Over the next two weeks, Zhou Bai silently read the Dao Compendium, increasing his degree of Dao comprehension.
As for the laziness points, he accumulated them all and did not use any.
However, the Dao Compendium 09 was indeed more bizarre and difficult than he had anticipated; after each reading session, he needed to walk around to relieve the discomfort in his heart.
Zhou Bai found that chatting with Qian Wangsun and Jing Xiu, then going to the cafeteria for a meal, and taking a dog for a stroll eased a lot of the discomfort.
The only regret was that the 2,000 points awarded for finishing first in the last assessment had already been spent by Zhou Bai.
Now, he only had his monthly income of 200 points of basic credit and 200 points of extra credit; he couldn’t continue to splurge on food and drink like before.
But at least he could still manage to eat meat every day.
"Sigh, still not enough credits to spend. If I could eat python bone soup and scarlet fish thick soup every day, and casually eat various extraordinary foods, my cultivation would definitely increase faster."
"Then there are those magical treasures, formation diagrams, talismans, and the like, not to mention."
"Sigh."
At that moment, Zhou Bai was sitting in the cafeteria, with a bowl of rice and a bowl of Crystal Demon Seed in front of him.
He was seen eating a mouthful of rice followed by a mouthful of meat, enjoying it thoroughly.
The Crystal Demon Seed tasted like shrimp and subtly enhanced the eater’s reaction speed; it was a dish Zhou Bai really liked.
Just then, the cafeteria aunties, carrying their food, sat at the table to Zhou Bai’s left and began their dinner.
Zhou Bai checked the time, it was three in the afternoon; the cafeteria aunties were eating early.
However, seeing what they were eating, Zhou Bai’s eyes briefly flickered, noticing they were all having congee with some pickled vegetables.
This was not the first time Zhou Bai had seen such a scene; the cafeteria aunties seemed to always only have congee and pickles, never trying the cafeteria’s food.
This time, Zhou Bai couldn’t help but ask, "Auntie, do you eat porridge every day?"
The aunty Wang, who once "shakily" added more meat to Zhou Bai’s dish, turned around with a smile and said, "Having porridge to eat is very good, this is gruel soaked with human grain. Eat a bowl and feel invigorated all day. You can’t eat this outside."
"Outside…" Zhou Bai curiously asked, "Isn’t there plenty to eat outside?"
Aunty Wang shook her head, "There are more than three hundred million people in Donghua City, how can there be enough food? Here at Dao School, we can follow you all and sponge some human grain porridge. Outside, we can’t eat such extraordinary food now, and can only have ordinary congee, noodles, or rice, and adding an egg means it’s a festival."
Thinking of the egg, Zhou Bai’s gaze slightly hazed, seemingly recalling the noodles he had eaten on the morning of the entrance test.
He nodded thoughtfully as he heard Aunt Wang say, "Today, I specially added an extra spoonful of Crystal Demon Seed for you, keep it up, and cultivate well."
Zhou Bai smiled and nodded, "Definitely, I’ll be the top of the school in the future."
After finishing his meal and taking Elsa for a walk, Zhou Bai felt his spirits were good and that he could try to enter the quiet room again to read Dao Compendium 09.
Over the past two weeks, Zhou Bai had increasingly adapted to reading Dao Compendium 09. His Dao comprehension had also increased to 9.6%.
"There are two more days until the assessment."
"My condition is good today; I can try to see if I can push my Dao comprehension to 9.9%."
Walking back to his dorm, Zhou Bai saw Kong Zheng.
At that moment, Kong Zheng had a desolate expression, the area under his right sleeve empty.
Zhou Bai still remembered the scene from the Heavenly Demon incident where Kong Zheng’s right arm was dissolved by demonic energy and twisted off by Sun Yuzhen.
Recalling the first time he had seen him, when Kong Zheng was so spirited on the stage, now seemed like a completely different person.
Zhou Bai glanced behind and beside him, where Kong Zheng, laden with big and small bags and two famine-faced, white-templed men and women by his side, was helping him carry items.
Zhou Bai guessed inwardly, ’Jing Xiu mentioned that after losing his arm, Kong Zheng’s cultivation never caught up. Has he dropped out?’ Watching his retreating figure, Zhou Bai shook his head, only sighing in his heart without going up to greet him.
Back in the dormitory, Zhou Bai saw Jing Xiu activating the power of her Primordial Spirit, cleaning the floor, doing laundry, and washing the bedsheets while simultaneously lifting Elsa into mid-air to help her bathe.
"Ah, Brother Zhou?" Jing Xiu turned her head and smiled, "You’re back. I’ll be done soon, and then we can study together."
