Applied Immortality

After the mirage play, Wang Qi’s group’s tour of the headquarters came to their last stop, Reaching Heaven Palace at the top. 

Leaving the theater and going to their next visit, Wang Zhenqi kept on wan this and wan that, but always about how the play moved her. Wang Qi’s annoyance grew and grew, with nowhere to vent.

Midway, Wang Qi up and grabbed Mao Zimiao’s ear. “Hey, Ah’Zimiao, you’ve been quiet since the start.”

“Nya!” Mao Zimiao slapped his hand in annoyance.

[Hey, shouldn’t you be saying, ‘You mustn’t, nya!’ It’s weird not hearing you say it.]

Ever since the beginning of the tour, Mao Zimiao avoided him like the plague. She even had Wang Zhenqi sit between them while watching the mirage play.

Wang Qi found her behavior beyond bizarre.

“Ah’Miao wasn’t too happy in the morning, wan,” the dogeared girl whispered as he pulled a face. “It was around the time you defeated Wu Shiqin.”

[When I beat Wu Shiqin?]

“Did you ever consider your posture indecent, wan?”

Wang Qi facepalmed. “I really wasn’t aiming to disgrace her. She was just that strong and left me with no other option.”

Mao Zimiao pulled Wang Zhenqi away. “Not my problem, nya.”

As he reminisced, Wang Qi groped the air in a telltale sign. “The feel of her muscled body ain’t that exciting either. I never gave it much thought until you brought it up.”

“Nya.” Mao Zimiao flung her head away in scorn, giving him a side glance. “Little Qi, aren’t you also using ripples?” Why did you have to do it like… that, and pick on girls?”

Wang Qi had the same long face. “That’s just it. The feeling I got from her was not like a girl’s. Besides, wouldn’t I be picking on her for real if I used Grand Ripple Enigma?”

“Nya?”

Wang Qi explained, “She cultivates the electromagnetic path. When we first fought to a tie, I only used Celestial Hymn Odyssey. In the research trial, she realized that her training in Celestial Hymn Odyssey was worse than mine, and she worked hard to understand Celestial Element Series over the past month. You have to know that, right?”

Mao Zimiao nodded. “Mmm.”

“So wouldn’t fighting her with anything other than Celestial Hymn Odyssey be picking on her?”

“I have no clue what’s so logical about that, nya.”

“Exactly, wan!”

Wang Qi smiled and gave a thumbs up. “It’s how guys become friends with their fists.”

“The heck kind of friendship is that, nya? Besides, Shiqin is a girl. Aren’t you taking it too far, nya?” 

The chatty trio arrived at the Reaching Heaven Palace.

Reaching Heaven was a clear reference to Dao. Having one’s statue in the Reaching Heaven Palace was a sign of worship and reverence, mostly due to reaching the pinnacle of one’s domain, a unique genius advancing the cultivation society’s understanding of the world by leaps and bounds. Unlike the statues from the Heavenly Sword Palace midway up the mountain, the cultivators here didn’t all give their lives for the good of the world. The Immortal Alliance had some of these cultivators nailed to the pillar of shame. Yet their statue still stood in this place, just like Wang Qi’s acquaintance, Daoist Proscribe Heisenberg.

Dao was the only standard for having your statue here. 

As they entered, the group became solemn and respectful, including the goony Su Junyu. Wang Qi waved at him, but he received no reply.

Reaching Heaven Palace was unlike any secular temple Wang Qi had ever seen. Typical ones had offerings in the middle. Reaching Heaven Palace had two doors: one in front and one in back. A path connected the two, making it Reaching Heaven Palace’s axis. The statues of the worshiped cultivators lay on either side, symbolizing that the path to seeking Dao had not yet run its course.

The statues were four meters tall, with no apparent order. The arrangement seemed random at a glance but adhered to math upon closer look. The older the cultivator, the closer to the entrance, and the later he achieved his path, the closer to the back door he was placed. Furthermore, the greater one’s achievement in pursuit of Dao, the closer his statue was to the front.

The very first they gazed upon was Copernic and Unfettered Evolutionary Divine Lord Darwin. 

Another statue, however, drew Wang Qi’s gaze. 

It had one foot on the path connecting the doors, and it was the only one in the Reaching Heaven Palace enjoying such honors.

Transcendent Newton of Transcending Sect.

The modern system had been around for less than two thousand years. In terms of ancient cultivation, two millennia was a reasonable amount of time for a Qi Refining cultivator to reach the Great Ascension Stage. It made perfect sense that no modern cultivator ascendant had yet emerged, since it took nearly forty thousand years since the dawn of ancient cultivation for the first ascendant to appear.

Nevertheless, the modern system did enjoy the birth of one ascendant.

The supreme genius who laid down the framework for this new system, Transcendent Newton, was the sole ascendant of modern cultivation.

Transcendent’s Arithmetics of Dao shocked the world, the core theory to establish modern cultivation. Transcendent leaned on Middle Ages Numeral School’s teachings to form modern cultivation’s axioms. He went on to derive topics and definitions from them. Creating a hypothesis through inductive reasoning, testing it through experiments and statistical analysis, and adjusting or discarding the hypothesis based on the results. 

This was Earth’s scientific method.

Some Divine Province denizens expressed their gratitude through a poem: ‘If Newton hadn’t lit the way, the world would dwell in endless gray.’

[Heroes pity heroes, and bookworms always sympathize with each other.] Wang Qi gave a slight bow as he toured the place, as a way to show respect.

But he was more interested in the large statue at the back. It was almost at the end of the path, with only a few others like it.

Daoist Proscribe Heisenberg. The man looked to be in his thirties, closer to the image of the teenager in the mirage play.

Wang Qi examined it and laughed, “I never knew Old Hai used to be handsome.”

In his memories, Daoist Proscribe was a stooped old man living a couple of houses from his. He had a wrinkled face resembling an oak’s bark. 

“You lived in the same village as Daoist Proscribe, right?” Su Junyu asked.

“Yeah.”

Su Junyu analyzed his expression. “What kind of person was Daoist Hai to you? I’m only curious.”

[What kind?] Wang Qi stared at the statue’s face as his mind reeled through the memories.

During his stay at Albion Village, Daoist Proscribe was an idler. He claimed to be an outsider with some savings, setting up a small garden in the village and tending crops. More often than not, he played chess or the zither. Some villagers advised him not to squander his money and run out. The old man would laugh, saying he had no children and had to spend it all before passing away.

[Speaking of, the old guy came by my house when I was a child…. I seem to recall him teaching me some Divine Province-specific chess game…] 

[The memories I once scorned feel so vivid and interesting. A shame the village is no more.]

Wang Qi chuckled. “An Unfettered’s farming isn’t always better than mountain people’s.”