Chapter 3: Little Prodigy Early Learning Tablet

With one arm in a sling, Ding Ling reclined on the hospital bed, resting with her eyes closed.

Although the spiritual apertures of this body were open, within the upper dantian, the space of one cun and two fen was completely empty.

The previous host’s spiritual root had indeed been scorched to withered twigs and leaves by the lightning strike. Yet just as the original owner’s soul was about to scatter, Ding Ling had borrowed the shell to return her soul, unexpectedly keeping this body alive.

Now that she had entered this vessel, life would sprout even beneath scorched earth.

After changing Ding Ling’s dressing, Nurse Xu asked routinely, “Do you feel uncomfortable anywhere else?”

Everything else was manageable, as regrowing flesh after shedding burnt skin was bound to hurt, but a faint rumbling came from her taicang^[1].

She had examined her internal organs, and just as that medical cultivator named Song had said, there was no severe damage. So why was it making noise?

Just as Ding Ling was puzzling over it, Nurse Xiao Xu heard her stomach rumble and smiled, opening an insulated lunchbox. “Hungry, aren’t you? You’ve been on an IV drip for days, so of course you are. But your body is still too weak, so you’ll have to stick to rice porridge for a couple of days.”

The metal lunchbox held a bowl of minced meat porridge, fragrant and appetizing.

Ding Ling stared at the porridge, stunned. She was… hungry.

Nurse Xu assumed she didn’t like meat porridge. “You don’t like savory food? Should I have the cafeteria make pumpkin and red date porridge tomorrow? Or maybe purple rice milk porridge?”

Ding Ling had not eaten food in centuries.

Cultivators lived with pure hearts and few desires. Once they crossed the threshold of cultivation, they began fasting from grain^[2]; those who fed on qi gained divine clarity and longevity.

After hundreds of years, she had long forgotten what hunger even felt like.

With this body so badly damaged and the spiritual energy here so sparse, attempting to fast from grain now would be asking for an early grave.

Ding Ling picked up the small spoon and fed the hot porridge into her mouth spoonful by spoonful, doing her best to absorb the nutrients from the meat porridge and channel them into her spiritual manor. Her body trembled faintly from the pain.

Nurse Xiao Xu had a subtle look on her face. She didn’t even realize she was hungry? It really is sensory and behavioral impairment from a closed brain injury.

Ding Ling had barely finished half the bowl when she heard a rustling beneath the windowsill, as if some small animal were lurking there.

“Who’s there?”

“Me.” Yao Beibei slowly poked her head out. The moment she got a clear look at Ding Ling on the bed, tears welled up in her eyes from fright.

Nurse Xiao Xu smiled when she saw Yao Beibei. After all these days, this was the first time someone had come to visit Ding Ling. “You’re her friend, right? Come in, come on in!”

Yao Beibei had no choice. She had originally planned to quietly leave the food and slip away, but now she had to drag her feet inside and stand beside Ding Ling’s bed.

Nurse Xu said with a smile, “I’ll let you two chat. Just ring the bell if you feel unwell.” With that, she tidied up the discarded gauze and empty medicine bottles, picked up her tray, and left.

Everyone knew that Ding Ling’s spiritual root was ruined and she had turned foolish. Unable to transfer to the regular school next door, she had no choice but to return to her hometown, a tiny mountain village in the South Polar Continent.

Yao Beibei had been Ding Ling’s roommate for over two weeks and had even gone exploring the mountaintop stone cave with her. After thinking it over for a long time, she felt she ought to come see Ding Ling.

She pulled a pile of food and drinks out of her bag, so much that the bedside table could barely hold it all. “My parents were worried I wouldn’t get enough nutrition, so they bought these supplements specially for the training camp. You can have them all, plus these snacks.”

The pile of items was far larger than the capacity of the bag itself.

Ding Ling glanced at the small pink bag covered in sequins and nodded inwardly. Mm, a low-grade cosmos bag^[3].

“These are from Zhang Tianyu and the others. It wasn’t convenient for them to come see you. And this… this is from Cheng Lu and her group.” It was true that Zhang Tianyu had asked her to bring things, but as for Cheng Lu and the others, Yao Beibei was lying.

Ding Ling remained silent. These people were all “her” fellow disciples.

Yao Beibei wanted to comfort Ding Ling, but she had no idea what to say. Ding Ling was charred black all over, save for a pair of eyes that shone with terrifying brightness.

The sight was so striking that she barely dared to look.

Averting her gaze, she forced herself to offer comfort. “Honestly, being a normal person isn’t so bad. You still go to school, take exams, and find a job. I even heard their college entrance exam is a bit easier~”

She assumed Ding Ling’s foolishness just meant her grades wouldn’t be as good as before. Even if Ding Ling’s score were cut in half, it would still be higher than hers.

Yao Beibei was comforting her with total nonsense while thinking to herself, How could any college entrance exam be easy? No college entrance exam is easy!

“My spiritual root only opened unexpectedly last year; my parents never even counted on it. After all, if your spiritual root doesn’t open before sixteen, you’re just an ordinary person. Once mine opened, my parents went crazy with joy, but I don’t want to cultivate at all. My grades were bad before anyway, so I might as well have gone back to a regular school…”

So in this place, if one did not awaken a spiritual root before the age of sixteen, they could no longer cultivate.

Yao Beibei stopped abruptly. She had only opened her spiritual aperture last year, and in the two weeks since joining the summer camp, her overall score had ranked dead last every week.

Ding Ling was entirely different; she had tied for first place with Ye Yibai twice.

