Cultivation Campus

Suddenly a knock sounded at the door to Lin's new room.

"Lin-Lin! Breakfast is ready!" A woman's voice came from behind the door.

Lin, flustered, hurriedly untangled himself from a heap of sheets. It seems he woke up on the floor because he fell off the bed. Lin tried to act natural, "C-coming!" He said, hoping he said it in the strange language of this planet. Bai reassured Lin that the words coming out of his mouth translated to the planets language in everyone else's ears.

He rushed out of the room, his heart beating wildly. He was in an unfamiliar house with unfamiliar people that he had to act like he knows as naturally as possible. It was very nerve wracking to say the least.

He strode down the hall, relying on the original Hao Lin's memory. He made his way to the dining room where a delicious smell wafted to his nose. On the round table was four plates filled with steaming eggs and toast, a jelly jar standing in the middle of the table. 'Western style food… guess the culture of the panzelas is similar to western culture. But the names seem to be like chinese names because every person in my memory has chinese given and surnames… interesting.'

Lin sat down at one of the four seats and waited for the rest of his new family. Suddenly, a boy that looked to be around 12 years old walked up to him saying "Lin, you're in my seat." 

Lin looked at the young boy in surprise. 'This must be my younger brother Hao Rong!' Remembering that Hao Rong liked to be called just Rong, Lin greeted him.

"Morning Rong!" Lin said, completely forgetting that the boy just said that he's in his seat.

"Hah. Lin you're in my seat." The boy said in annoyance.

'In his moody stage I see…' Lin thought. "And how is this your seat?" He said putting on a smirk.

"My seat always has nothing with milk. For example, the eggs on that plate have no cheese while the rest do. Happy? Now get up and let me sit." Rong said, a deep frown on his face. 

"Okay." Lin said with a smile. He got up and sat at another seat. Rong sat down in the chair with a huff. He suddenly became confused. 

'Lin always argues with me or acts passive aggressive, but today he just got up and moved? The heck?' Rong thought with a scrunched up look on his face.

Soon after, Lin's mother, Luo Wen, sat down next to Rong. Then his father Hao Qiang sat down in the last seat. They all began eating in unison. Rong devoured the food like a ravenous beast. His mother chuckled. "Very hungry I see! Is it good?" She asked.

"Very!" Rong said between mouthfuls "The eggs are seasoned correctly this time!" 

"Yes, well I tried to avoid last week's incident. The eggs were very… peppery." Wen said with a chuckle.

Lin's father gave a boisterous laugh. "Ha ha ha! They weren't that bad. I actually prefer them that way!"

"Ew, dad you're weird!" Rong said with a weird expression.

They all laughed happily, including Lin. He found this happy daily exchange exhilarating for him as he had never experienced it once in his life. He felt content.

They all finished eating and everyone went to their respective rooms to get ready for the day. Lin walked back to his room and closed the door. He wracked the memories of the original Lin and found that his school required a uniform and that the papers sprawled out on the desktop was his summer homework that he finished last night before going to bed. 'Well, now I know that og Lin was a true procrastinator.'

Lin organized his papers and pens into his backpack, and put on his school uniform.

The uniform consisted of a buttoned down, white, short sleeved shirt, thin black dress pants, and a red collar ribbon to show that he's a first year.

He stood outside the bathroom, hesitant. He had to steel his nerves to prepare himself for the unfamiliar face he'll see in the mirror. He took a deep breath and walked into the bathroom to stare at his reflection.

He had some handsome features. His jaw looked slightly chiseled and his bright blue eyes sat within tired eyelids. The outside corners of his eyes were drooping slightly down and his pink lips looked smooth. The finishing touch was the silver stud earring above a silver hanging earring that looked like a hanging pole on his right ear giving him a playboy look. Lin looked at himself stunned. 'Damn! Not to sound conceited but I'm handsome as f*ck!'

"You sound very conceited." Chimed Bai's voice in his head. 

'Shut up…' Lin looked at himself gawking, then he broke into a wide grin. 'Woah! Dazzling!'

"Stop exaggerating." Said Bai with a huff.

Bai materialized in front of Lin on the counter. "You have to get ready or else you'll be late to school." Bai said with a demanding tone.

'Alright, alright. I'm going.' Lin started brushing his wispy, light brown hair to a style that fitted his looks. 'Western food, western hair… only thing that's chinese is the names. Guess my life is gonna have a ton of western culture.' Lin thought with a sigh.

