I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 860: A Difference in Worldviews

After the meeting ended, the crowd gradually dispersed.

The conference room, crowded before, emptied out quickly, leaving only a few core mentors still discussing the specifics in low voices around Dean Avery.

Jie Ming walked out and was about to head back to his own laboratory when his eye caught a silver-grey figure at the far end of the corridor.

Viola was standing there, a set of documents in her hand, reading.

“Senior Sister.” Jie Ming greeted her first.

Viola looked up at him. “Meeting over?”

“Mm.”

The two of them walked side by side toward the teleportation array.

Thinking back on the meeting, Jie Ming could not help remarking, “It is a real pity you did not attend, Senior Sister. What was covered this time counts as fairly important.”

“I used to think a technology like the Blood Sacrifice Method would need at least a few thousand years to spread on any large scale. Now it seems technology develops far faster than I expected.”

Viola raised her head, looking a little puzzled. “It is fine. I knew the contents long ago.”

Jie Ming sounded rather taken aback. “Hm? You already knew, Senior Sister?”

Viola's steps abruptly stopped. She turned her head to look at him, her expression somewhat strange.

“Uh… what is it?” Being stared at like that made his skin crawl slightly.

“You did not know beforehand?” Viola kept her eyes fixed on him.

“Did not know what?”

“What the meeting was about.”

“Well, no, I really did not…” Jie Ming scratched his head, puzzled.

Viola looked at that face of his, which could not possibly have been more sincere, and the corner of her mouth twitched. “You are sure? You are serious?”

Jie Ming only grew more puzzled. “Why do you say that?”

Viola said, “Something big on that scale is certainly an order handed down from above.”

“Right.”

The corridor went quiet for a moment. Viola stared at him for a long while, then finally could not help raising a hand to rub the space between her brows.

“Noren Workshop has exactly two people at the top right now. One is our Grand-Mentor, the other is the founder of our lineage. A matter on this scale is settled by those two first, so… you truly did not know about this education reform?”

Jie Ming was rather embarrassed to hear it. “I really did not…”

“Then I genuinely do not know what to say to that…” Viola drew a deep breath.

It struck her all at once that she had underestimated just how absurd Jie Ming was.

Did this fellow… not have one shred of a normal social life?!

“Jie Ming.”

“Mm?”

“Are you not being a bit too much of an ascetic?”

Jie Ming frowned slightly. “Do I really seem like an ascetic?”

“Then let me put it another way…” Viola gathered her words. “Apart from research, experiments, cultivation and war, do you do anything else with your time?”

Jie Ming gave it some thought.

“I do.”

Viola's eyes lit up. “What?”

“Rest.”

“…”

Viola silently turned her head away.

After a few paces she could not help asking again:

“And what else?”

Jie Ming considered it seriously. “Eating?”

In his current state he had long since been able to do without food entirely, yet Jie Ming had not given up that small pleasure.

Viola stopped walking. She turned her face aside and, with open distaste, edged half a step away.

“Keep your distance from me.”

Jie Ming: “?”

“Is that not exactly the same as you?”

“Who is the same as you?”

Viola said crossly, “You research for centuries at a stretch, and when you come out of seclusion you know nothing but your experimental data. You do not even know what has happened at the academy lately.”

“Do you know what behavior like that means among wizards?”

Jie Ming shook his head.

“It means you have already dropped out of normal society.”

Jie Ming was silent a moment, then countered, “Senior Sister, are other wizards not the same way?”

Viola was taken aback.

Jie Ming went on, “Take you and Mentor Clark. Do the two of you not spend your time researching laws and wizardry as well?”

Viola's expression turned subtle at once, and she even edged another step sideways without thinking.

“Do not lump me in with you. Mentor and I simply happen to enjoy research. You have buried yourself in a laboratory outright! How is that the same?”

Jie Ming was puzzled. “What is the difference?”

Viola looked at him and said nothing for a good while.

At last she let out a faint sigh.

“Of course there is a difference. Take Mentor Clark. He enjoys research too, but if his experiments did not restrict his movements, he would still gather with his friends once every dozen years or so.”

“A drink now and then, an academic exchange now and then, sometimes even a trip off to another plane. As for me, on holidays and festivals I generally get together with friends, and now and then I have a cup of tea with Starfall. All of that is normal socializing.”

Having said this much, Viola's expression turned somewhat complicated.

“As for you…” She looked him up and down.

“If you did not still report your situation to Mentor every so often, he and I would half suspect you had already died in that laboratory of yours.”

Jie Ming's step faltered as he caught a certain word. “Report?”

“Yes.”

“Wait.” His expression finally changed. “That report…”

“That is right.” Viola nodded without a shred of mercy. “It is a requirement raised specifically for you, chiefly out of fear that you would die without making a sound. Mentor certainly never required me to report on my research at regular intervals.”

Jie Ming was left utterly stunned.

Viola went on nattering beside him. “You vanish for decades, for a century at a time, every single time. If we could not still pull up your purchase records on the magic network, we would have no idea whether you were alive or not.”

The expression on Jie Ming's face gradually turned awkward. “I always thought…”

“Thought what?”

“I thought all wizards were like this.”

Viola: “…”

She raised a hand and covered her face. “We are merely wizards, not deviants. We have normal social needs too.”

Jie Ming: “…”

How to put it? Being called a deviant by the senior sister in front of him, the one people called the Pain Demoness, gave Jie Ming a distinctly odd feeling.

Viola lowered her hand, her face full of resignation.

“What wizard behaves like you, plunging headlong into a laboratory and not coming out for centuries? How on earth have you survived until now?”

Jie Ming did not answer.

He did not know how to answer either.

Because as he saw it, all of this really was perfectly normal.

Studying knowledge, raising his strength, endlessly exploring the unknown.

Every experiment brought some new discovery; every deduction let his own strength grow.

That feeling… was simply far too easy to become lost in.

The world of his previous life, after all, had been a world without any transcendent power whatsoever.

There, no matter how hard humans strove, they could never in any true sense grasp transcendent power of their own.

But after coming to this world, everything had changed.

To watch with his own eyes as his life level leapt upward bit by bit was, for the person he had once been, very like having a door opened onto infinite possibility.

And once it was open, who could bear to close it?

None of this, of course, was anything Jie Ming could say to Viola.

So in the end all he could manage was a dry laugh. “I am used to it.”

Talking all the way, the two of them arrived at the academy's teleportation hall.

Viola seemed disinclined to keep dwelling on the subject, and said abruptly:

“By the way, over these next few years you had better be quick about it.”

Jie Ming turned his head.

“Since the dean has handed this matter to you, the academy will certainly want to see results as soon as possible. Put up the first version of the system first, and refine the rest at your leisure.”

“More importantly, you need to finish building the system soon, because our departure time is nearly here.”

Jie Ming's step faltered. “Departure?”

He looked at Viola.

“To where?”

Viola did not answer directly. She only let a meaningful smile show.

Jie Ming caught on quickly. “Mentor's business? We are going to stand behind him in force? So soon?”

Viola's smile vanished on the spot, and she looked at him with distaste.

“Do not put it so crudely. Standing behind him in force, of all things. It makes us sound like a pack of street thugs.”

“Then how should I put it?”

Viola said, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, “We are simply going to fetch our mentor's bride, that is all.”