Thinking about it now, Ye Yibai had been tutored by renowned masters his whole life. If Ding Ling had possessed the same advantages, she would have left him in the dust long ago.

With neither able to outscore the other, the two had agreed to venture into the restricted area together to see the Stone Gourd.

Belatedly, Yao Beibei realized she had said something foolish.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.” Yao Beibei choked up, her eyes reddening as she was on the verge of tears.

Ding Ling intended to snap at her to stop, but her situation was different now. Since the girl had come to visit, she was likely close with the original owner, so Ding Ling merely said coldly, “Stop crying.”

The sight of Ding Ling’s face frightened Yao Beibei into silence at once.

Sniffling, she pulled out her final treasure from the small bag. “This… you can have this too. If you get bored lying here, you can play with it. It has lots of mini-games.”

Camp rules strictly forbade electronic devices. Getting caught meant a point deduction that would go onto one’s overall evaluation.

Wherever there were rules, there were rulebreakers. Everyone showed off their own tricks, some sneaking in phones, while others hid gaming consoles.

The tablet Yao Beibei had brought was an early learning device meant for toddlers who had just awakened their spiritual power.

The games inside were very simple, and the advertisements claimed that prolonged use could enhance spiritual power.

The moment Yao Beibei opened her spiritual aperture, her mother had bought this latest model of the children’s learning device and told her daughter, “We can’t let you fall behind at the starting line.”

Come on! She was already sixteen. Starting now was as late as it could possibly get!

It was something meant for little kids, so she had been too embarrassed to take it out in the dorm and hadn’t used it even once. Giving it to Ding Ling worked out perfectly.

At first, she had only planned on giving her some food, but seeing Ding Ling’s pitiful state, Yao Beibei couldn’t help emptying out everything she owned.

Ding Ling looked at the tablet, guessing it was probably some kind of magical artifact. “How do you use this?”

“Huh?” Yao Beibei’s big eyes blinked in confusion before the realization struck her.

Everyone said Ding Ling came from a terrible background, and it turned out to be true.

Yao Beibei sniffled and flicked the power switch on.

A sweet child’s voice played from the device: “Welcome to the Little Prodigy Early Cultivation Learning Machine.”

Yao Beibei picked out the simplest option, something anyone with hands could play: Monster Match.

“Just like this. Line up three of the same, and once they clear, you get points.”

The game was very easy to pick up, and Ding Ling even figured out on her own that lining up five created a flash bomb, blasting away a whole cluster of colorful little monsters.

“Win ten times and your spiritual root will light up.” Seeing Ding Ling tear through match after match, Yao Beibei eagerly ripped open a snack package. “Try this, it’s super tasty.”

Ding Ling watched Yao Beibei eat several pieces first. Yao Beibei thought Ding Ling was just being shy and enthusiastically pitched it: “Give it a try, it’s really good! It’s merch from the match game. This red one is strawberry-flavored, my absolute favorite.”

Having seen with her own eyes that Yao Beibei was fine after eating a few, Ding Ling picked out the same flavor.

“How is it? Good, right?”

The moment it entered her mouth, Ding Ling tasted it. These snacks contained a minuscule trace of spiritual energy, but it was so faint that eating them made practically no difference.

Before long, a pile of snacks accumulated in the corner of Ding Ling’s bed.

Holding the tablet, she cleared ten rounds in one breath. This little sect junior of hers was quite the chatterbox, and from her, Ding Ling learned that while some people did awaken their spiritual roots after sixteen, most of them never achieved anything significant in cultivation.

They still ended up living the lives of ordinary people.

“There’s also the self-study cultivation exam for adults. If you want to learn, you still can.”

Just as Yao Beibei tore open a pouch of drinkable jelly, Director Chen walked in.

Seeing Ding Ling playing a game with a friend keeping her company made him feel a little better, and a faint smile squeezed onto his square-jawed face.

“Teacher Chen.” Yao Beibei scrambled to her feet and stood straight.

She had only just entered No. 1 High School, and before classes even began, a major demerit had been recorded on her file. That night, she had been the one crying the loudest.

Tablets were against the rules and carried a point penalty if caught. If she lost any more points this week, her score would hit zero.

“Step outside for a moment. I have something to discuss with Ding Ling.”

Yao Beibei breathed a huge sigh of relief and slipped out along the wall. At the doorway, she turned back and stealthily pointed at herself, then at Ding Ling, meaning, I’ll come see you again tomorrow.

Chen Dahai pulled over a chair and sat down in front of the bed. No matter how hard the words were to say, some things had to be addressed.

He cleared his throat. “The school is willing to let you stay. You’re still young, so audit classes for now. Your grades won’t be counted, and after graduation, you can stay on as part of the school’s logistics staff.” Since she was no longer literate, the path of studying, taking exams, and finding regular employment was cut off.

“Logistics?”

“Logistics support. Ensuring daily life and studies run smoothly for the teachers and students.”

A chore servant^[4]? It felt as if a corner of the dense fog in her mind had been blown away by the wind.

An intense wave of indignation surged forth, pressing down so hard on this broken body that she could barely breathe.

There was actually a remnant… soul left in this body?

In her current state, if it turned into an inner demon, she wouldn’t be able to withstand it.

If Ding Ling still had eyebrows, Chen Dahai would have seen her brow furrow deeply right now.

But without a single hair left on her brows, and without her speaking, it was impossible to tell what expression she was making.

Ding Ling immediately gathered and focused her spirit. Every person possessed a spirit; keep it inside and live, let it wander and die.

She addressed the wisp of remnant soul within the body: I am merely borrowing your vessel for a time. When I shed this mortal shell, I will return this healed body to you.