"This isn't completely useless," Li Yun thought, slightly surprised the system had awarded him with something interesting.
Jing Qi Shen could be considered the first real reward. Albeit, it was still something no one else could see.
Based on his understanding of Tao, the two pyramids represented the two Yin and Yang. Each corner of the pyramid represented Jing, Qi, and Shen. Jing was the essence of a person, an attribute that represented mortality and Earth. The simplest gaming equivalent would be HP and strength. If a person's Jing was drained, then a person was dead.
Qi, a common element of many fiction novels, was a type of energy that protects the jing from damage and connects it to nature. It was often associated with air and breath, hence a lot of breathing techniques focused on regulating Qi. Since it was easily manipulated, MP was the best way to describe Qi.
Shen was a person's spirit or soul. A person's body and jing hosted the shen. Without a good jing, the shen would weaken. A person with good shen could easily manipulate Qi. Although rare, it was possible to see shen manifest in the body, such as a person who is said to be glowing or bright.
In Li Yun's mind, each of the three corners of the triangular pyramid representing Jing, Qi, and Shen could be selected and extended. Only the fourth corner was fixed. The three corners, like stats, required action points in order to extend outward. And so far, Li Yun had zero action points available. He scanned through the mental list of side-quest missions available to acquire action points. The list was both long and short. It was long in a sense that there were endless ways to accumulate action points, but short in terms of what was feasible.
"One action point is awarded by making ten people genuinely cry after eating a delicious meal?" He thought the system was joking.
It seemed reasonable and easy to achieve in novels, but it was extremely difficult to do. Even for a Michelin chef, how many people had genuinely cried after eating their meal? The system didn't give him any magical fried rice or recipes. If he could cheat by putting ghost peppers, he would, but he intrinsically knew that the system would not approve of such a method. Also, Li Yun had no cooking skills; he could barely cook fried eggs.
There were a couple of possible routes that he could take, like reaching a certain level of fame and wealth or achieving certain tasks. However, the vast majority of tasks were not repeatable. He found a task that could be repeated 100 times, which was reading and memorizing 10 textbooks. He had seen people with speed reading and memorization ability on TV. Although it may take some practice, it was possible to do this task. Unfortunately, in the long term, it was not sustainable enough since there was still a limit on the possible action points. Scanning through the list, he saw a task that didn't have a limit. It was to save a person's life. Needless to say, he avoided the ones that could put him in jail.
"Well, even without my cute little sister, think about Uncle and Auntie," Wu Bin continued. "They will be disappointed if you don't get into college. Hey, are you listening?"
"Yeah, yeah, what score do you need to get into medical school?" Li Yun asked.
"Uh? Well... What!?" Wu Bin blinked bewilderingly. "Are you serious? There are only two months left before the gaokao."
Wu Bin looked at Li Yun's focused face. He had almost forgotten that this was the same guy who was copying Taoists texts like a madman for several years. For Li Yun, going to a medical school served another purpose, to study meridian. After comprehending the face reading, the system had another mission, to comprehend the meridian. This task was not a simple task to achieve. Face reading was at least rooted in concepts that could be physically explored and studied. However, meridian was thought by many to be imaginary lines of qi energy or flawed anatomical systems theorized by early physicians.
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The key to understanding meridians was through understanding anatomy and medicine. It didn't take him long to narrow his future path down to either medicine or surgery. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) seemed like a natural progression, but for Li Yun there were several reasons why he preferred modern medical training over TCM.
First, there were many flaws in a modern interpretation of TCM. Original texts from antiquity had been lost or revised over the course of several millenniums. Although it seemed counterintuitive to think that classical Chinese medicine was better than modern TCM, it was true that TCM had regressed rather than evolved over the years.
One example was Cao Cao's ambition to monopoly Hua Tuo, leading to his early death and lost legacy. Other examples include religious cult leaders, some claiming to be the reincarnation of Luozi, altering texts to fit their power-hungry agenda, or emperors burning books that undermined their dynastic rule.
Second, he had already read all the Taoist texts on Chinese Medicine. One could not go through the 1400 texts of the Daozang without coming across classical Chinese medical texts. Medical treatises and classics were deeply entrenched in Taoist teachings. It was not too arrogant to say that he knew more than most so-called TCM doctors.
Lastly, job prospects for modern medicine were better according to Biado. He still needed to eat in order to survive, but there was a problem, the gaokao was two months away.
****
From the school hallway, Wu Bin heard the class bell rung and saw the students shuffled out of the classroom. Their shoulders slumped and their head drooped to the side as they dragged their feet to their classrooms like zombies during the apocalypse. All their eyes were devoid of any emotions as if their souls have escaped to the great beyond. This was a typical scene in many high schools right before a gaokao, but Wu Bin was surprised that his little cousin was in the same state.
Not only in the high schools, but the atmosphere of the entire nation changed during the week of the gaokao. The air was tense, and everyone could sense the hope, fear, and restlessness in the air. Other than the national holidays, no other event was as much anticipated as the two days of the college entrance exams. A random stranger would yell out good wishes and encouragements to high school students and roadside vendors were unusually benevolent with free drinks and snacks.
On day one, Li Yun nervously walked into the exam hall with his friends and registered their names. Prior to entering, they had scribbled some last-minute notes on their hands and arms, but then furiously rubbed it out while waiting in line. If they were caught cheating, they would lose all chance of entering college that year.
"Good luck!" They cheered on each other with Li Yun's extra set of luck blessings wrapped around their wrist, but they could only rely on was the knowledge they had crammed in from the past two months. "Don't let everything go to waste!'
On the last day of the gaokao, Li Yun completed the test, and his mind autopiloted him to return home. Inside his living room, he saw four moving big blobs playing mahjong. He stared at them briefly with his dark and puffy eyes, blinked, and then walked past them, ignoring their existence as he crashed onto his bed.
"Has he been like that all week?" asked Aunt Xu while playing mahjong.
Li Fan nodded as he closed the door that Li Yun had neglected to close and headed back to the couch.
"More like for a good month," Lu Suyin stated, half complaining about her son. From baths, laundry, to chores, the brat seemed to have neglected everything while he was studying.
"Is the kid going to be okay?" asked Bu Chi, Bufu's mother.
"Who knows," replied Lu Suyin. "All of the sudden, he wanted to attend med school."
"I always thought he was going to join a Taoist temple after high school," Aunt Xu remarked.
"Well, at least it has rubbed off some positive influences on my little Fang," said Wang Fang's mother, Wang Li. "He also wants to get into Binchu University."
"Oh ho, that's not too far from here, half an hour by train?" asked Bu Chi. "My little Fu also wants to go there."
The three mothers chatted happily. During the beginning of high school, their expectations of their children were extremely low. If their children had exhibited any bit of genius, they would have ended up becoming tiger moms. But instead, their children performed poorly in school and seemed to have no future in higher education. The mothers were simply happy that their children didn't end up arrested before the end of high school. Who would have known that instead of entering the workforce right after graduation, the three kids would be entering a university?
A month later, everyone was overjoyed when the results came out. Bufu was naturally gifted in math and scored 570. Fatty Fang somehow got 541, and Li Yun got 536, surprising everyone by acing the Chinese portion of the test. They naturally got into college as the minimum requirement was 500.