Chapter Nine: Ripples

PS: My thanks to the reader 20170306193539927 for rewarding me with two thousand Starting Point coins. I never expected someone to reward me on the very first day of signing the contract—I'm so excited!

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At first, all the students thought these stone columns were quite simple, and Feng Xue felt the same. After all, the requirement was to sit, and the top of the column was even wider than the space needed for someone to sit cross-legged. Even with a slight swaying, it wouldn't be enough to knock anyone off, and at this height—surrounded by columns that soared thousands of meters—there was hardly any sense of wind, making it feel no different from sitting on the ground and meditating.

But soon, the students realized how naive they had been. The frequency of the column's sway was subtle; gradually, it began to synchronize with the students' heartbeats. Almost every swing disrupted their breathing, yet they couldn't resist it, because to fight against the sway was to fight against their own heartbeat.

Feng Xue was particularly conflicted at this moment. As the saying goes, what helps you succeed can also lead to your downfall. The more Feng Xue was able to clear his mind and remain calm, the more sensitive he became to the column's movement beneath him. Even if his mind was undisturbed, his body would instinctively attune itself to the rhythm, causing him to forget the complex patterns of breathing.

"The essence of the Ripple Immortal Way is the ripple caused by breathing. Since there are ripples, there must be frequency..." Feng Xue pondered, searching for a solution.

"Breathing creates ripples in the blood; the blood stirs and delivers oxygen to the cells..." Suddenly, Feng Xue realized he was too impatient. In the original work, even the strongest Ripple master, Da Qiao, needed a week to integrate the breathing technique into daily activity. Feng Xue lacked the intense willpower that Da Qiao possessed, not to mention that the Ripple qigong he studied was a version refined by countless predecessors. He hadn't fully mastered the Ripple yet, but already wanted to make breathing an instinct. It was like trying to run before learning to walk.

Abruptly, Feng Xue halted his cultivation and began anew, forcing his body to operate according to the breathing technique with sheer willpower. He paid no mind to habit or feeling, simply followed the rhythm of the one hundred twenty-eight cycles.

With the change in breathing frequency, Feng Xue began to sense the alterations in his body. Faint, subtle ripples became perceptible within him.

Ripples accumulated with time spent cultivating. It was precisely for this reason that, in the original work, Qibelin was able to pass on the ripples he had cultivated for half his life to Da Qiao.

This accumulation wasn't like inner force, storing up energy; rather, it activated every cell in the body, making them move according to a certain frequency.

Such movement preserved cellular vitality, extended cell lifespan, and allowed kinetic energy to brew and build up within.

Gradually, Feng Xue's focus shifted from breathing frequency to the vibration of his cells.

He soon discovered a unique advantage over Da Qiao: he possessed gourmet cells and the Body-Refining Mantra. With focused concentration, he could even directly, to a limited extent, influence his own cellular movement, and through the brewing among the cells, affect his breathing rhythm in reverse.

No matter how one looked at it, the movement brought about by countless cells far exceeded the influence of the column's swaying beneath him.

As time passed, Feng Xue's body began to change—a side effect emerged: symptoms of arrhythmia appeared.

This was no joke. His heartbeat started to speed up and slow down unpredictably, sometimes urgent, sometimes languid. If not for the strengthening effects of the Body-Refining Mantra and gourmet cells, an ordinary person would have suffered a stroke by now!

Yet, if the other students could observe, they'd notice that his heartbeat rhythm closely matched that of the Ripple Immortal Way's breathing.

Bit by bit, Feng Xue no longer triggered the Ripple Immortal Way with his breath, but instead used his heartbeat to directly drive the ripples in his blood, then let the blood influence the lungs, adjusting his breathing in reverse so that it gradually matched the rhythm of heartbeat, blood, and internal organs...

It wasn't until half a month later that Feng Xue finally completed this process. If he were to stand in water now, he'd see a myriad of chaotic ripples spreading from his legs, intertwining and colliding—a sign of entry into the Ripple Immortal Way.

However, the Ripple Immortal Way was not a shortcut to power, nor an offensive technique. Even though it was the ultimate weapon against vampires in the original story, that was only because its ripples resembled those of the sun. It was more about regulating the body, which perhaps was the academy's true intention for making it the first lesson.

"Very good, it seems you have mastered it." The fake monk was the first to notice Feng Xue's success, even before Feng Xue himself had realized it, startling him.

"Don't worry, I just saw that the frequency of your skin's twitching has begun to align with your breathing," the fake monk said with a smile, though his words were anything but simple.

To observe with the naked eye the skin's tremor caused by the breathing technique—this was a level of mastery bordering on the microscopic. If not for some special origin, it would require at least epic-level ability.

