In the central square of Broken Gold Town, the cold wind swirled with snowflakes, yet it could not blow away the heavy and anxious atmosphere.
The admission test for the Lucaria Magic Academy was far more cruel than the townsfolk had imagined.
There was no warm encouragement, nor was there any comforting nonsense about how hard work guarantees success. Reality was like an icy sieve, ruthlessly filtering out the dream-filled youths one by one.
"Next."
On the high platform, Scarlett Stewart sat in a velvet-lined armchair, holding an exquisite magic wand and tapping it against the armrest in sheer boredom.
"Low magic affinity, circuit construction failed. Unqualified."
"Next."
"Scattered spiritual power, casting time exceeds five seconds. Speaking of which, to think such a simple spell actually took you five seconds, who on earth taught you magic?! Unqualified."
"Next."
Scarlett's voice was lazy and indifferent, and she could not even be bothered to lift her eyelids. Behind her, several assistants were busy leading the eliminated candidates away from the scene, as the sounds of weeping and sighing rose and fell.
The atmosphere below the stage grew increasingly oppressive. The young people who had initially been eager to try now mostly had faces as pale as ashes. They finally realized that the top academy in the royal capital was simply not a threshold that country kids like them could easily cross.
"Is that it?"
Scarlett yawned, her azure eyes filled with disappointment. "Is there something wrong with the feng shui in Lalavina? How is there not even a single decent seedling?"
Even though recruiting in a small place was inherently like panning for gold in a pile of crap, this was just too crappy.
Right at this moment.
"Um... Lady Examiner!"
A slightly nervous yet somewhat stubborn voice rang out.
Asik took a deep breath, clutching the magic model he had rushed to build overnight, and walked onto the high platform with somewhat stiff steps.
For today, he had specially changed into his cleanest mage robe, and his hair was combed meticulously.
However, in the face of Scarlett's powerful aura, he still felt his legs go a bit weak.
"Oh?"
Scarlett glanced at him, her gaze pausing on his monocle for a second. "You look like a scholar. Name?"
"Asik! I am from the Broken Gold Town blacksmith shop... uh, and also a self-taught mage apprentice!"
Asik answered loudly, "The test subject I am applying for is—Magic Circuit Construction and Optimization!"
"Optimization?"
Hearing this word, the corners of Scarlett's mouth curled into an amused arc.
A self-taught apprentice from the countryside actually dared to talk about optimization in front of a professor from Lucaria? This was as ridiculous as an elementary school student who had just learned addition and subtraction running up to a university professor to say they wanted to correct calculus.
"Very courageous," Scarlett commented lightly. "Then begin. Let me see what this so-called optimization of yours is."
Asik swallowed hard and placed the model in his hands onto the display stand.
It was a strange device made of several copper pipes and crystal nodes.
When Scarlett saw the structure of the device clearly, her brow instantly furrowed.
"What is this mess?"
Scarlett pointed at a bifurcated section of the circuit, her tone severe. "According to the Third Law of Magitech Fluidics, magic transmission must follow the principle of unidirectional decrement. By forcibly splitting the flow here and merging it at the end, you will only cause a magic collision, or even trigger an explosion!"
"This is fundamentally a flawed structure that defies common sense! It seems your theoretical foundation is an absolute mess!"
Facing Scarlett's harsh criticism, the audience below let out a wave of sympathetic boos.
However, Asik did not back down.
In his mind, the simple and perfect formula that Lynch had casually drawn in the tavern that day surfaced: I=U/R.
That was the truth.
He firmly believed it was the truth!
"No! It is not an error!"
Asik abruptly raised his head, a fanatical light flashing behind his monocle. "This... this is parallel shunting! It is meant to reduce the resistance of a single circuit, thereby increasing the overall output power!"
"Please allow me to demonstrate!"
Without waiting for Scarlett to refuse, Asik pressed his hand directly onto the magic input terminal, injecting his meager first-tier magic power.
