Chapter 65: Academic Pursuits

Zen was fighting with the mannequin. It was still early morning, the sun had yet to come out. Zen could not sleep because of the broken window in his dorm room which allowed the cold air to roll inside, hence why he was up in the morning.

To say that his roommates were mad about the damage he and the mannequin had caused about a month ago would be an understatement. They forced him to clean up… alone, threatening him with a report to the authorities. Not needing any more trouble, Zen was forced to comply. He felt so embarrassed, picking up after those two. He also promised that he would report the broken window to the maintenance guys, who usually take seven days to reply.

He kicked the mannequin in the head, sending it falling onto the floor. His breathing was ragged, each huff sending steam rolling from his mouth. Winter had begun to roll into the land. He hoped the maintenance guys would hurry up for he could not handle sleeping in that cold room for long.

He looked towards the dorms, where he had left Deng Ai and Li Ao sleeping with Shibi also there. His human roommates had piled blankets on themselves to keep the cold at bay. Shibi on the other hand simply rolled into a ball right next to the window! It was strange but Shibi seemed warmer than normal.

He tilted his head when he saw a group of students heading for the top of the mountain that was within academy territories. He remembered that the students, including his roommates, would head up to the top of the mountain to cultivate, as the tops of mountains were the best places to cultivate as energy would accumulate there.

He sighed again, sending twin steams of air from his nose. As much as he wanted to join them, it would be no use. The tops of the mountain was usually packed with crossed legged cultivators. If Zen used his meditation method, the pace of his improvement would not improve. Perhaps if he could exercise up a mountain thick with mana energy, then it would better but once again, there was no space on top of the mountain for him to move, with every inch occupied by a meditating cultivator.

An iron foot slammed into his face, sending him tumbling back. He quickly rolled to his feet. “Stop!” he shouted and the charging mannequin immediately stopped. “What a cheap shot.” Zen said as he wiped the blood trickling from his nose.

Zen sat down and folded his arms. The slow pace of his cultivation was also bringing something else to his attention. His academic progress. He thought of the three paths he could take to pass. One of the options was to cultivate past Intermediary and as far as he could into novice. He already knew that was not an option as he was struggling to overcome Intermediary rank 2, with 8 more ranks he still had to overcome to enter novice level.

His other option was to get 9 out of 12 approvals from the classes he took. Currently he was taking 7 martial arts classes which he was either doing average or excellently in, however, he had 5 theory and knowledge classes that he was consistently failing.

He fell onto his back, looking up at the grey, lightening sky, and wondered why everyone around him seemed to progress while he struggled with the same things. What had he been doing the past year? Then he remembered. He had been spying on Chen Jian. Instead of improving himself so that he could overcome the pest, he had been spying on him for Bao to find a weakness he could exploit. Now that he thought about, Bao never did any spying himself. The group was doing his dirty work, leaving him free to cultivate and improve himself.

Zen slammed his fist into the ground, thinking of how stupid they had all been to be following Bao for so long. The wasted year was quickly coming to bite him back. He thought of the last option he had to pass, learn and master Sparkling Jab.

Zen had no doubt he could learn a technique good enough to be considered a master, but the problem was that the technique was hidden in a scroll with cryptic text. This was one of the ways cultivators hid their techniques through recordings. They would usually use a common or a variation of cryptology to hide the technique, leaving it up to future generations to crack the code if they did not have the key to decrypt the code.

“I can do it,” he said to himself. “I can break the code.” He sat up, his eyes burning with determination.