Third year of his PhD. Two papers in Tier 2 journals. All credits earned. Blind review passed across the board. On his graduation review form, only his advisor's signature was missing.
Tan Zhenguo said, "In my eyes, you're no more than an ant."
That night, Lin Zhou's secondhand laptop lit up. He could see who had really written every paper.
Here, papers were cultivation techniques, research grants were spiritual energy, academic titles were cultivation realms, and peer review was a heavenly tribulation.
A master's student was at the Qi Refining stage, a PhD student was in the late stages of Qi Refining, and a lecturer had only just established their foundation. Above them lay Core Formation, Nascent Soul, and Deity Transformation, followed by the Academician election, a trial as fearsome as nine layers of heavenly lightning.
First authorship stolen from him.
A senior student who slept on a folding bed in the lab and had been held back for six years.
A senior woman so depressed she didn't dare speak up.
A shady business that drew in traffic by fabricating stories of advisors exploiting students, then ghostwrote papers for clients.
And that offhand remark: "We only consider graduates from 985 universities."
One by one, he set the accounts straight.
Some people advised him, "You can't fight the system. Put up with it, and you'll graduate eventually."
He had only one reply: "Whether my advisor signs or not has nothing to do with whether I meet the requirements. But I can make him afraid not to sign."
What he didn't know was that buried deep within this System was an old case from twenty years ago, one that someone had tried to silence.
Twelve years later, at the grand Academician election ceremony of the two academies, someone asked the fraud-busting firebrand onstage, "Where did you do your undergraduate degree?"
He replied, "Jiangcheng Institute of Technology."
Fellow cultivator, what realm have you reached?
Titles: My Third Year Delayed, and I Took Down My Advisor; Non-985 Master's: I Can See Academic Fraud; Academic Cultivation: From Non-985 Master's to Academician; My Advisor Called Me an Ant.
