I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 779: An Old Friend

Three days after the meeting, Avery Knight left Noren No. 147 Academy.

There was no grand farewell ceremony. For a seventh-level wizard, leaving an academy was merely one ordinary departure in a very long life.

Jie Ming, meanwhile, went to deal with something else first.

Paying up.

The academy teleportation plaza.

Several alchemy wizards responsible for array maintenance stood around the large teleportation array, now taken apart, recording data while stealing glances at Jie Ming beside them.

One of them, a fifth-level alchemy wizard, could not help asking:

“Sir… you intend to bear the full cost of repairing this array?”

“Mm.”

Jie Ming nodded.

“I was the one who broke it, after all.”

With that, he casually set a crystal recording a great deal of alchemical structure down on the workbench.

“Also, since it is being repaired anyway, upgrade it while you are at it. I will cover the resources the upgrade needs as well.”

The repair crew blinked. “Upgrade?”

Jie Ming pointed at the center of the array.

“An ordinary academy array has too little load capacity. While you are repairing it, convert it to an engineering-grade array.”

“It will make large-scale transport and the movement of war materiel easier later on.”

The group exchanged glances.

They quickly realized that “large-scale transport” actually meant… making it easier for Jie Ming himself to teleport in future.

At that thought, several mouths twitched at once, but by unspoken agreement they all lowered their heads and got back to work.

Several days later, the new array went back into service.

Its overall structure was a full measure heavier than before, its rune density several times higher, and its energy circuitry had all been replaced with large engineering specifications. A good many academy mentors passing by could not help stopping for a second look.

Someone remarked, “At least now the academy need not worry about anyone sitting the array flat.”

The person beside him nodded, everyone exchanged a glance, and nothing more needed saying.

Jie Ming was in fact aware of the rumors about himself, but he did not much mind. Mostly he could not tell whether the rumors counted as teasing or as fear.

At least by his own experience, a good many mentors at the academy had grown noticeably more formal around him afterward. With Avery gone, the academy’s acting garrison duty formally began.

By the arrangement, Jie Ming and Viola were to take turns.

But Viola was currently remaking her own plane and had entered the most critical stage, far too busy to get away.

So the garrison duty fell naturally to Jie Ming.

He had no objection to that.

His main goals at this stage were study and research in any case, and it made no difference where his main body sat.

So Jie Ming simply picked a laboratory within the academy and moved into it outright.

Because he stayed buried in that laboratory researching and studying, never to be seen, a good many students even suspected this mentor had never actually turned up at all.

A year later, the academy received a new sixth-level mentor.

When Jie Ming got the notice and came to the mentors’ office area, he saw a familiar figure from some way off.

Long silver-white hair.

A pale blue wizard’s robe.

A quiet, gentle presence.

It was Anya.

The two of them met each other’s eyes and both smiled.

“Long time no see.” Anya spoke first.

“Long time no see.”

Jie Ming came closer, looked her over, then nodded slightly.

“Not bad at all. Sixth level.”

Anya laughed ruefully. “It is. I got here in the end.”

“Though…”

She looked at Jie Ming, and something wistful surfaced in her eyes.

Only standing in front of him could she feel clearly how large the gap could be between two people who were both, supposedly, sixth level.

Jie Ming simply stood there quietly, and yet he was like a slowly turning star, an enormous essence of life radiating off him as a matter of course. Even without deliberately releasing any pressure, Anya could still feel that presence a higher order of life cannot entirely draw in when facing a lower one. And nominally, the two of them were both sixth-level wizards!

She even had the faint illusion that if Jie Ming let his life aura out completely, she would not be able to get near him at all.

At that thought, she could not help sighing:

“I really do envy you. My sixth level is not the same concept as yours.”

Jie Ming smiled. “It is impressive enough already.”

“No.” Anya shook her head. “I know better than anyone. I was pushed up here by my family piling resources on. On that front I cannot even match David.” She made no attempt to disguise it.

The Starfall family had poured a vast quantity of resources in to get her through to the sixth level.

Setting aside all the precious materials for strengthening mental energy and the great many special elixirs to assist advancement, the plane origin alone that it required had been an outrageous expense.

In the end she had broken through… but that was all.

Anya laughed softly. “I probably will not be going to any more plane battlefields.”

“Fighting above the sixth level is not something I can take part in, and the family will not let me run that risk.”

Jie Ming nodded, unsurprised.

A sixth-level wizard like Anya took on teaching, logistics and administration instead, a genuinely civil-service sixth-level wizard. “So you have come to the academy to…”

“Teach.” Anya said with a smile. “Enrollment season is nearly here. I intend to come to the academy as a soul studies mentor.”

“The family has invested too much in me. I ought to give something back.”

“The ancestor does not care about those resources, but by the principle of equivalent exchange I will still train students for the family and build up connections, which also broadens the Starfall family’s influence.”

Hearing that, Jie Ming nodded thoughtfully.

That did fit the wizard civilization’s consistent philosophy.

There is no gift without a reason.

Even one from family will always, in the end, be repaid in some other form.

But what caught Jie Ming’s attention more was something else. “I had no idea enrollment season was so close.”

Anya nodded with a smile. “It is. Before long it will be the academy’s once-every-five-years intake of new students.”

Only then did it register with Jie Ming.

He had been so immersed in his research that he had nearly forgotten the academy had this fixed piece of business.

Something occurred to Jie Ming, and he took out his magic network terminal, searched through the information on it, and quickly turned up an academy notice:

[In six standard months, the academy will hold its enrollment ceremony.]

So the notice had gone out quite some time ago.

Nominally the garrison post was only a matter of standing by as combat power, but in practice it amounted to being acting dean.

It was simply that Jie Ming had been busy with his own affairs and had not attended to it, and besides, the academy’s mentors handled these things themselves and had no need of him telling them what to do.

Still, the notice sent Jie Ming into a certain reverie.

He had served as a mentor once before, though the academy had only just been founded then and had taken in very few students.

And the one student he had guided at that time had died on a battlefield soon after.

Now that the academy was properly on track…

“It might be worth seeing whether this year’s intake has any good seedlings.”