Chapter 23: Shrek Academy's Textbooks, Flow
Less than a week after becoming a Disciple, Chen Ming was sent by his teacher to the "Academy"...
Well, although it was called an academy, in truth, it was nothing more than burying himself in self study inside a library.
After giving his instructions to Zhao Sanjin and Chen Ming, Zhang Peng simply drifted away. For a lone wolf like him, the task of teaching a Disciple was still far too unfamiliar. Especially since Chen Ming had no foundation at all, Zhang Peng simply did not know what he was supposed to do.
Now that he could toss Chen Ming aside to study on his own, Zhang Peng immediately felt much lighter.
Zhao Sanjin opened an independent room and a private quiet room for Chen Ming on the 1st floor, then began searching for the books he had just mentioned.
Every book in the Holy Spirit Cult's library was sealed inside an iron box marked with its title. To borrow one, the administrator needed to use a key to open the box.
The [Introductory Guide to Basic Spirit Master Common Knowledge] and [Spirit Power and Meridians], both textbooks from Shrek, were kept on the 1st floor. Zhao Sanjin easily took them out from their iron boxes and handed them to Chen Ming.
The [Introductory Guide to Basic Spirit Master Common Knowledge] was almost perfectly square, 8 inches long, 8 inches wide, and over 3 inches thick. It weighed roughly 15 pounds. If someone swung it at another person, it really could kill.
Originally, this had actually been nearly 10 separate volumes, containing textbooks for several different grades in Shrek. But when the Holy Spirit Cult staff recorded and compiled them, they had simply crammed all the content together, resulting in this absurd size and weight.
As for [Spirit Power and Meridians], it was even more exaggerated. Because this book contained many diagrams of meridians, it was a cube 8 inches long, 8 inches wide, and 8 inches thick. Due to the difference in paper material, its weight was nearly 2.5 times that of the [Introductory Guide to Basic Spirit Master Common Knowledge].
Together, the 2 books weighed over 50 pounds, enough to leave an ordinary adult's arms numb just from holding them.
Even with Chen Ming using Spirit Power to reinforce his body, he still found them exceptionally heavy. Furthermore, because both books had covers wrapped in special metal and had gone through special treatment, ordinary storage Spirit Tools could not store them at all.
After finally dragging the books into his quiet room, Chen Ming let out a long breath.
Although Chen Ming's body had become a source of disease and plague due to awakening the Abomination Martial Soul, causing anything used for too long to gradually become contaminated, the Holy Spirit Cult had clearly already accounted for this possibility. That was why these books were so ridiculously heavy and durable.
With Chen Ming's current strength, even if he deliberately tried to destroy them, he could not truly damage these books, let alone leave behind any real poison or plague on them.
Under the lamplight, inside the enclosed but not overly cramped quiet room, Chen Ming opened the comparatively lighter [Introductory Guide to Basic Spirit Master Common Knowledge].
Contrary to his expectation that it would contain profound or difficult concepts, the [Introductory Guide to Basic Spirit Master Common Knowledge] explained the most basic Spirit Master knowledge in the simplest and plainest possible language, guiding the reader step by step from the shallow to the deep.
As an introductory book, it had almost no barrier to entry at all. The basic common sense and knowledge most needed by novice Spirit Masters were answered directly at the beginning.
In addition to the text, the book also contained detailed illustrations for the more difficult sections. They were not truly lifelike, but compared to the old Qing Dynasty style diagrams from the exam papers in Chen Ming's previous life, they were already ultra high definition.
The people who compiled this book had truly put in enormous effort. In every possible aspect, they had pushed consideration for the reader to the limit. As long as someone was not an outright fool whose mind was broken and who could only babble nonsense, then even a somewhat dull person would be able to absorb the knowledge inside under the book's guidance.
One could say Shrek was evil, but no one could say Shrek was incompetent.
With 10,000 years of support from the top geniuses of the entire Douluo Continent, the foundation and knowledge accumulated by Shrek were almost unimaginable.
Driven by intense curiosity, Chen Ming fell into the book almost instantly.
