Worldwide Awakening: My Soul Kinds Are Lost-Chapter 424: The Imperial Examination System Computer? I’ll just be a direct carrier of ancient books! _1
The Elementary Studies Examination began smoothly, and Wang Linchi was naturally among the candidates.
However, Jin Cheng did not attend. With his lax academic performance, it was not surprising that he failed the qualification exam. He paid another year’s tuition fee and stayed behind, unsure whether he would be able to pass next year.
At this moment, Wang Linchi was seated in a room. The only items in the room were a table, a chair, and writing materials.
The Golden Warding Beast poked its head out from Wang Linchi’s sleeve. Its intelligence seemed somewhat high, possibly due to the influence of data-based rules. Wang Linchi pushed its head back into his sleeve.
In front of his seat, there was only a stack of white paper.
The exam was simple. It required candidates to compile an essay based on everything they had learned, seen, and known. Whether or not the essay could produce a Spirit Law from one’s Spiritual Bone and Spiritual Meridian was up to the individual.
The time limit was 24 hours. Candidates could submit their essays early. Regardless of whether one had finished writing, papers would be automatically collected when time was up.
The supply of writing materials was also limited. If a candidate made a mistake and subsequently ran out of time or materials, it was considered their own fault.
Wang Linchi pondered what to plagiarize.
It wasn’t about how vast or vague the content should be. It had to suit one’s own Spiritual Bone and Spiritual Meridian, not be fanciful boasts or mere theories.
If one could not implement their ideas, they would ultimately fail the exam.
The point was not to pass the exam to acquire a Spirit Law, but rather to produce a Spirit Law and thus pass the exam.
Many candidates initially misunderstood this crucial point and failed as a result.
In Wang Linchi’s mind, various classics surfaced. Soon, he found something to copy.
"The substance of the mind is inherently neither good nor evil. The stirrings of intention are either good or evil. To know good and evil is innate conscience. To cultivate good and eliminate evil is the investigation of things."
When his pen touched the paper, Wang Linchi felt his Spiritual Bone and Spiritual Meridian starting to absorb something, so he quickly restrained them.
Is this a supercomputer?
Wang Linchi squinted. The words he wrote, combined with his Spiritual Bone and Spiritual Meridian and this supercomputer, would ultimately shape exclusive data for him. However, this data had a crucial issue: its operation and deduction depended on the data derived from his written words.
"The original substance is but the Great Void. Within the Great Void, what is not present—sun, moon, stars, celestial bodies, wind, dew, thunder, lightning, haze, stifling air? And yet, what single thing can be an obstruction to the Great Void? The original substance of the human mind is also thus."
"Upon understanding the original substance, one sees the true effort; the self and the world, internal and external, all become transparent."
"This is principle. Does the world possess affairs or principles external to the mind?"
"Within knowledge, there is action; within action, there is knowledge."
"Take knowledge as action; knowledge determines action."
"Outside the mind, there is no thing; outside the mind, there are no affairs; outside the mind, there is no principle."
"..."
Wang Linchi copied line after line of text, all the while furiously ’shearing wool’ from this supercomputer-like Imperial Examination system via his Spiritual Bone and Spiritual Meridian.
The Spirit Law Wang Linchi deduced using this method was extremely advanced, at least in his opinion.
Under normal circumstances, this would certainly result in failure.
After all, he was not Wang Yangming, the last sage of Confucianism, and his mental cultivation was definitely not at that level.
Therefore, he was unable to support this Spirit Law. But he was using a plug-in. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t support it himself, as long as the Imperial Examination system—this supercomputer—could bear the load. He forcefully made this computer deduce this Spirit Law.
Surprisingly, the outcome was quite good. Even if the deduced Spirit Law was unusable, Wang Linchi could still use it as a reference to evolve a new Spirit Law.
CRACK.
Visible cracks emerged on the wall.
As he continued to write, the characters on the paper became increasingly chaotic.
But that didn’t matter. The writing on the paper was just a vessel. The information Wang Linchi received through his Spiritual Bone and Spiritual Meridian was not diminished in the slightest.
The more Wang Linchi wrote, the more engrossed he became. A few minutes later, he also wove in the core principles of Dong Zhongshu’s interpretation of the "Spring and Autumn Annals."
"Great Unity!"
"Under the vast heaven, there is no land that is not the king’s. Along the shores of the earth, there is no one who is not the king’s subject."
"Great Revenge!"
"A feud of nine generations can still be avenged."
Everyone sees only Dong Zhongshu dismissing the hundred schools of thought and exclusively venerating Confucianism. Yet, no one sees that the achievements of the empire’s twin pillars in campaigns like Fenglangjuxu were built upon an environment forged by the Confucian ideals of the Gongyang school. Emperor Wu of Han wanted to battle the Huns, a path of aggressive warmongering.
