**Chapter 18: Points, Oh Points**

After submitting the application for selling refined gold, Jie Ming couldn’t help but feel smug for quite a while.

He had already begun to imagine himself making a fortune through refined gold, using the earned points to enhance himself, forming a perfect resource cycle, and ultimately becoming an unrivaled powerhouse.

Whenever he saw those apprentices toiling away for points, though he didn’t show it outwardly, Jie Ming couldn’t suppress a sense of satisfaction deep inside.

“As expected, without unique techniques and production resources, you’re just exploited by others. This kind of grueling, low-point work—honestly, even a dog wouldn’t…”

…

…

“…do it! Dogs won’t, but I will. I freaking love doing tasks!”

In the area of Distillation Tower No. 3, Jie Ming’s expression was somewhat contorted.

The air here was thick with a nauseating, pungent mix of odors—like rotting plants combined with spoiled potions.

Wearing heavy protective gear, complete with sealed goggles and a mask, Jie Ming held a long-handled scraper issued by the workshop and a rag soaked in acrid solvent.

His task was to clean the massive metal distillation tower in front of him, which was at least ten stories tall.

He had no idea what had been processed here before, but the tower’s interior was coated with a black, tar-like, viscous residue.

They said this stuff was highly sensitive to energy factors, completely untouchable by witchcraft, so it had to be cleaned purely by manual labor.

He needed to crawl into the cramped internal space, scraping, wiping, and washing bit by bit…

As for why he was doing this task, it was a long, tearful story.

He had once thought that by refining gold—one of the materials most urgently needed by wizards—he could permanently solve his resource problems.

But reality dealt him a harsh blow.

The worst-case scenario Jie Ming had imagined was that his refined gold would go unsold, lost among a pile of similar insulating materials.

But the truth was even crueler—he didn’t even make it to the selling stage!

His submitted “White Iron-Based Insulating Material” was stuck in the workshop’s magic network system, displaying a glaring “Awaiting Inspection.”

No matter how many times he checked daily, the status didn’t budge, as if forgotten in some corner.

Without passing inspection, it couldn’t be listed for sale, let alone be criticized by others or earn him any points.

This hidden path to wealth he’d stumbled upon was now firmly blocked by an unexpected obstacle.

Meanwhile, Jie Ming’s need for points was as urgent as breathing.

As his studies progressed, the demand for points only grew.

Want to practice shaping with special materials after class?

Fine, head to the material storage and exchange points for a new allocation.

Want to analyze an unknown ore using newly learned knowledge?

Sorry, the detailed *Material Properties Compendium* requires points to unlock access.

Want to rent a slightly better crucible with mental energy enhancement for more complex experiments?

No problem, just pay points at the magic network terminal.

Everything in the academy revolved around points!

The alchemy workshop didn’t keep idle hands.

They provided basic food, lodging, and knowledge, but anything more required labor and results in exchange.

“Damn it, what kind of inefficient bureaucratic nonsense is this?!”

Jie Ming cursed inwardly but could only obediently don his protective suit and get to work.

The work was monotonous and grueling.

The protective suit blocked most of the smell but made movement sluggish and cumbersome. The swelteringly high temperature inside the tower was uncomfortable even for someone with Jie Ming’s constitution.

Sweat steamed inside the suit, and the grating sound of the scraper against metal echoed within the tower.

“This is freaking exhausting…” muttered another apprentice nearby, his protective suit caked with stubborn grime.

Jie Ming nodded in agreement, saying nothing but mechanically repeating his motions, seemingly too worn out by the heavy work to care about conversation.

Yet, in truth, his powerful mental energy was quietly active.

He carefully sensed the internal structure of the distillation tower—the intricate pipeline connections, the engravings of energy-transfer runes, the joining of different metal materials. These were living textbooks.

He quickly relayed the information to the Great Dao Book Pavilion, letting it cross-reference his observations with similar knowledge for study.

“The design of this energy interface… it’s remarkably similar to the basic artifact-crafting techniques in the Great Dao Book Pavilion. It seems to utilize spatial folding principles… but the core is still rune-based energy conduction. I’ll need to memorize this part and start studying runology soon.”

In such a harsh environment, Jie Ming endured the monotony and fatigue while integrating the wizarding world’s knowledge into his cultivation system.

After a day’s work, he returned to his dorm and collapsed onto his bed.

Though mentally exhausted, his body didn’t feel overly strained. In fact, his inner true essence had become even more condensed.

More critically, he could feel the energy within him surging wildly. The barrier to Qi Refinement Layer One was already fragile, ready to break at any moment!

Climbing off the bed, he assumed a meditative pose and gazed into his mental sea.

In the seemingly boundless ocean, three radiant, intricate patterns occupied three points around its perimeter, continuously drawing elemental energy from the outside world into his body.

In just over a month, he had unknowingly inscribed three Truth Runes in his mental sea, fully engraving the runes representing the core alchemical concepts of “Transformation,” “Fusion,” and “Refinement.” His meditation progress had reached the peak of a Level One Apprentice in the wizarding system!

His mental sea had more than doubled in size since he first enrolled, and his mental energy was now both refined and vibrant.

Next, as long as he successfully meditated and inscribed a fourth Truth Rune, he could officially become a Level Two Apprentice.

But at the same time, the mental foundation brought by Jie Ming’s “talent” had been completely exhausted.

Now, he could only rely on meditation to absorb external elemental energy, slowly accumulating more mental energy to support his attempt at the next rune.

This was an advantage for geniuses like him—his talent allowed him to effortlessly reach Level One Wizard Apprentice. He speculated that top-tier geniuses, those at Levels Eight or Nine, might not exhaust their innate mental foundation until they reached Level Two.

Mental energy accumulation wasn’t something that happened overnight, so meditation progress wasn’t his immediate concern.

The real trouble was that his cultivator cultivation was also on the verge of a breakthrough!

It hadn’t even been two months since he broke through to Qi Refinement Layer One, and now he was on the cusp of the next layer.

The energy in his body was becoming uncontrollable, as if it might explode at any moment.