"Okay," Zhou Bai nodded and sat down on a chair, delighted to watch someone clean his room while also enjoying the increase in his laziness points.
Meow! Meow!
Hearing the cat’s cries, Jing Xiu turned around, "Here, here, Tina." Then she saw the invisible force of the Primordial Spirit lightly touch Tina, starting to massage her back.
The white cat’s body undulated with the massage, her face finally revealing a look of enjoyment, and her eyes slowly squinting.
"Hmph, this woman is quite useful," Christina communicated with Zhou Bai using the power of her Primordial Spirit, "I’ve trained her into my female slave, and she’s so easy to train."
Saying this, Christina stretched out her paws on the ground, lifted her rear end, stretched her claws, and let out a yawn.
Watching the little cat stretch and then lie back down, Jing Xiu couldn’t resist petting her again: "Christina’s fur is as fluffy as cotton, it feels so comfortable.
Brother Zhou, I can understand why you’d want to keep cats. Even if one feels awful after reading Daoist texts, coming back to pet such a little cat would surely lift one’s spirits."
"Hehe." Zhou Bai smiled outwardly, but thought to himself, ’If you knew what this silly cat really thinks, you might want to kill her.’
Over these days, Jing Xiu came to Zhou Bai’s house daily to help clean and study, naturally becoming familiar with Zhou Bai’s pets.
Zhou Bai casually picked up a scripture from the table, merely flipping through it to relax his mind for another attempt to increase his Daoization rate tonight.
While reading, Zhou Bai casually asked, "Jing Xiu, your family is in Donghua City, right? Why don’t you go back to visit?"
"There’s not much to do if I go back," Jing Xiu replied while doing household chores, "My dad’s a doctor and my mom’s a teacher; they’re both busy all the time. I wouldn’t see them much, so I’d rather focus on cultivation."
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Zhou Bai nodded. Aside from the Dao School in Donghua focusing on cultivation, the vast city with a population of over 300 million still needed various industries like hospitals, schools, factories, and food.
However, now there were hardly any private enterprises left; everything was controlled by the government and the Heavenly Court to ensure the basic survival of the common people, tilting all resources towards cultivators and wars.
After a while, Jing Xiu finished cleaning up the room and sat next to Zhou Bai, taking out her notebook saying, "Brother Zhou, there were some points I didn’t understand yesterday, and I’d like some more explanation."
"It’s this, lately when I’m practicing breathing exercises, I feel a blockage from the twelfth floor down to the Dantian. Is it because the count of breath cycles I use doesn’t match the celestial stems and earthly branches? Look, here’s the calculation of my Circulatory Cycle."
Zhou Bai furrowed his brows and fell silent, a light of wisdom shining in his eyes as if pondering Jing Xiu’s question.
Thump, Christina jumped onto Zhou Bai’s shoulder, her cat eyes scanning Jing Xiu’s notebook.
Soon, Zhou Bai said, "Oh, this problem is simple. Listen to me…"
A while later, Jing Xiu’s face lit up with joy, "So it’s because I miscalculated the numerology of ’The Book of Changes’? Brother Zhou, you are really amazing."
Zhou Bai sighed, "It’s all basic stuff, nothing impressive. The study of ’The Book of Changes’ is fundamental to Daoist cultivation. Be sure to study it well; whenever you don’t understand something, just ask me."
Zhou Bai, having studied for the past four months, knew that human civilization still embraced teachings from ’The Book of Changes.’
The thought of ’The Book of Changes’ reminded him of the first hexagram absorbed by Christina’s gemstone.
’Come to think of it, the current textbooks don’t contain the original text of ’The Book of Changes’, just various secondary interpretations, yet it is still one of the foundational theories of Daoism. What a pity that I can’t fully recite ’The Book of Changes.’
’And speaking of this gemstone and the sixty-four hexagrams, what are they for?’
After the Heavenly Demon incident, Zhou Bai had tried using the gemstone and its first hexagram.
Unfortunately, no matter how he tried, he could not harness its power and had to give up temporarily.
’It’s probably not something I can use at my current level of cultivation. Better to focus on improving my cultivation.’
That night, after sending Jing Xiu off, Zhou Bai went back to his meditation room, ready to raise his Daoization rate to 9.9%.
Christina, listening to Zhou Bai’s thoughts, looked at the gemstone around her neck.
Since absorbing the first hexagram, as Zhou Bai’s Daoization rate increased, the cracks on the gemstone seemed to become lighter, gradually restoring it to its original state.
’Is the gemstone recovering?’