Chapter 1: Plane Nuolun Academy

Plane Nuolun Academy.

This behemoth was not built on the ground, but suspended in the clouds, like a block set carelessly left there by some unreasonable giant.

On the ancient stone walls, a kind of obscure and powerful energy fluctuation was visibly flowing.

Jie Ming mingled among the thousands of young men and women crowded in front of the academy's massive bronze gate, trying hard to make the same expression as everyone else—looking around, with just the right amount of nervousness and longing in his eyes.

But to be honest, the reason for his nervousness was on a completely different channel from everyone else's.

"... One hundred eighty, one hundred eighty-one... Damn, there are over one hundred eighty Jin Dan stage personnel just greeting guests at the entrance... Uh, no, according to this world's terminology, they are Tier 2 official wizards."

Jie Ming tried his best to maintain the standard "country bumpkin in the big city" expression on his face, but his eyeballs couldn't help but twitch.

Fortunately, the young people around him who had come to participate in the test also had "Who am I, where am I?" written all over their faces, making him appear less conspicuous.

Feeling the wisp of Qi Refining Stage 1 true essence he had barely polished within his body, Jie Ming felt like he was about to laugh out of anger.

"What kind of interstellar joke is this? How on earth did this 'Spirit-Extinct World,' where spiritual energy is so thin that even sand feels abrasive, give birth to so many Jin Dan stage... no, Tier 2 official wizard-level powerhouses? Could the knowledge my golden finger gave me be a pirated version? If something goes wrong here, can I even run away?!"

He secretly glanced at the group of imposing Tier 2 official wizards in front, who were like small human-shaped nuclear missile launchers, and the Tier 1 official wizards around them, whose numbers he was too lazy to count.

A single wisp of pressure released casually by these guys could render him, at the Qi Refining stage, unable to move.

Recalling the ten-plus years he had spent day after day, grinding away through "Refining Essence into Qi," an ancient technique that was almost ready for a museum in the Cultivation Realm, just to barely reach Qi Refining Stage 1... Jie Ming really wanted to slap himself to see if he was dreaming.

He had been in this world for a long time, so long that he had almost forgotten the era of his past life filled with neon lights and high-speed internet.

He had become the son of an ordinary merchant in a remote territory of this world, with a middle-class family background and a predictable life trajectory.

Except for... that "Library Administrator" authority hidden deep within his consciousness.

Taking a deep breath to calm his mood, which was more stimulating than a roller coaster, Jie Ming split off a portion of his consciousness and skillfully located the magnificent white jade palace deep within his soul.

【Great Dao Library】.

The name sounded high-class, as if it represented the ultimate truths of the universe.

Its origin was unknown and mysterious, but the knowledge inside was truly as vast as the sea, ranging from the most basic introduction of Qi into the body to supreme secret arts for defying fate, alchemy, artifact refining, arrays, and talismans—it covered everything under the heavens.

"If I had this thing in a Cultivation World rich in spiritual energy, I would surely be at the Jin Dan stage by now, right? Maybe even Nascent Soul or Soul Transformation would be within reach!" Looking at the white jade palace standing quietly in his consciousness space, Jie Ming couldn't help but pull the corners of his mouth in self-mockery.

This golden finger was very good and very powerful.

But Jie Ming discovered that it was more like a top-tier online library and scientific research database, rather than a cheat that could directly infuse him with power.

The knowledge inside required him to understand, practice, and find "raw materials" himself.

Unfortunately, this world... had no spiritual energy.

Without spiritual energy, those awesome techniques in the Great Dao Library that required drawing heaven and earth spiritual energy into the body, and the alchemy, artifact refining, and array setting that required spiritual herbs, spiritual stones, and spiritual veins—none of them could be used!

A clever housewife cannot cook without rice; no matter how awesome the Great Dao Library was, it couldn't conjure spiritual energy.

He could only rely on those "Refining Essence into Qi" techniques in the library that were almost obsolete in the Cultivation Realm, literally "eating" his way to cultivation.

Every day of effort required consuming a massive amount of energy and time, as well as a large amount of food to replenish the deficit.

The "Qi Refining Stage 1," which looked unremarkable in the Cultivation Realm, was a ladder he had barely climbed here after gnawing on dry rations for over ten years and exhausting countless efforts.

And just when he thought he might spend his life like this, barely stronger than an ordinary person with his weak true essence, living a stable life, this world suddenly gave him a huge slap—this was actually a high-magic world, inhabited by a group of wizards who controlled elements, studied souls, and pursued eternal life!

What was even more fatal was that these wizards were a group of research fanatics with a near-pathological craving for unknown knowledge.

And as someone who practiced a completely different power system, he... was exactly an extremely rare, living research subject!

Jie Ming knew very clearly that once he was discovered to be an outsider, his only fate would be to be researched, sliced, and exhibited as a specimen after his value was squeezed dry.

Human rights? Morality? Expecting a group of wizards who could start wars in different planes at will and use souls for experiments to have such things?

So when he heard his lord, that Tier 2 wizard with power equivalent to the early Jin Dan stage, notify him that he had reached the age to go to the academy with other children for a qualification review, Jie Ming wanted to refuse.

But facing the lord's mountain-like pressure as a Tier 2 wizard, those words of refusal spun in his mouth several times, but not a single word dared to pop out.

Fortunately, Jie Ming was not yet desperate enough to sit and wait for death.

Although most of the knowledge in the Great Dao Library could not be used directly, the number of techniques it recorded and the strangeness of their types far exceeded Jie Ming's imagination.

In addition to mainstream cultivation knowledge, some special, unorthodox techniques were also recorded.

Accompanied by Jie Ming's intent, a stream of light flew out from the white jade palace, forming a phantom of a book in front of his consciousness.

He skillfully flipped through the content above, while sensing the operation of the true essence in his body, performing precise calibration and adjustments to ensure nothing went wrong.

"Internal Circulation Basic Volume"

Internal circulation, this thing was considered a quite non-mainstream technique in the cultivation knowledge system Jie Ming knew, generally only practiced by those cultivators who specialized in body refining and attempted to refine their bodies into cave-heaven magic treasures.

It did not seek to absorb heaven and earth spiritual energy from the outside like mainstream cultivation methods, but emphasized internal exploration, using the essence, Qi, and spirit within one's own body as nourishment to form a miniature energy circulation system within the body.

The most important advantage was: once the internal circulation operated to the extreme, it would disconnect the body from external energy, putting itself in an extremely closed state.

As long as he didn't expose it actively, even if scanned by someone using spiritual sense, it would be very difficult to discover the wisp of true essence in his body that was completely isolated from external energy!

"Calm down... I already went through a simple preliminary qualification test at the lord's mansion, and roughly understood that wizard qualification tests mainly focus on mental power and soul. As long as I use internal circulation to hide the true essence fluctuations in my body and appropriately restrain my mental power intensity, it should be no problem to get past it... right?"

If it can't be done, it must be done; this was already the most effective technique he could use under limited conditions!

Jie Ming sighed and let his consciousness return to reality.

He raised his head and looked into the bronze giant gate again.

To outsiders, he was just dazed for a short while at the entrance because of nervousness.

The queue in front kept shortening, and as he got closer to the bronze giant gate, his heart became calmer instead.

The speed of the qualification test was quite fast; young people with trepidation and expectation stepped into the gate in batches, and came out in batches, their faces filled with various different emotions.

Soon, it was Jie Ming's turn.

He straightened his back, took a deep breath, and discarded the last of his inner misgivings.

Come on! This life-and-death gamble!