Translator: AnubisTL
"Huff... Qi Refining Stage 3."
Jieming slowly exhaled a breath of stale air, feeling the pure true essence flowing through his body like a gentle stream.
With ample merit points now at his disposal, Jieming no longer denied his appetite, devouring various high-energy foods.
The combination of nourishing foods rich in vital essence, the dual nourishment from Eastern Purple Qi, and the accelerating effects of his increasingly refined meditation technique propelled his immortal cultivation progress like a rocket.
In just half a year since enrolling, Jieming had soared from Qi Refining Stage 1 to Stage 3.
Within his dantian, the true essence had formed a deeper, wider lake, each circulation amplifying his power.
Nourished by the true essence, his physical body grew increasingly resilient and translucent, while his five senses sharpened.
Simultaneously, his Wizard Meditation Technique advanced by leaps and bounds.
Thanks to the cultivation system's nourishment of his mental sea and soul, the assistance of higher-grade meditation chambers, and the freedom to cultivate at full speed without concealing his progress after being recognized as a "genius," Jieming had successfully inscribed his fourth truth rune and was on the verge of completing his fifth.
Jieming focused his inner gaze.
Within his mental sea, the first three runes—representing the foundational principles of alchemy: Transformation, Fusion, and Refinement—glowed brightly. Immediately following them, the newly inscribed fourth rune pulsed with a powerful mental resonance.
Jieming had carefully considered his choice for this fourth truth rune.
Wizard apprentices were required to inscribe nine core truth runes, which would often determine their future specialization and foundational abilities as wizards.
Although his primary focus was alchemy, the wizard school system was vast and complex, with many runes being either universally applicable or complementary across disciplines.
Ultimately, Jieming anchored his fourth core rune to Stability, one of the three core runes of the Potionology School.
The Stability rune balanced energy and material structures, suppressed runaway reactions, and formed an indispensable foundation for potionology.
Simultaneously, it served as a secondary rune in alchemy, essential for stabilizing energy in many advanced alchemical experiments.
By choosing Stability, Jieming deepened his mastery of alchemy while laying the groundwork for future research in potionology.
Jieming had already decided on his future path. He planned to select all nine core runes for his wizard apprentice period from the Logistics Department, focusing on the core runes for alchemy, potionology, and rune studies.
This choice was exceedingly rare even among logistics wizards.
Most logistics wizards, after inscribing three to six core runes from their department, would typically choose to inscribe combat-oriented runes such as amplification, energy, shields, casting, and elemental runes to compensate for their lack of direct combat capabilities.
But Jieming was different.
In addition to the wizard system, he had another cultivation system!
The Great Dao Library Pavilion contained countless exquisite combat spells, martial arts techniques, and methods for crafting various talismans and magical artifacts. He had no need to worry about lacking combat skills.
Therefore, when selecting truth runes, he could completely disregard combat power and focus entirely on accumulating knowledge in the Logistics Department, laying a solid foundation for the future fusion of his dual systems at a higher level.
"Hah..."
After adjusting his breathing, Jieming remained in his meditative state. Seizing the opportunity of his newly invigorated spirit following his breakthrough, he shifted his focus to the center of his mental sea.
There, surrounded by four truth runes, lay the first Witchcraft Model he was constructing within the wizard system.
Learning wizardry in the Wizard World wasn't as simple as reciting spells and performing gestures. Instead, it followed the same rigorous process as cultivating through meditation techniques, requiring the construction of Witchcraft Models within one's mental sea.
Because building these models consumed mental power, many wizard apprentices—and even formal wizards—avoided inscribing too many, lest it hinder their cultivation progress.
Moreover, the difficulty of constructing these Witchcraft Models was terrifyingly high.
In wizard civilization, each wizard could be seen as a researcher, and a Witchcraft Model could be understood as the successful completion of a "research project" based on their personal knowledge system and research focus.
The wizardry they cast was the practical application of this "project."
Therefore, no two Witchcraft Models in the world were ever exactly the same.
Even for alchemy, the most common foundational wizardry of the Alchemy School, the Witchcraft Models constructed by different wizards varied due to differences in their accumulated knowledge, personal interpretations, and slight variations in research focus.
The advantage of these custom-built Witchcraft Models was that they were not static, unchanging "dead objects" with rigid hierarchical classifications. Instead, they continuously evolved and improved alongside the wizard's own expanding knowledge system, deepening understanding of the world, and advancing techniques.
Due to this unique learning approach, most wizards in this world only truly mastered a handful of "original" Witchcraft Models... much like how many researchers in my previous life might only produce a few truly valuable scientific breakthroughs in their entire careers.
Of course, this refers to "properly" mastered Witchcraft Models.
Beyond the "proper" methods, the wizard system naturally also included "improper" shortcuts—heretical paths that allowed one to forcibly imprint another wizard's already-constructed Witchcraft Model into their own mental sea through rote memorization.
This way, even without understanding the underlying principles, one could still cast the corresponding wizardry.
However, these "pirated" Witchcraft Models lost all potential for advancement and optimization.
Moreover, when conquering other planes, if they encountered incompatible rules or other issues, these rote-memorized wizardries were highly likely to fail. Unlike "proper" Witchcraft Models built upon personal understanding, which could be adjusted and adapted to real-world conditions, these inflexible techniques lacked such adaptability.
These unorthodox Witchcraft Models were often favored by wizards of the Combat Department.
They needed to quickly acquire various direct and effective offensive or defensive methods. The underlying principles were irrelevant to them; as long as it worked, that was all that mattered.
However, in the wizard civilization's plane invasion wars, the standard procedure was to first gather data from the enemy plane, then continuously adjust the Witchcraft Models based on the collected information.
Due to the division between the Combat and Logistics Departments, the Logistics Department typically handled adjustments and countermeasures. As for the source of information, that naturally came from the Combat Department's artillery... wizards.
"Logistics Department and Combat Department? More like the Orthodox Department and the Cannon Fodder Department..." Having grasped the true nature of the wizard system's "research" versus "application" dichotomy, Jieming couldn't help but mutter inwardly.
No wonder Wizard Jack had once claimed that logistics wizards were the true orthodox. Now it seemed clear that logistics wizards were the ones who had truly grasped the essence of wizardly power.
(End of the Chapter)
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