From the previous conversation with Xia Mi, it was likely that this fake monk was in the same cohort as Xia Mi, or perhaps even a year or two lower. To advance from extraordinary to epic in just eight years—four levels, twelve tiers—what incredible talent, luck, and perseverance! Perhaps it was because of this rapid advancement that he was sent here to manage the freshmen, to temper his character. No wonder he was forced to wear a monk's haircut.

Feng Xue's gaze toward the fake monk suddenly shifted, making the monk uneasy. Still, he braced himself and said, "Next, go stand on that column! While maintaining the breathing technique, use your student ID to connect to the school network, attend theory classes, and when you accumulate one hundred credits, you can come down."

Feng Xue looked at the five-hundred-meter-high column, barely thicker than a small stool, and his face instantly turned green. Not only did he have to stand on it, but earning one hundred credits from theory classes alone was enough to make him suffer. Each theoretical course required completion and a written exam before credits were awarded.

So-called elective theory courses were essentially knowledge-based classes, similar to language, math, physics, and chemistry from his previous life, but with a greater emphasis on practicality. Most were knowledge that travelers would likely need, such as a hundred methods for harvesting magic herbs, a hundred ways to beg for mercy from story bosses, a hundred basic behavioral patterns of story characters, and of course, various trivia about story plots—such as UC era history, Type-Moon chronicles, and so on.

Even with a perfect score of one hundred, only ten credits were awarded; an excellent score gave five credits, and a passing grade of sixty earned just one credit.

A perfect score meant ten subjects with full marks, twenty subjects with excellence, or one hundred subjects with a passing grade.

Passing aside, even if all scores were eighty or above for excellence, it still required twenty courses.

Fortunately, many theory courses overlapped with those at the Enlightenment Academy in this world, and the heavy emphasis on story knowledge made electives less difficult.

But the problem was, all the stories in this world were fragmented!

For example, if you were asked the true identity of the masked man in Naruto—anyone who had finished reading the manga in the twenty-first century could tell you it was Obito Uchiha. But here, all the Shippuden plot after a certain point was lost, so the answer depended on incomplete information from various travelers—Madara Uchiha.

Feng Xue almost wanted to cry to the heavens: It's not me who's wrong, it's the world!

……

The cold wind howled, and in the blink of an eye, three months had passed. Seventeen extraordinary-level students now stood atop columns a kilometer high, no thicker than a child's arm, maintaining their balance amidst the swaying, frowning at their student IDs.

Including the initial period, the students had now spent four months in this stone forest. During this time, they even slept on the columns, and meals were delivered directly by the fake monk. Speaking of which, this fake monk was no ordinary person—the students needed special colored clouds to ascend the columns, but the monk simply walked up, feet pressed to the stone, as easily as strolling on level ground. Feng Xue initially suspected the monk's Body-Refining Mantra incorporated chakra training (chakra was strictly forbidden for certain reasons, which would be explained in the Naruto arc).

In any case, four months was almost a semester back in his previous life. If not for the Central Travelers Academy holding final exams only once a year, these students would barely have learned anything before facing their end-of-term assessments.

At present, Feng Xue stood atop a column similar to the one Xia Mi had first climbed. Damn that fake monk—every month, the columns increased in difficulty. Feng Xue was the second to ascend, so the challenge was second only to Xia Mi's. As for Xia Mi, he was probably leisurely daydreaming in some elective class!

That's right—Xia Mi was an eighth-year veteran. In the second month, he completed ten elective courses with perfect scores, earned one hundred credits, and left, departing under the murderous gaze of his classmates.

It wasn't inequality but disparity that breeds resentment—so true.

But today, Feng Xue would finally be liberated.

He had already earned ninety-eight credits; with this elective, even without a perfect score, as long as he scored eighty or above for excellence, he could leave this damned stone forest!

But he had miscalculated—

"Seventy-nine? Seventy-nine bloody points! You could have deducted or not, but you just had to! You did it on purpose, didn't you? Absolutely! Wolf's Bane and Mountain Tiger are obviously the same thing—why was it wrong when I wrote Mountain Tiger! You insist on the scientific name? Is this a medicinal herb identification class or a pharmaceutical nomenclature recitation class?"

That's right—Feng Xue scored seventy-nine, just one point short of excellence, which was utterly useless, since it still only counted as a passing grade—just one credit.

He had to choose another elective.

"Elective, elective my ass!" It was no wonder Feng Xue was furious—he had already taken thirty-three electives (two with full marks, twelve excellent, nineteen passing), nearly one every four days. Thankfully, most of the school's theory electives were refined, concise courses, rarely exceeding fifty thousand words (some, like materials identification, might be longer—such as the nightmare-level elective "Compendium of Materia Medica"), otherwise, completing one hundred credits worth of courses in such a short time would have been a pipe dream!