He neither ate nor drank, nor rested nor slept, reading for an unknown amount of time in one breath until a hunger so intense it felt as though fire were burning in his stomach finally tore him out of that absorbed state.
After hastily chewing some dried meat and drinking water to fill his belly, Chen Ming once again threw himself fully into the book.
What Chen Ming did not know was that, at this very moment, Zhao Sanjin was pacing anxiously outside the door of his quiet room.
"He's been in there for a full day and night already. Why isn't there even a sound? A normal Spirit Master should usually find it impossible to keep reading after just a few hours... Nothing has happened, has it?"
"The 6th Consecrated Elder specifically told me to take good care of this child, and yet if an accident happens the moment he comes to my place... wouldn't I be in serious trouble too?"
Although Zhao Sanjin was deeply intoxicated by knowledge, he was not the sort of bookworm who had completely lost all sense of the world around him. After hesitating for a long time and grinding his teeth, he finally pulled out his administrator's key, quietly opened the door to Chen Ming's quiet room, and cautiously poked his head inside.
Chen Ming was hunched over the table, looking at the text and illustrations inside the book with a face full of rapture and obsession. Under this extreme immersion, the knowledge written on the pages seemed to come alive, transforming into all kinds of images that poured into his mind.
Before transmigrating into this World, Chen Ming had been a web novel author in his previous life. The reason he had chosen that path was because he had been born with an immense love of reading. During his school days, he had already been a regular visitor at the library, and every year, after receiving new textbooks, he would often finish all of them within a single day regardless of the subject.
Whether he actually understood them was another matter. What he was intoxicated by was the feeling of stuffing knowledge and images into his brain.
Knowledge about Spirit Masters was almost a completely blank field for him, and the [Introductory Guide to Basic Spirit Master Common Knowledge] was simply the perfect guide, leading Chen Ming into a state of rapture that he had rarely experienced in either of his 2 lives.
Completely immersed in his own world, Chen Ming did not notice the slight sound of the door at all. He simply kept reading in silence.
Zhao Sanjin quietly watched Chen Ming's entranced and intoxicated expression. While he let out a sigh of relief, a sense of appreciation also rose in his heart.
Although people often said that the higher an Evil Spirit Master's level was, the more knowledge they needed, in truth, there were very few within the Holy Spirit Cult who genuinely pursued knowledge from the bottom of their hearts.
Most people merely treated knowledge as a necessary means of increasing their strength. Their pursuit of knowledge was, in essence, a pursuit of power. Once they felt they had enough, they would stop caring about learning. Most people specialized in only 1 path and had only a shallow understanding of everything else.
But Zhao Sanjin was different. He was a scholar, a man with intense hunger and greed for knowledge.
When he had first entered the Holy Spirit Cult, he had felt fear because of his surroundings and the Evil Spirit Masters around him. But after finding all kinds of forbidden knowledge within the Holy Spirit Cult's books, knowledge that would never be circulated or even allowed to exist in the outside World, he had fallen deeply into it.
The Holy Spirit Cult's records were bloody and eerie, but the different perspectives and methods of interference regarding the Spirit, the flesh, and the Martial Soul that they described were profound. They filled in many areas where ordinary Spirit Masters knew the "what" but not the "why," forming an entirely different knowledge system from the one circulating across the continent.
The reason Zhao Sanjin had chosen to become the chief administrator of the library despite being a Spirit Douluo was precisely because he was obsessed with all kinds of knowledge.
Looking at Chen Ming, who had become intoxicated by knowledge, Zhao Sanjin nodded slightly, and a bit more goodwill naturally rose in his heart toward this new Disciple personally taken in by the 6th Consecrated Elder.
The 6th Consecrated Elder was exceptionally talented but was clearly not good at teaching Disciples, and the attributes of his Martial Soul differed greatly from those of his Disciple. Zhao Sanjin, however, had personally cataloged almost all the books and knowledge in the entire library. He understood the characteristics and precautions related to every path of cultivation, and he knew how different kinds of Spirit Masters should cultivate and strengthen themselves.
If this child performed well enough, then what harm would there be in him giving the boy a little guidance?
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