Wei Zao the Serial Page Flipper

Wei Zao stood before the Alchemy Guild's building. Before he took over this body, the original "Jo Way" had tried to apply for an alchemy license, only to fail miserably.

Thankfully this was in another city. Just thinking about the mess the original body made sent a shiver down Wei Zao's spine.

For teachers, having a practising license in another occupation was a huge plus. Having a certification in another profession would automatically make a teacher more desirable.

Teachers could be classified into tiers based on the number of teaching stars they earned. A teaching apprentice who advanced to become a teacher would have zero stars. Once a zero-star teacher earned a 1-star license in one of the many side professions in this world, they could take a certification exam with the Teaching Association to get promoted to a 1-star teacher.

The difference between a starred teacher and one without was like heaven and earth. A starred teacher could be considered a global entity not tied down to any political power. But an unstarred teacher was still beholden to the powers that operated in the area they worked in.

To move from a 1-star teacher to a 2-star teacher, the teacher in question would need to hold at least two 2-star licenses in any side occupation. This pattern followed in that manner, and the difficulty to gain more stars as a teacher rose exponentially with each step.

The highest number of teaching stars held by any teacher living or dead was 5. The number of 5-star teachers that existed in this entire world could be counted in one hand, and these entities were veritable powerhouses in the field of cultivation and magic.

With regards to side professions, the ones that offered certification had their own official guilds and associations. Unfortunately, not all side professions were ranked equally. For instance, holding a 2-star chef certificate was less sought after compared to a 2-star alchemist's certificate.

Starting in these certifiable occupations was similar to teaching, in that the person had to first take a practising test and earn a license for it.

Wei Zao calmly entered the guild's building and sauntered over to the receptionist's desk. Seated there was a beautiful young woman who was reading through a book on recognising medicinal wildflowers.

"Excuse me. I'd like to apply for the practising license," Wei Zao said to the receptionist.

The woman looked up from her book and pointed towards a bulletin board to the side where the sign-up forms were posted.

Wei Zao walked over and checked out the test schedules. There was a practising licence test in an hour, on top of that there was also a 1-star certification test right after. Wei Zao didn't want to waste too much time so he decided to pick up the sign-up sheets for both the tests and walked back to the receptionist.

"Excuse me, miss. Can you please tell me the general overview of the contents in the practising license and the 1-star license tests?"

The woman looked a little annoyed, but she answered nonetheless. In fact, she was only at the receptionist's desk temporarily. The actual receptionist was taking the practising licence test and so she was temporarily holding down the fort.

In actuality, the woman was a 1-star alchemist called Eida Barr who ran the support workshops for alchemy practitioners.

Eida was annoyed with Wei Zao's questions because the answers to them could be found on the display boards all around the building's ground floor. If only the man bothered to look around him, he'd notice them. She automatically had a poor impression of this impertinent lad. But since she was technically a "receptionist" answering these trivial questions fell within the job description.

"For the practising licence, the test consists of identifying common ingredients and listing their uses. It's fairly simple. For the 1-star licence, the test involves brewing a potion or a pill that is at least 1-star in difficulty. For that, you will have supervised access to our storage. You can use all the ingredients you want, but depending on the success or failure of your attempt you will have to pay for the ingredients," she rattled monotonously.

"That sounds easy," Wei Zao murmured, which was promptly heard by Eida.

"Miss, for the tests preparations, would definitely be necessary. Is there a book repository or library that we have access to?" Wei Zao asked with an expectant gaze.

Noticing the man's excitement, Eida's harsh assessment softened a little and she pointed him in the general direction of the public repository.

Wei Zao quickly walked towards the library to gauge out the number of books he'd have to go through for the tests.

After he saw that there weren't that many topics being assessed for the tests, he quickly signed up for the practising license test and began the process of assimilating the books into his Omniscient Library.

What followed were a series of periodic sounds of aggressive page-turning. After "practising" back at the academy library, he was sort of an expert in this. He now used all the fingers in his hand while turning the pages. That saved a lot of time!

While he was doing this, Eida happened to enter the repository to give him some advice in case he needed it. Most budding alchemists couldn't make heads or tails of how to start their journey, and it was her role to help them out.

But as she neared the repository, he heard loud noises echoing from within. It sounded similar to someone venting their frustrations on books. She quickly rushed in to make sure nothing was wrong, and she was welcomed with a sight of a man quickly pulling out books and swiping through them like a madman.

Although she was greatly angered by the callousness in the way Wei Zao handled these precious books, she was kind of impressed by how he got the whole process down to a science. If she didn't know any better, it looked almost as if he had practised this many times before.

She quickly shook that stupid idea out of her head and tapped on Wei Zao's shoulders.

"Excuse me. Is there a problem? Can I help you in finding what you're looking for?" Eida calculated her words.

Wei Zao put on an amicable smile and answered, "No thanks. I'm just memorising the contents."

Eida's brows collapsed into her eyes, and her skull threatened to swallow them whole.

'Who the hell memorises by rapidly shuffling through the pages?' She questioned internally.

Either she was an idiot all this time for reading books slowly and this man was a genius of immeasurable proportions, or that this asshole was trying to act overconfident and putting on a show.

As a human being that firmly believed in logic, she was leaning towards the latter explanation.

She exhaled out a long sigh and decided to let the man continue with his charade. Before she left she made sure to point out that the books in the repository were expensive and that he should practise caution when handling them.

And with that Wei Zao returned to his leisurely page-turning.

There was still a little less than half an hour left to the practising licence test, and he was nearly finished with scanning all the books in the repository.

Of those available to the public, only a few handfuls were required for the practising licence. The contents of those books mainly pertained to safety procedures, basic skills, and foundational theories. The remainder were for the aspiring 1-star alchemists and included more advanced topics more geared towards application and brewing.

By the time he finished accumulating all the books, there was still 10 minutes left. Wei Zao quickly looked through the contents in his Omniscient Library and found that similar to the books on cultivation methods, the potion brewing recipes were also edited. However, unlike with the cultivation methods, the number of additions to the recipes were staggering. They went into so much detail that even a complete layman would be able to follow them. Wei Zao was feeling confident, so before going towards the testing hall, he decided to submit the 1-star license test sign-up form along the way.

Just as he arrived outside the testing hall, a representative walked over with the list of applicants. Coincidentally, the representative happened to be Eida. Wei Zao was pleasantly surprised as he had a good opinion of the well-meaning woman.

Eida looked through the sheets in her hands and called out the names of the examinees, indicating for them to enter the hall. For the test today there weren't many applicants - only 6.

When she called out the final name, she looked up and saw a familiar face.

"You? Didn't you just start looking through the examination contents?" She asked in shock.

Wei Zao nodded his head and tried to assuage her worries. "I did. But don't worry ma'am, I've memorised it all."

Eida was still not convinced and so she tried to issue a subtle warning. "Well, I can't stop you. But just know that you only get three opportunities to take the practising licence test. And you have to wait for at least 5 years before attempting it again."

To be honest, Eida didn't care about the man. Even though she was the same age as him, she had already seen many kinds of people walking through the building's halls. And while he was respectable, she felt that the man was acting a little too callous.

She had to work tirelessly to earn her 1-star licence and while she didn't wish ill for him, she hoped that his failure today would be a teaching moment for him about the difficulty of her occupation.

Seeing as Wei Zao was adamant about taking the test, she decided to not push any further and gestured him to enter.

She had washed her hands of the responsibility after issuing that previous warning. If anything were to happen in the future, she wouldn't be held liable.