Chapter 700: New Reward and Ancestor-Level Concept!
Helian Beifang had been prepared that he might not be accepted by Sun Mo. Hence, he wasn’t too disappointed. As for that agreement, he didn’t take it seriously.
After all, even if Sun Mo abided by his promise and didn’t discriminate against him because he was a barbarian, Sun Mo might not look upon his aptitude favorably.
Hence, Helian Beifang planned to stay for half a month in Jinling to tour the place and play around. He wanted to see the scenery of a famous city in Jiangnan before returning home.
Although the Central Plains was a good place, it was ultimately not his home.
...
“The aptitude of that youth is very excellent. Are you not afraid that he would be snatched away by others?”
Gu Xiuxun was curious.
“If that’s the case, it would mean that the two of us aren’t fated.
Sun Mo shrugged.
The great teachers of this world would want nothing more than to snatch good seedlings when they encountered one. After all, the value of great teachers was to nurture students whose names could be renowned through the Nine Provinces.
The stronger your students and the more famous they were, the greater your prestige as a great teacher would be.
Although Sun Mo had come to Jinling for over a year, his mentality hadn’t changed yet. To him, he felt it would be enough as long as he taught more students.
There was no difference in having more personal students or not.
Hence, Sun Mo would do his best when he gave his lectures, holding nothing back. Even for personal students of other great teachers, he would never hide knowledge from them.
By doing so, it actually helped him to gain a good reputation as well as favorable impression points.
...
Sun Mo spent his entire day in the battle hall and also discovered a few soon-to-be students with quite a good potential. But they were merely outstanding and hadn’t reached the extent where they were elite geniuses.
After dinner, he returned to his study and started to do some research on the spirit runes classic he obtained from the old headmaster’s library. But not long later, he heard noises outside.
Sun Mo came out and saw that darn bird, the immortal crane, currently chasing the papaya girl. The crane was wielding a wooden cudgel with one of its wings and beating her.
“...”
Sun Mo was speechless.
Ga!
After the damn bird established dominance by shrieking at Sun Mo, it continued to chase after Lu Zhiruo.
“What’s going on?”
Sun Mo frowned. “Stop or I will stew you!”
“Ga!” The damn bird directly spat a mouthful of saliva at him.
“...”
Sun Mo became angry. “Little`E, go fetch me a cleaver and boil some hot water.”
The little maid Yi Cui`e was very obedient. She immediately broke into a jog as she headed to the kitchen.
Ga!
After seeing Sun Mo being serious, the damn bird halted. It used its wings and pointed to the food on the ground and left angrily.
“Zhiruo prepared grains and clean water for it, but these didn’t seem to suit its taste? Hence, it started to beat Zhiruo up.”
Dong He explained.
“I thought cranes eat rice and grains?”
The papaya girl covered her head and felt very wronged. “If it feasts on fish and meat, how can it still be an ‘immortal’?”
In Lu Zhiruo’s heart, a bird like an immortal crane had to eat spirit fruits and drink from mountain springs. Only then would such things fit its demeanor.
It was naturally impossible to find spirit fruits. Hence, she personally went to select the best grains to cook them. She even added sweet jujubes and fruits to make the rice more fragrant, but the food was still held in disdain by the crane.
“I think it eats fish?”
Sun Mo also couldn’t be sure. This was because he lived in a city in his past world and there were no immortal cranes in the zoo. There were only swans and various types of parrots.
The ticket that cost $50 bucks was truly not worth it. The tour wasn’t comparable to the immortal crane in his home.
Although the personality of this damn bird wasn’t good, its external appearance was honestly impressive and handsome. It could depend on its appearance to swindle people. There would definitely be no problem.
“It says that it doesn’t eat fish.”
The papaya girl felt very wronged. “It wants to eat stewed meat.”
“Stewed meat?”
Sun Mo’s brows furrowed together tightly.
