**Chapter 18: Points, Oh Points**
After submitting the application for selling refined gold, Jie Ming couldn’t help but feel smug for quite a while.
He had already begun to imagine himself making a fortune through refined gold, using the earned points to enhance himself, forming a perfect resource cycle, and ultimately becoming an unrivaled powerhouse.
Whenever he saw those apprentices toiling away for points, though he didn’t show it outwardly, Jie Ming couldn’t suppress a sense of satisfaction deep inside.
“As expected, without unique techniques and production resources, you’re just exploited by others. This kind of grueling, low-point work—honestly, even a dog wouldn’t…”
…
…
“…do it! Dogs won’t, but I will. I freaking love doing tasks!”
In the area of Distillation Tower No. 3, Jie Ming’s expression was sowhat contorted.
The air here was thick with a nauseating, pungent mix of odors—like rotting plants combined with spoiled potions.
Wearing heavy protective gear, complete with sealed goggles and a mask, Jie Ming held a long-handled scraper issued by the workshop and a rag soaked in acrid solvent.
His task was to clean the massive tal distillation tower in front of him, which was at least ten stories tall.
He had no idea what had been processed here before, but the tower’s interior was coated with a black, tar-like, viscous residue.
They said this stuff was highly sensitive to energy factors, completely untouchable by witchcraft, so it had to be cleaned purely by manual labor.
He needed to crawl into the cramped internal space, scraping, wiping, and washing bit by bit…
As for why he was doing this task, it was a long, tearful story.
He had once thought that by refining gold—one of the materials most urgently needed by wizards—he could permanently solve his resource problems.
But reality dealt him a harsh blow.
The worst-case scenario Jie Ming had imagined was that his refined gold would go unsold, lost among a pile of similar insulating materials.
But the truth was even crueler—he didn’t even make it to the selling stage!
His submitted “White Iron-Based Insulating Material” was stuck in the workshop’s magic network system, displaying a glaring “Awaiting Inspection.”
No matter how many tis he checked daily, the status didn’t budge, as if forgotten in so corner.
Without passing inspection, it couldn’t be listed for sale, let alone be criticized by others or earn him any points.
This hidden path to wealth he’d stumbled upon was now firmly blocked by an unexpected obstacle.
anwhile, Jie Ming’s need for points was as urgent as breathing.
As his studies progressed, the demand for points only grew.
Want to practice shaping with special materials after class?
Fine, head to the material storage and exchange points for a new allocation.
Want to analyze an unknown ore using newly learned knowledge?
Sorry, the detailed *Material Properties Compendium* requires points to unlock access.
Want to rent a slightly better crucible with ntal energy enhancent for more complex experints?
No problem, just pay points at the magic network terminal.
Everything in the academy revolved around points!
The alchemy workshop didn’t keep idle hands.
They provided basic food, lodging, and knowledge, but anything more required labor and results in exchange.
“Damn it, what kind of inefficient bureaucratic nonsense is this?!”
Jie Ming cursed inwardly but could only obediently don his protective suit and get to work.
The work was monotonous and grueling.
The protective suit blocked most of the sll but made movent sluggish and cumberso. The swelteringly high temperature inside the tower was uncomfortable even for soone with Jie Ming’s constitution.
Sweat stead inside the suit, and the grating sound of the scraper against tal echoed within the tower.
“This is freaking exhausting…” muttered another apprentice nearby, his protective suit caked with stubborn gri.
Jie Ming nodded in agreent, saying nothing but chanically repeating his motions, seemingly too worn out by the heavy work to care about conversation.
Yet, in truth, his powerful ntal energy was quietly active.
He carefully sensed the internal structure of the distillation tower—the intricate pipeline connections, the engravings of energy-transfer runes, the joining of different tal materials. These were living textbooks.
He quickly relayed the information to the Great Dao Book Pavilion, letting it cross-reference his observations with similar knowledge for study.
“The design of this energy interface… it’s remarkably similar to the basic artifact-crafting techniques in the Great Dao Book Pavilion. It seems to utilize spatial folding principles… but the core is still rune-based energy conduction. I’ll need to morize this part and start studying runology soon.”
In such a harsh environnt, Jie Ming endured the monotony and fatigue while integrating the wizarding world’s knowledge into his cultivation system.
After a day’s work, he returned to his dorm and collapsed onto his bed.
Though ntally exhausted, his body didn’t feel overly strained. In fact, his inner true essence had beco even more condensed.
More critically, he could feel the energy within him surging wildly. The barrier to Qi Refinent Layer One was already fragile, ready to break at any mont!
Climbing off the bed, he assud a ditative pose and gazed into his ntal sea.
In the seemingly boundless ocean, three radiant, intricate patterns occupied three points around its periter, continuously drawing elental energy from the outside world into his body.
In just over a month, he had unknowingly inscribed three Truth Runes in his ntal sea, fully engraving the runes representing the core alchemical concepts of “Transformation,” “Fusion,” and “Refinent.” His ditation progress had reached the peak of a Level One Apprentice in the wizarding system!
His ntal sea had more than doubled in size since he first enrolled, and his ntal energy was now both refined and vibrant.
Next, as long as he successfully ditated and inscribed a fourth Truth Rune, he could officially beco a Level Two Apprentice.
But at the sa ti, the ntal foundation brought by Jie Ming’s “talent” had been completely exhausted.
Now, he could only rely on ditation to absorb external elental energy, slowly accumulating more ntal energy to support his attempt at the next rune.
This was an advantage for geniuses like him—his talent allowed him to effortlessly reach Level One Wizard Apprentice. He speculated that top-tier geniuses, those at Levels Eight or Nine, might not exhaust their innate ntal foundation until they reached Level Two.
ntal energy accumulation wasn’t sothing that happened overnight, so ditation progress wasn’t his imdiate concern.
The real trouble was that his cultivator cultivation was also on the verge of a breakthrough!
It hadn’t even been two months since he broke through to Qi Refinent Layer One, and now he was on the cusp of the next layer.
The energy in his body was becoming uncontrollable, as if it might explode at any mont.
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