Selling Knowledge in the Cultivation World

The thing Zhou Mingyuan regretted most in his life was staying up late.

In his previous life, he was a graduate student in history who died of exhaustion in the lab while pulling an all-nighter to revise his thesis. When he opened his eyes, he had become a servant at Bailudong Academy in the Great Sheng Dynasty. With no spiritual roots, he couldn't even draw qi into his body.

Then he discovered that so-called spiritual energy was radiation from quantum vacuum decay, and so-called heavenly tribulations were a civilization-screening program set up by an alien civilization called Hao. Every three thousand years, it ran another cycle. Those who failed were formatted.

The Heavenly Secrets Pavilion advocated fighting violence with violence, while the Rogue Cultivators' Alliance was treated as a pawn. Zhou Mingyuan, meanwhile, was just a scholar with half a copy of the Analects left in his pocket.

So he opened an academy and took in a group of oddball students: a female Confucian scholar raised in a brothel, a woodcutter who had chopped firewood for thirty years, a twelve-year-old prodigy, a bandit-turned-outlaw hero...

People called them “good-for-nothings” and mocked them as “hidebound.” Yet when the heavenly tribulation arrived, these were the very people who charged into the fray first.

Zhou Mingyuan recited, “To establish the mind for Heaven and Earth, and to secure life and fortune for the people.” Liu Rushi took up his mantle, saying, “My heart is pure and clean.” Zhao Tiesheng defended the realm with an ordinary mortal's body, finally understanding that “the benevolent are invincible”:

The more people you hold in your heart, the stronger you become.

Three thousand years later, a new civilization rose from the ruins. A child opened the Analects and read its first line:

“To learn and then practice what you have learned...”

See? Some things outlive even civilizations.