The papaya girl realized that she had said something wrong. A moment later, she lowered her head, shrank her neck back, and pretended that she was a quail.
“Did something happen?”
Sun Mo asked.
“This immortal crane ate a large pot of stew meat in the canteen today and even injured three head chefs.”
Dong He explained in a low voice.
The ecology and environmental protection of the Nine Provinces was very good, and immortal cranes weren’t considered very rare. Hence, the head chefs didn’t feel any reverence for it. When they saw the bird stealing food, they wanted to capture, defeather, and boil it, making it into food.
If it wasn’t for the fact that Lu Zhiruo arrived in time, that damn bird would have fought all the head chefs and turned the canteen topsy turvy.
“Are their injuries serious?”
Sun Mo’s lips twitched. He felt that his reputation might be damaged by this darn bird.
“No.”
Lu Zhiruo rubbed her eyes. “I bought some presents and apologized to them.”
Her teacher’s spiritual beast committed a mistake, hence, she had the responsibility and obligation to settle things. She didn’t want her teacher to worry.
“Mn, well done.”
Sun Mo nodded and patted the papaya girl on her head.
“System, let’s get started with opening a chest!”
Ding!
“Congratulations on obtaining 1x divine force fruit.”
His certainty of breaking through to the next level was stable now.
Breaking through so easily in such a relaxed manner caused Sun Mo to feel extremely joyful. He finally understood the joy and happiness of those players who spent money on games.
Others had to work hard and cultivate, but those rich kids just had to spend money on buying experience potions and would directly get several times the amount of experience points. After that, they would max out their levels and go around killing people with their high-level weapons. That was simply tyrannical and terrifying.
“Don’t be too complacent. You can obtain nature fruits as a reward through the system, but those descendants of peak wealthy clans can use their ocean-sized wealth to purchase nature fruits as well. If I run a calculation, those geniuses from those powerful and wealthy clans are enjoying even more cultivation resources than you.”
The system felt that Sun Mo’s vision was too shallow.
He merely ate a few divine force fruits and was already so happy. (What a frog in the well, don’t you know how those geniuses in wealthy clans level up?)
They would soak in top-grade medical bathes daily and eat good and delicious food infused with nutrients every day. They even had powerful great teachers guiding them and strong opponents to spar against them.
“I understand!”
Sun Mo’s lips curled.
How did that saying go? All roads lead to Rome, but some people were directly born in Rome. This was something Sun Mo heard when he was in middle-school.
After that, when he started to work, he finally knew the latter part of this sentence. And for someone...they were born to rule Rome.
Would you feel despair or not?
You had to work hard for your entire life and be indebted to the goddess of luck before you could walk to the end point. However, your end point was even lower compared to the starting point of others.
If it was when Sun Mo was still a student, he would feel ashamed to take such a shortcut. But now, he was already accustomed to it.
The only question now was if the system went on strike and stopped working, what should he do?
Therefore, he needed to construct his own botanical garden. At that time, he could grow a few divine force fruit trees there. Not only would he be able to consume them, but he could also use them as rewards to attract more great teachers to join the Central Province Academy. Their numbers would surely multiply.
This was simply perfect!
Sun Mo pondered over his plan while touseling the papaya girl’s hair. He continued to open the treasure chests.
This time around, before the purple light faded completely, a silvery-white light replaced it.
“A new reward?”
Sun Mo’s spirits stirred. He had not seen this color before.
Ding!
“Congratulations on obtaining 1x spirit rune design magic cube. Duration: 144 hours.”
“Note: Upon using it, you can inspect and verify your spirit rune design concept. If the concept is workable, the magic cube will form a material object based on reality that’s either effective or ineffective.”
“It also means that it can save you time on modeling.”
The system introduced.
This reward was a good item, but Sun Mo wasn’t agitated. On the contrary, he calmed down and stared at the magic cube as he sank into contemplation.
The so-called magic cube was just lumps of blocks. Using them, one could form different models.
