A World Worth Protecting

At the thought of his rapid improvement in Inscriptions and Cao Kun’s aggrieved expression, the smug Wang Baole felt good, especially upon seeing the jade green bracelet on his wrist again.

A storage Dharmic artifact! Wang Baole was thrilled. He could not bear to part with the bracelet, and it was obvious that this object was too precious and special to these students. After all, it represented the Federation’s step into the Spirit Inception Era to a certain degree. To normal people, it was one of the most well-known objects that belonged to a cultivator.

Now, on the way back to the Dharmic Armament faculty cave abode, Wang Baole could not resist the urge to try putting his personal items into the storage bracelet. It was simple to use this Dharmic artifact; in the Federation, as long as a person had cultivated the Qi Fostering Art, they could use it.

He only needed to inject Spirit Qi to instantly sense that the bracelet had about twenty square feet of space, and he could put in and take out items as he wished. After trying, Wang Baole was exhilarated.

Along the way back, he kept putting in items and taking them out. He even learned the gesture of the Chancellor and the others. Raising his right hand and flicking, a bag of snacks appeared in his hand. When he flicked again, the snacks disappeared.

All this caused Wang Baole to laugh out involuntarily. Caught in this wonderful feeling, he swiftly returned to the cave abode and took out the jade slip that the Dharmic Armament Pavilion Elder had given him.

The so-called Material Study described the ingredients to augment and amplify Spirit Kernels. There were also simple methods to meld the ingredients. After a long time, Wang Baole—who had gained some insight—put down the jade slip and entered the hallucination realm to continue his systemic deduction.

Following the explanations from the Chancellor at the lecture, Wang Baole had swiftly filled up his own basic knowledge. Through drawing reason by analogy, he had a deep understanding of the Inscriptions system, and when he started to calculate again, he realized that his deduction speed was even faster than before.

After three days, Wang Baole was delighted to discover that the number of times that he had been struck by lightning could be counted on his fingers. Now, whenever the mask posed a question, he could immediately give the answer.

Even though the number of Inscriptions he remembered was only a few hundred thousand, with the system, he could deduce all the Inscriptions he needed. On a certain level, to say that he had already memorized all of the million Inscriptions was not an exaggeration.

Most importantly, his understanding of these Inscriptions was deeper because of his formulaic deduction.

Feeling that he was very formidable, Wang Baole could no longer resist. He did not want Liu Daobin and the others to continue suffering. Furthermore, he did not want Zhang Lan and the other three to continue their arrogance. So, in the early morning of the fourth day, he brought his determination and resolve and went directly to the Inscriptions Hall.

When he reached the Inscriptions Hall, they were in the middle of a lesson. The Inscriptions study teacher was at the lectern, looking at the students with a stern face, explaining the Inscriptions.

The moment Wang Baole saw the teacher, he immediately clasped his fist in greeting. His arrival attracted the attention of all the students, and even the teacher looked over. If it had been any other person interrupting the class, the teacher would have scolded them, but after seeing Wang Baole and being one of the teachers who had participated in the Chancellor’s lecture, his face showed a genial smile.

“Oh, it’s Wang Baole. Today, we’re talking about basic Inscriptions. If you’re interested, you can also listen.” The appreciation in the teacher’s gaze was evident. His warm tone toward Wang Baole was a big contrast to his previous stern attitude toward all the other students.

This made all the surrounding students astonished. What was with the sudden change? Even if Wang Baole was the Spirit Stones Head Prefect, this was the Inscriptions Hall.

“I’m sorry, Teacher. That… I want to open the blue wall test to see how much I have mastered in my studies. If that’s not acceptable, I can wait till you finish class and come again.” Wang Baole scratched his head. He had been too hasty and did not consider that there might have been classes.

When the teacher heard this, his eyes shone in that moment, and he laughed loudly.

“There’s no need to wait for the end of class, Baole. You may take the test. I will watch over you and witness the appearance of the new Head Prefect of the Inscriptions Hall!” Not only did the Inscriptions teacher not get angry, he was even enthusiastic. In actuality, he also wanted to know just how many Inscriptions Wang Baole had mastered. According to his judgment, it had to be around 600,000 Inscriptions.

The surrounding students heard the conversation between Wang Baole and the teacher. When it came to the three words ‘New Head Prefect’, all of their eyes grew wide, and their hearts were in turmoil. Their brains roared as though they had seen a ghost, and they looked at Wang Baole in shock.

“Heavens, Wang Baole is really going to… take on the challenge of being Inscriptions Head Prefect?”

“How can this be? He only just became the Spirit Stones Head Prefect a few months back… so why is our teacher so confident?”