The Han Dynasty was harassed by the Huns. Fortunately, the philosophy of the Gongyang school aligned perfectly with Emperor Wu of Han’s intentions, so it was adopted. Otherwise, without this, given the presence of all hundred schools, it would have been impossible to launch such a campaign. The Mohist concept of "universal love and non-aggression" would have been an obstacle, not to mention opposing factions within Confucianism itself, like the Guliang school.
Gongyang Confucianism seemed to inherit the martial spirit Confucius displayed during his travels among the states; its adherents were truly capable of drawing swords against people, not just engaging in verbal sparring.
Of course, the decline of Gongyang Confucianism was due to impacts from various factions during the late Eastern Han Dynasty, eventually leading to its fading and disappearance.
Having copied everything, Wang Linchi still felt unsatisfied. He decided to include Dong Zhongshu’s theory of the Harmony Between Man and Nature as well, just to see if this "Imperial Examination supercomputer" could handle it.
"When fire assails wood, wild insects emerge early, and thunder strikes prematurely. When earth assails wood, fetuses die young and eggs spoil, causing many birds and insects to perish. When metal assails wood, there is war..."
As he wrote more and more, the paper could no longer bear the characters. Vast quantities of text began to float into the air, drifting aimlessly.
Wang Linchi found this rather interesting. Since he had already copied so much and the text was floating away anyway, he decided to cram in the Four Books and Five Classics as well.
This immediately ignited a powder keg.
Confucianism itself contained many points of divergence, which had led to the formation of various schools of thought.
Wang Linchi forcibly cramming them all together created a massive problem.
BOOM.
After he finished copying the "Spring and Autumn Annals," the table exploded, and the white paper was torn into shreds.
"What a pity I hadn’t finished copying everything," Wang Linchi said somewhat regretfully.
Clearly, the "Imperial Examination supercomputer" couldn’t take it anymore.
Generally speaking, he would have been judged as failed long ago. However, Wang Linchi had been forcibly constraining it, leaving the system no choice but to grit its metaphorical teeth and continue the deductions. Otherwise, Wang Linchi would have been kicked out long before.
Wang Linchi stopped copying, and the entire space stabilized.
It seems there’s a bit of a problem, Wang Linchi suddenly realized. His Spiritual Bone and Spiritual Meridian had been continually receiving the content of the Spirit Law. However, the Spirit Law was in complete disarray, haphazardly formed.
It felt as if a deduction would proceed halfway, hit a dead end, then switch direction to continue, only to find that path also blocked, necessitating another change.
Seriously, put some more effort into it! Wang Linchi also joined in the deductions, but what he was deriving was not the Spirit Law itself, but the connections and essence between Spirit Bone, Spirit Vein, and Spirit Law.
That’s right, from the very beginning, he had no intention of using the Spirit Law obtained from the Elementary Studies Examination. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t.
After all, his Spiritual Bone and Spiritual Meridian housed two Innate Talents, Restless Heart and Wild Horse, which did not belong to this world. Not to mention, the raw materials for his Spiritual Bone and Spiritual Meridian came from his clone; success was simply impossible.
So, in essence, he was just going through the motions. He hadn’t expected to completely dumbfound this Imperial Examination system computer.
Fortunately, the information he was gleaning was indeed quite valuable to him.
Time trickled by, with Wang Linchi remaining immobile.
A Spirit Law, formed from a vast amount of content, was slowly taking shape, and his Spiritual Bone and Spiritual Meridian were continuously growing and transforming.
Particularly the Spirit Vein, which had initially been only a small part of his nervous system. As the Spirit Law gradually formed, the Spirit Vein also grew.
Wang Linchi estimated that once the Spirit Law fully materialized, the Spirit Vein would form a complete neural network and fully integrate with the Spirit Bone.
And the Spirit Law, naturally, would be borne by the Spirit Bone.
The world must have had a very high energy level in its prime; otherwise, such potent transcendent methods manifesting with only low-energy expressions wouldn’t make sense. Wang Linchi’s expression was grave.
Only the last two-hour period remained, and Wang Linchi’s Spirit Law was still incomplete. The main issue was that the Imperial Examination system computer seemed to have run out of steam, its processing speed becoming slower and slower.
It could also be that all possible paths of deduction had been exhausted.
It was as if all paths had been exhausted, much like how Confucius’s descendants, the bearers of the Duke Yansheng title, often had no choice but to submit to new dynasties to ensure their continuation; that was the only road left.
In the final moment, a Spirit Law riddled with errors appeared. Wang Linchi forcibly intercepted it, leaving his transformation stuck at the last step.
If this Spirit Law truly materialized, he would need at least a year to sort it out properly, and he didn’t have that kind of time. He still had to take the Tongsheng examination.
He planned to raise his Realm from a Spirit Master to Jinshi within a year. This wouldn’t be a problem; he could proceed by taking the examinations in sequence without worrying about missing their scheduled times.