This also meant that the reward this time around was for him to build various spirit rune buildings.
In the Middle-Earth Nine Provinces, it was very expensive and time-consuming to build a spirit rune tower.
Think about it, just drawing spirit runes on paper already had a very high failure rate. If one were to engraved spirit runes on buildings, how terrifying would the failure rate be?
One must know that buildings were made from bricks or mud and clay. If the spirit rune on a brick was put together wrongly with the others, it might very well lead to the entire spirit rune building being ineffective.
To spirit rune masters, they wouldn’t know whether the new spirit rune they designed was ineffective or it was a mistake caused when joining the bricks together.
If it was the latter case, things would be solved as long as they changed the wrong brick. But if it was the earlier case, they would have to redesign each brick for the entire building.
Hence, there weren’t many spirit rune buildings in the entire Middle-Earth Nine Provinces.
The spirit rune buildings now were either from ancient times, or they were built according to design diagrams excavated from the ruins in the Darkness Continent.
Actually, Sun Mo had long since wanted to build a spirit gathering tower.
After being used to the spirit qi density in the Wind King Divine Hall, which was several times higher when compared to the Middle-Earth Nine Provinces, he felt like a fish out of water whenever he returned to school from there.
However, it was simply too difficult to design a spirit gathering tower. Sun Mo had tried to attempt it before, but that was an area only spirit rune great ancestors would dare to step into. Hence, he smartly gave it up.
But now with the spirit rune design magic cube in his hands, Sun Mo had a new opportunity.
He could use the magic cube to continuously probe for mistakes and ultimately design a perfect building. If he didn’t have this and wanted to do the same thing, he would only be able to re-design a building every time after it was tested to be ineffective during the construction phase.
No matter how fast the second method was, it would already be not bad if one could probe for mistakes twice a month. Besides, one had to spend a great amount of human labor and physical resources. That would be a great sum of expenditure.
“Good stuff!”
Sun Mo sighed ruefully. He got Lu Zhiruo and Dong He to leave the room and impatiently took it out, starting to play with it.
The material used to make the magic cube was a type of jade that Sun Mo couldn’t identify. He counted it and there were 1,000 pieces in total. At the same time, there was an engraving knife that came with it. No matter the amount of force he exerted with the knife, the lines left behind on the runes were similar in terms of depth.
Sun Mo could carve some spirit runes on certain jade pieces and experiment with combining them to see if the overall spirit runes were effective.
It was naturally impossible to draw a single spirit rune on an entire wall; that would simply be a waste of area. At this time, there would naturally be a need for a dual-fusion, triple-fusion, or even five-way fusion appearing.
It also meant to say that on a single surface where a spirit rune was drawn on, there would be five different effects.
“Spirit gathering tower? This idea isn’t bad. If you manage to build it, you will be the best spirit rune master in the entire Central Province.”
The system sighed ruefully.
“Oh, not number one in the Nine Provinces?”
Sun Mo counter-asked.
“Do you think those spirit rune great ancestors who lived for a few hundred years are useless fools?”
The system was speechless.
“It’s fine, I’m young. I can wait for all of them to die.”
Sun Mo consoled himself.
“You are not even at the Longevity Realm and you want to compare your lifespan to theirs? When you cannot control your bowels due to old age and soak your pants and shoes with your own urines, they would still be living well.”
The system spoke contemptuously.
“At the very least, old men at the Saint Realm are fitter than you.”
After getting a new toy, Sun Mo was immersed in it completely. This play session of his lasted an entire night. He only stopped playing this game reluctantly the next morning when Li Ziqi came over to greet him.
“Let’s go, I have to recruit a student no matter what today!”
Sun Mo went out in the sun and headed toward the campus.
...
In a tea inn at a certain location of Jinling, a boiling cauldron of voices drowned the atmosphere.
Liu Tong brought his personal student Zhang Pan here and realized that this inn was flooded with people.