“If he succeeds, he will be the Spirit Stones Head Prefect and the Inscriptions Head Prefect!”

While all the people in this classroom looked like they had seen ghosts, Wang Baole inhaled deeply. After bowing to the teacher, he walked into the classroom and stood in front of the blue wall. He raised his hand and placed it on top. The blue wall test opened.

In an instant, the blue wall emitted a blue light and trapped Wang Baole within. Wang Baole sat cross-legged. His test had officially begun!

The test for Inscriptions was different from Spirit Stones study. It was not about testing their skill in carving but condensing illusions, to prove that the student had a certain proficiency in Inscriptions. Under the scrutiny of the students and teacher, Wang Baole sat down. In an instant, pictures that other people could not see appeared before his eyes.

In those pictures, there were countless Inscriptions that required Wang Baole to differentiate, and simultaneously follow a set sequence to complete the ranking.

While it was like this, the difficulty was not too high. However, in truth, more complicated Inscriptions questions could appear at any moment during the process, such as fill in the blank questions or multiple-choice questions. Other questions needed to be annotated or required the student to draw the Inscriptions.

These questions appeared at random times. The moment the candidate answered the question incorrectly, the test would end. Furthermore, the test had a strict time limit, and the moment the candidate exceeded the time limit, the test would also end.

This difficulty caused the students to refer to the Inscriptions study test as the devil’s trial.

Now, although everyone who was spectating the process could not see Wang Baole’s answering progress, they could see Wang Baole’s result constantly changing and increasing on the blue wall.

30,000, 80,000, 120,000, 200,000!

In a short five minutes, Wang Baole’s number swiftly exploded. The constantly jumping numbers immediately struck all the students in the Inscriptions Hall dumb with amazement again, and some students even stood up, speechless.

“That’s fast!”

“This Wang Baole… It can’t be that he will become the new Head Prefect!”

The jumping of Wang Baole’s number was truly terrifying. When Cao Kun was promoted, he had required one hour to raise the number to 200,000.

The cry of amazement from the Inscriptions Hall quickly spread. To the students, this incident could be said to be an incident of an unbelievable magnitude. With the news spreading, the Inscriptions College Discipline Department’s inspectors also heard of it. While all of them were stunned, they also paid attention. As for those who were close to Cao Kun, they quickly informed him of the news.

“Head Prefect Cao, Wang Baole is in the Inscriptions Hall. He… he wants to challenge you!”

Cao Kun—who was buried in his studies in the cave abode and had experienced some sort of breakthrough in memorizing Inscriptions—raised his head violently when he heard the voice transmission. His stress was unprecedentedly huge, and he was frantic.

“Wang Baole!”

If it had been before the Chancellor’s lecture, he would have laughed mockingly if he had heard of this situation. But today, his heart beat rapidly, and a strong sense of unease caused his breathing to become erratic. He charged out of the cave abode fiercely and ran straight toward the Inscriptions Hall.

When he arrived, people already filled the interior and exterior of the classroom. It was clear that Wang Baole’s opening of the Inscriptions blue wall had attracted the attention of everyone in the Dharmic Armament faculty, and they had all arrived en masse.

It was possible to even hear the shocked cries coming from inside the lecture hall.

“It’s already 230,000. Heavens!”

“Way too fast, 250,000!”

“How proficient is this Wang Baole in Inscriptions that he can be so fast? Don’t tell me that, to him, these 200,000 or so Inscriptions are already something he can easily answer in an instant!”

After spotting Cao Kun’s silhouette, the crowd’s expressions changed too many times to count, especially upon noticing Cao Kun’s red eyes and his obviously mad expression. The crowd quickly created a path to allow Cao Kun to rush into the hall. As he entered, he did not have the energy to care about the confused stares from the students and looked directly at Wang Baole.

When he looked, he saw that Wang Baole’s number on the blue wall had reached 280,000. Cao Kun felt as though a bomb had gone off in his brain, his vision turned black and he staggered, breathing with some difficulty. His face turned white in that instant, and the veins on his forehead stood up as he moaned.

“Wang Baole, you want to surpass me, impossible. I will also… apply for the test!”

Cao Kun stepped forward fiercely and placed his right hand directly on the blue wall. The Head Prefect test had the light from the blue wall as protection so that no one could disrupt the student, but that did not mean that only one person could take the test at a time.

Now, Cao Kun and Wang Baole were competing directly against each other. In the Spirit Kernel Head Prefect Pavilion, Lin Tianhao, stood suddenly and threw his teacup viciously onto the ground, gritting his teeth.

“Wang Baole, you want to fight with me. You peasant-born cooked entrails, how dare you oppose me!”