Just as she was struggling with whether to pretend to turn her head, she suddenly heard the footsteps pause, and then her older sister’s voice came from the stairs: “If you’re so free, go do your homework.”

The little girl’s body trembled, the chips in her hand shook, and she hurriedly focused on eating her chips.

Only then did the footsteps continue.

After returning to her room, Lily Carter sat down at her desk and opened the book.

Chapter Three: Time Capsule

“Professor Brooks, cutting meat again?”

“Why did you get caught in the rain again?” Professor Brooks temporarily lifted his gaze from behind his phone, his voice gentle. “The big exam is coming up soon. It’s best not to run around during this period, and don’t eat outside, to avoid getting sick. Recently, Yuanzhou is also quite dangerous, so don’t wander around outside.”

“Oh wow! That’s rare!”

“……”

Professor Brooks buried his head again, too lazy to bother with him, focusing on his phone, only his voice coming out: “I told you before, asked you to add Uncle Reed as a friend on Feixin. Did you add him?”

“I did.”

“Did you talk?”

“We exchanged a couple of words.”

“If there’s anything you don’t understand, you can ask him.”

“Got it.”

Grace Brooks walked back to his own room and lay down on the bed.

His room was very tidy, mainly because there wasn’t much stuff. However, the coffee table on the balcony was piled with many scattered books, and the trash can was filled with crumpled notebook pages. There was a desk by the wall, with books neatly stacked on it, and a computer.

Grace Brooks picked up a physics textbook, flipped through it a bit, and felt a little bored.

He’d come to a fantasy world, and still had to study physics—how annoying is that?

But that’s just how it was. Although this was a fantasy world with spiritual power and cultivation, the physical laws from the previous world still applied. The Creator hadn’t deprived people of the right to use physical laws just because they could cultivate and use spiritual power and runes. Instead, the two were combined, making the world’s technology tree even bigger and more complete.

So, in this world, both Earth’s physical technology and their own unique spiritual rune technology existed.

For example, the little cars running outside—anything with wheels was essentially an electric car, except the energy was stored as spiritual power, which was then converted to electricity when used, giving it a very long range. But the lights overhead were different; they were purely spiritual power bulbs, with luminous runes directly using spiritual power to emit light—simple and durable. The runes themselves wouldn’t get damaged or degrade in performance.

In short, they picked the best of both worlds.

Grace Brooks held the book, but couldn’t really focus.

Earlier, when flipping through Lily Carter’s problem set, he could solve most of the questions instantly, but there were some truly tricky ones, some that looked extremely difficult at first glance. The content about spells always attracted him much more than the physics book in his hands.

The more he thought about it, the itchier he felt.

Normally, Grace Brooks was a rather lazy person. If he didn’t run into a problem, he’d let it go, but once he did, he couldn’t rest until he figured it out. And if he managed to solve it or understand it, he’d feel a great sense of accomplishment.

“Not reading anymore.”

Grace Brooks tossed aside the physics book, got up, turned on the computer, opened his notebook, picked up his fountain pen, and started solving problems.

The sky gradually darkened, and the sound of rain pattered outside.

He had dinner in between.

The notebook got a bit thinner.

Half thinking, half searching, he basically solved all the problems. For one that he really couldn’t figure out and couldn’t find online, he asked Mr. Reed about it, and took the chance to connect a bit.

Mr. Reed was Professor Brooks’s old college classmate. Grace Brooks had met him once when he was very young.

Both of them studied history at Yujing University, one of the best universities in Yiguo, and, given the country’s cultural status internationally, also one of the best in the world. Later, Professor Brooks followed his major and returned to his hometown Yuanzhou, and is now a history professor at Yuanzhou University, also one of the most famous historians in the country. James Reed, on the other hand, stayed at Yujing University to teach, but his teaching focus wasn’t in the history department, but in the ancient cultivation department.

Grace Brooks planned to apply to Yujing University and wanted to major in the Principles of Spellcraft. By then, James Reed would likely be his teacher.

“Feeling good!”

After a short break, Grace Brooks’s phone alarm went off, and he quickly sat cross-legged on the bed.

Now was his daily cultivation time.

In this world, cultivators were divided into nine levels.

This wasn’t an artificial division, but a very natural one—

Before stepping onto the path of cultivation, one needed a long period to get familiar with and master spiritual power. Once prepared, they could attempt to open up their spiritual sea. Only after successfully opening the spiritual sea could one be considered a true cultivator.

But after the spiritual sea was opened, its capacity wouldn’t increase linearly with cultivation, so cultivators would hit bottlenecks as they progressed and would have to expand their spiritual sea again.

This was a difficult process.

Each time it was expanded, the spiritual sea would grow.

And when the expansion succeeded, one would hear a sound like clashing metal, so the limitation of the spiritual sea was also called the spiritual sea lock.