“As expected of a large city, there are people everywhere.”
Zhang Pan sighed ruefully. In the little town he came from, the number of people he saw in a year couldn’t even be compared to the number of people he saw in Jinling today.
“Let’s head over there!”
There was a table at the corner, and the customer there just finished his meal. Liu Tong quickly headed over and sat down to ‘reserve’ the table in advance.
“The two of you, what do you want to order? Our shop is famous for our roasted goose and is well known in the entire Jinling. Even Great Teacher Sun has eaten here before and praised it for being delicious.”
The waiter was collecting the plates and cleaning the table as he asked.
Liu Tong’s spirits stirred. Just when he wanted to ask, another person already interjected.
“Which Great Teacher Sun?”
A middle-aged merchant at another table asked with a smile.
There was a youth sitting beside him.
“Who else? Naturally, it’s Sun Mo, Great Teacher Sun, the God Hands, the One-Vote Sun that spoke about dogs waiting in front of people’s doors.”
The tone of the waiter was amiable. After that, he glanced at the youth beside the merchant. “You must be bringing your kid to the Central Province Academy to find a personal teacher, right? Let me tell you this, if you eat our shop’s roasted goose, you will be able to worm your way into being friends with Sun Mo.”
“Hehe, give me one then!”
The merchant naturally didn’t believe in this, but for the sake of luck, he decided to just order the roasted goose.
“Teacher Sun’s fame is so great!”
Zhang Pan exclaimed in shock.
“Yeah!”
Liu Tong also didn’t understand why.
Logically speaking, in such a large city like Jinling, there were even 7 and 8-star great teachers. But why was Sun Mo so famous?
How outstanding must he be that even vendors on the streets used his name when they were selling their signature dishes?
“Speaking of which...waiter, who is currently the most impressive great teacher in Jinling?”
A non-local was curious.
“Esteemed guest, I don’t know who is the most impressive one. But the most famous great teacher in Jinling is definitely Teacher Sun.”
The waiter replied.
“Eh? Why have I not heard of his name before? From what I know, Liu Mubai and Fang Wuji are known as the twin jade annulus of Jinling, and they are the most famous in the younger generation.”
Someone doubted.
“That’s an old story. The two individuals you are speaking of actually participate in the same great teacher examination as Great Teacher Sun. Why don’t you guess what their results are?”
The waiter intentionally paused to build suspense. After drawing the attention of all the guests, he finally spoke, “Their rankings are very good and if it was in the previous year, they would be considered rising superstars. But this year, they encountered Great Teacher Sun.”
“Great Teacher Sun is a two-time champion and trampled on the top graduates of the Nine Greats. Tell me, do you think he’s impressive or not?”
As the waiter said this, his tone was completely filled with worship and respect for Sun Mo.
“Just a few days ago, Headmaster Cao from the Myriad Daos Academy personally led his great teacher circle here to challenge them. In the end, Great Teacher Sun alone crushed half his force. Who other than him can do this?”
The waiter boasted and felt a little regretful. How regretful that Sun Mo wasn’t a local of Jinling.
“Don’t you guys know that the door of the Central Province Academy has been knocked down, trampled flat by the terrifying influx of groups of youths from everywhere when they came here for a tour?”
The waiter sighed. If it wasn’t for the fact that his age was too old, he also wished to study in the Central Province Academy too.
After hearing this, Liu Tong and Zhang Pan swallowed a mouthful of saliva and exchanged mutual glances.
“T...teacher, should we not go?”
Zhang Pan glanced at his crippled leg. If he wasn’t Liu Tong’s student, he wouldn’t even be able to join a school located in a run-down village, let alone a famous school like the Central Province Academy.
“Don’t panic, teacher is here to support you even if the sky falls!”
Liu Tong drank his tea.
Zhang Pan’s lips twitched. (Teacher, can your hand which is holding your teacup not tremble? The tea is splashing around and has drenched my clothes.)