Chapter 10: Testing the Waters (Thanks to Leader Ai Xiaoxun)

As noon approached, the lively commotion of the first-year students registering for their new classes gradually faded. The older students of the second and third years also put down their pens and streamed toward the cafeteria.

Only Chen Shian’s transfer registration was still underway.

The young Taoist now sat alone in a spacious meeting room in the administration building, with six test papers waiting beside him—covering Chinese, mathematics, English, physics, chemistry, and biology.

On the table, aside from the test papers, there was a bottle of mineral water and a boxed meal—generous and hearty, packed for him by Principal Lin herself from the teachers’ cafeteria.

“How’s the food, Fat Mo?” he asked.

“Meow.”

“Usually you ignore me when I call you Fat Mo, but with food, you answer, don’t you?”

“…”

Chen Shian lifted the lid and set aside a portion for the black cat. Neither he nor the cat was picky about food, and compared to the meals on the mountain, the variety here was clearly richer.

So there they were, one person and one cat, eating their boxed meal under the air conditioning, enjoying a rare moment of leisure.

Chen Shian was meticulous by nature. He didn’t rush to start the test, afraid of staining the paper while eating. Only after finishing did he carefully clean the table and lunch box with napkins and turn his attention to the test papers before him.

The black cat glanced at the papers, quickly feeling dizzy and unfocused. After all, it wasn’t the one who would be going to school. Well-fed and content, it simply sprawled across the conference table and drifted off into a deep sleep.

Facing the six test papers, Chen Shian felt little better than the cat. His expression shifted from relaxed to grave.

This was his first encounter with an examination.

This “test” was rather unusual: the meeting room served as the exam hall, he was the only candidate, there was no invigilator, no surveillance, and his phone hadn’t even been taken away.

As Teacher Liang put it, if he could find the answers by searching his phone or flipping through a book, that would show his foundation was at least decent.

The purpose was to gauge his level—not only did Teacher Liang want to know his baseline, but Chen Shian himself was curious how many points he could score.

He began with the Chinese test.

Two modern reading passages, one classical text, ancient poetry comprehension, famous quotations from classic works, language application, and finally, an essay.

He had thought Chinese would be his strongest subject, but to his surprise, he stumbled right at the start.

The first passage, an article about artificial intelligence, was full of unfamiliar terms like “algorithm” and “neural network.” Chen Shian stared blankly at the question “Can machines possess consciousness?” and after pondering, wrote in the margin: “Form is the vessel of life; energy is its fullness; spirit is its governance. Without energy and spirit, how can a machine have consciousness?”

Fortunately, after the modern reading passages, the classical text, ancient poetry, and famous quotations were his forte.

The classical passage was from “Records of the Grand Historian: The Biographies of Laozi, Zhuangzi, Shen Buhai, and Han Fei,” which he read more fluently than scriptures.

For the question asking him to define “naturalness” in the phrase “The Dao follows nature,” he not only provided an annotation but added, “Heaven and earth possess great beauty but speak not,” thinking the question itself too shallow.

As for the famous quotations, though some were presented in applied scenarios, he had studied the Four Books and Five Classics from childhood, so applying these quotes came naturally.

When he reached the essay section, the topic was “On Innovation and Inheritance.”

Moved, Chen Shian wrote from Zhuangzi’s “transforming with the times” to Ge Hong’s “expound but do not create,” filling half a page. Noticing the requirement for at least 800 words, he supplemented with lines from the “Scripture of Great Peace,” composing the essay entirely in classical Chinese—no punctuation, just pauses marked, making it a pure piece of classical writing.

Though unaccustomed to the test format, he found the Chinese exam manageable. This gave the young Taoist newfound confidence, a subtle sense of “is that all?” rising within him.

But this self-assuredness didn’t last.

When he turned to the math paper, Chen Shian’s brows furrowed deeply.