Lin was ready. He was going to a special high school that had two campuses. One was for regular study and the other was for cultivation classes. The latter had basic courses as well but had a longer school day to incorporate cultivation into their daily teachings. Wen and Qiang, Lin's parents, had forced og Lin, with much effort and determination, to enter the cultivation campus. Lin was extremely upset and excessively reluctant, but in the end, his parents had the say.

Lin walked to the living room and sat on the couch with his backpack. His mother had told him during breakfast that she would drive him to school everyday. And so, Lin waited for his mother to be ready.

A few seconds later, Wen rushed out of the bathroom with her purse and keys jangling in her hand. "Let's go Lin-Lin!" She said. 

"Ok!" Lin said in response. He was grinning from ear to ear with excitement. His mother looked at him with bewilderment. 

"Excited now are we?" She said with a look of confusion. Lin had been arguing with her just yesterday about how he didn't want to go to the school and that they could still back out if she let him. But now he was brimming with excitement.

Lin realized that he was acting oddly with the argument last night and whatnot. "Oh, yeah… Um, I had a dream. A really weird one where an old man, who called himself god, said that this school will be more exciting than I think and that much contentment will be brought with the cultivation. So I have decided to have an open mind and see it as a sign to go with anticipation!" Lin said hurriedly, lying through his teeth.

Bai snickered, his voice echoing in Lin's mind. "That's what you came up with? Hahahahaha!!"

'It was all I could think of!' Lin snapped back.

"Oh! I'm glad to hear that!" Wen exclaimed, her face turning into an expression of happiness.

Lin had to hold back from sighing in relief. 'See Bai? It worked.' 

"Yeah, yeah. Sure, whatever." Bai said with a twinge of annoyance. 

Lin followed his mother to the car and sat in the passenger seat. His mother turned on the car and started to drive.

'The engine made no sound and it's driving so smooth….' Lin said in wonder. After searching the memories of og Lin, Lin found that the source of all electrical energy was from a type of stone called qi stones. They held large amounts of qi and were widely used as an energy source. They are abundant and relatively cheap. They also last extremely long so they are an ideal alternative to fossil fuels.

'Fascinating… everything's so different…'

Wen and Lin drove in silence. Lin was busy looking outside the window where people walked around with peculiar but docile beasts. Children were running around with wooden swords and people laughed as a bird like beast pecked at one of their meals. Lin felt elated at the prospect of living in this world.

Lin was so mesmerized by the beautiful, peaceful scene that he didn't even notice that the car came to a stop. "We're here!" Wen said. "Honey, I hope you have a good first day. Try to enjoy the school, even if it wasn't the ideal place you wanted to go to."

Lin stepped out of the car eager for his first day in high school, and in a cultivation school no less! "Don't worry. Love you mom!" He said to Wen. Wen replied cheerfully and the car drove away, leaving Lin on the sidewalk in front of a large school campus.

He gawked at the sight. A large three story building with beautiful brick walls and a grand entrance stood before him behind a wide open gate. A wide pavilion spread in front of the building with a pretty stone pattern lining the floor. Children stood everywhere, laughing and chatting loudly in the humid heat. Trees provided shade in the grassy areas, which is where most of the teens flocked to.

Lin walked to an empty bench and sat down. He looked around the area in awe. Checking the time, Lin saw that there was four minutes until school starts so he waited for the doors to the school to open.

Soon a bell chimed 1 time, signifying the start of school and the first class. Lin glanced at his schedule, saw math at the top of the list, and headed towards that classroom. He looked back on og Lin's memory of orientation where after a long speech, the freshmen were allowed to look for their classes and explore the school. Eventually Lin found the math classroom and took a seat. The bell rang and class started.

The teacher introduced herself and went over the syllabus she handed out moments ago. Then she reviewed what the students should've learned last year.

'At least the secondary and primary schools on this planet taught exactly the same stuff as 7,000 years ago, excluding the history, which I can rely on og Lin's memory for.' Lin thought with true relief. He didn't know what'd he'd do if they taught something completely different.

The next few core classes went relatively the same way.

Then came the cultivation classes. They followed a different type of system. Each student had to go through a test when applying to the school. They would first be tested on their perception of qi. Lin failed that from the very beginning so he was put into all beginner classes.

The beginner classes were really just one class all together: perception class. You would be taught on how to percept qi and then given the rest of the time to practice. The instructor would be there to guide you on anything you needed. Once you began to percept qi, you would be tested and put into 2 freshman classes of your choice. It usually took around 5 days for people to start percepting qi well enough to learn other things so the other classes would be self study for one and a half weeks. If you could not percept qi within that time, you were deemed incapable of cultivation and sent to the regular campus. It was strict but necessary so as to not waste anyone's time.