Buzz—
In that instant, a strange buzzing sound rang out.
There was no magic collision explosion as Scarlett had predicted.
On the contrary, after passing through special node processing, those two streams of shunted magic power acted like two docile streams, merging perfectly at the end and producing a wondrous resonant amplification.
Boom!
A dazzling burst of fire surged from the output terminal, fiercely striking the distant target.
The basic Fireball spell, which normally would only leave a scorched mark on the target, had now blasted a massive hole straight through the wooden dummy!
The entire venue fell dead silent.
Scarlett abruptly stood up from her armchair.
She stared intently at the still-steaming model, then looked at the large hole in the distance. The arrogance on her face instantly collapsed, replaced by unbelievable shock.
As a sixth-tier Magister, she saw through the mechanics at a single glance.
"The output power... increased by at least 30%?!"
Scarlett's voice was trembling. "How is this possible? Under the same magic consumption, just changing the circuit structure can increase the power by thirty percent? This... this completely subverts the existing models of Magitech Fluidics!"
It would be one thing if a long-established master had come up with such an innovation.
But the person in front of her... was merely a first-tier apprentice from the countryside!
"A genius? No, this is an eccentric prodigy. Unorthodox, but with a highly flexible mind. Although his magic talent seems mediocre, this is also the type the academy favors."
Scarlett took a deep breath and quickly walked up to Asik, her originally indifferent eyes now burning with a blazing thirst for knowledge.
"Tell me, young apprentice."
Scarlett stared fixedly at Asik. "Did you come up with this concept of parallel shunting by yourself?"
Asik froze.
Looking at the stunningly beautiful female professor in front of him, who was currently leaning in extremely close out of excitement, his heart pounded wildly.
If it were for the dream of attending a prestigious school, or to show off in front of a goddess, he could easily just nod and say yes.
After all, he had indeed built this model with his own hands.
However.
As a meticulous problem-solver with a moral obsession for academic integrity, and as a scholar (self-proclaimed) who held reverence for the truth, his conscience would not allow him to steal the wisdom of that great master.
"No... it wasn't me."
Asik lowered his head and said honestly, "I am just a craftsman responsible for verification and manual labor. The person who truly proposed this concept and solved that key formula... is someone else."
"Who?!" Scarlett pressed. "Which reclusive master is it?"
Asik turned around, raised his hand, and pointed toward the back of the crowd below the stage.
Following his finger, hundreds of pairs of eyes in the venue, including Scarlett's burning gaze, instantly focused on the exact same spot.
Over there, Lynch was sitting on a small folding stool he had brought himself.
In his hand, he held a half-peeled orange. He was carefully picking clean the white pith from a segment before feeding it to Felsy, who was beside him.
"Open your mouth, ah—"
Lynch hadn't noticed the sudden change in the atmosphere around him at all, still immersed in the joy of feeding his wife.
Felsy was just about to open her mouth when she suddenly felt countless gazes shooting towards them. Her movements stiffened, and she looked up in confusion.
"It is that gentleman."
On the stage, Asik's voice spread throughout the venue via voice-amplifying magic, carrying immense reverence:
"It is that apothecary, Mr. Lynch."
"All of this stems from a casual pointer he gave during a chat."
Lynch's hand froze in mid-air.
That segment of orange fell to the ground.
"Huh?"
Lynch looked up with a dumbfounded expression, staring at Asik on the stage, who wore a look of utter earnestness.
This unlucky kid...
I was just spouting middle school physics nonsense that day! How did it become a pointer?
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
Cheng's father told him he was getting remarried—to a wealthy woman. Cao Cheng realized his time had finally come: he was about to become a second-generation rich kid. Sure, it might be a watered-down version, but hey, at least he'd have status now, right? The wealthy woman also had four daughters!! Which meant, starting today, Cao Cheng gained four stunning older sisters?? But that wasn't even the whole story... "My name is Cao Cheng—'Cheng' as in 'honest, smooth-talking gentleman'!"
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