A mass of unfamiliar terms and bizarre symbols filled the page—x, y, f(x), ∉, ∩, ∠, sin, cos… To him, the equations resembled unintelligible incantations. He recognized a few geometric diagrams—“boxes”—but “the angle formed by skew lines” might as well have been a spell.

For a moment, Chen Shian wondered if he was taking a math test or a foreign language exam.

Would ordinary people ever use any of this in daily life?

Maybe he could cast a hex with copper coins and pick the most likely answer among four options, but since this was just a diagnostic test, he didn’t bother guessing. The multiple-choice questions carried little weight, and even lucky guesses wouldn’t help much.

Put plainly, this test far exceeded his understanding of mathematics. No matter how he racked his brain, all he could recall was his master’s lesson: “Seek the square within the circle, the circle within the square.”

In the end, he simply drew circles at the end of every question—some big, some small—resembling the lines in a divination chart.

Math was thus “completed” rather quickly.

Next, Chen Shian unfolded the English paper.

A moment later, he quietly put it aside.

Then came the science papers.

Terms like “acceleration,” “kinetic energy,” and “electromagnetism” in the physics exam found no parallels in his memory, not even in the “Artificer’s Record.”

The chemistry test’s element symbols and reaction equations reminded him of alchemical mineral charts. He knew how to refine elixirs, but these “chemical experiments” were another matter entirely.

The biology test was even more confounding. Gazing at the diagrams of cell structures, Chen Shian wondered—were these really what made up a human body? And how could consciousness arise from such components? The more he pondered, the more his heart wavered, and he hastily composed himself, scribbling only, “All things possess essence; where essence persists, there is life.”

Looking at his haphazard answers in math, English, and science, Chen Shian felt a growing sense of confusion.

“Master, is this ‘following the Dao of Nature’ just letting me fail naturally?”

“Was sending me down the mountain to see the world really just to see these conic sections?”

Having been away from school for many years and lacking knowledge in these subjects, Chen Shian had expected to do poorly, but not this disastrously.

He had always been smarter than others, quick to learn anything, excelling at whatever he tried. One success after another had built an almost arrogant confidence deep inside him, making him feel the world was filled with nothing but slow fish.

But this diagnostic test shattered his self-assurance and changed his view of his peers—he learned from Teacher Liang that the class president of Class Five could score full marks on the very math paper that had stumped him completely.

Learning had always been his strong suit, yet this was the outcome.

For the first time, Chen Shian truly recognized his own arrogance.

No wonder his master had sent him down the mountain, had him return to school.

People live surrounded by points of reference. Stay too long on the mountain, and your only reference is yourself; in time, you lose your way.

“To know how high the heavens are, how deep the earth is, to have a mind as clear as a mirror, knowing one’s place and understanding the myriad beings—this is true greatness.”

“Master, which layer am I on?”

“You do not yet know how high the heavens are, nor how deep the earth is, let alone have a mind as clear as a mirror, knowing your place.”

“I’m perfectly clear on everything!”

“Heh, arrogance. Are you really not going to school tomorrow?”

“No, it’s too easy, not worth it.”

“…”

He had been told to experience the world, but only now did Chen Shian finally feel what that meant.

He had once understood “a mind as clear as a mirror, knowing one’s place” as a fixed coordinate.

Now he realized that one’s place is ever-changing.

Just as he, a prodigy in the Dao, floundered miserably in the classroom, so too would the school’s top student struggle to find the path on the mountain. Different points of reference determine one’s position—dynamic, complex, never the same.

Basing one’s value solely on what one excels at may seem lofty, but is in fact rootless and precarious. The self-assured inevitably collapse when their confidence is destroyed.

With this understanding, Chen Shian’s unsettled heart grew calm again—calmer than ever before.

In that instant, it was as if he rose above, gazing down from a new vantage, able to examine his place from another perspective.

Master, your disciple truly is a genius in the Dao… No, must be humble, humble! The Great Dao remains far beyond my grasp!

Though he had failed the test, the young man’s heart was steadier than ever.

Arrogance truly is the original sin.