Chapter 19

The students arrived one after another.

 Daniel and his daughter arrived the earliest, followed by Gus and Montserrat.

 Du Mingna now only had these four fixed students, and once they all arrived, Du Mingna turned the hourglass over and began timing.

 Last night, Daniel, who had studied the characters in advance, was the first to take the exam, and he also let the others recognize the characters that Daniel had already studied.

 Du Mingna also took out the writing board.

 He only had one map that could be used for teaching, suitable for two people to look at together.

 If more people gathered around, someone would definitely not be able to see clearly.

 It was better to let two people recognize characters from the map booklet, and then let two people learn to write characters on the side with the writing board.

 Time was limited, and Du Mingna hadn't had time to prepare the character recognition boards.

 However, with the help of the villagers today, Du Mingna had already made more than a dozen character recognition boards, and he used two of them to write many characters on them.

 There were place names like Gray Rock Country, Gray Rope Village, and so on.

 There were also names of people, including the names of the four fixed students, as well as Du Mingna and Old John's names.

 Old John became the assistant.

 While Du Mingna was busy teaching students to recognize characters from the map booklet, Old John helped teach the students who were still practicing writing characters with the writing board.

 The words written on the writing boards prepared by Du Mingna before were all individual words that the students were already quite familiar with, so the students could actually remember the meanings of the words relatively easily.

 Only after writing a word many times and then looking at the next word, were they not quite sure how to read that word, and that's when Old John needed to remind them a little.

 Two hours quickly passed.

 Daniel and the other three adults were still in good spirits.

 Dora spent the day studying how to make writing boards with Du Mingna, and she had already expended a lot of energy.

 After another two hours of intense study, Dora was almost too tired to walk after getting up from her chair.

 Daniel picked up Dora and took her home.

 Gus and Montserrat went to work overtime first.

 Du Mingna and Old John quickly tidied up the things in the room and prepared to rest.

 That night, Du Mingna didn't rush to lie down and sleep.

 He sat cross-legged on the bed, ready for meditation.

 He first focused his attention on his brow, trying to "see" what was inside his brow.

 According to the world's cultivation experience, the spiritual sea was in the brow.

 This was not a secret.

 But those who could see their spiritual sea internally were few.

 Almost all those who could do this became magicians.

 The original body was the exception.

 He could see his spiritual sea internally and had an affinity for elements, but he couldn't condense the elements into a core within his body.

 Soon, Du Mingna felt a slight throb in his brow.

 His body was still sitting upright on the bed, without any substantial movement.

 But he felt as if he had just pushed open an extremely heavy door.

 The door also had a unique elasticity that would bounce back the force of pushing it.

 The door was finally pushed open.

 Du Mingna felt his spiritual power enter a dark but extremely safe and comfortable space.

 He instantly understood.

 This was the spiritual sea.

 It was his first personal experience of internally viewing the spiritual sea, and Du Mingna was excited.

 His emotional changes were not significant, but enough to disrupt his previous state of peaceful cultivation.

 He continued to focus his attention on his brow, but he didn't have any special feelings.

 A sense of loss washed over him.

 Du Mingna tried several more times but still couldn't smoothly view his spiritual sea internally.

 He reluctantly opened his eyes.

 The window of the stone room was open.

 The small, high window looked no different from the adjacent stone wall, both dark.

 This night was without light.

 Du Mingna stared into the darkness for a while, letting his emotions calm down.

 He closed his eyes again to meditate.

 Even if he couldn't awaken smoothly, he couldn't attract any elemental light spots to condense into a core in his spiritual sea.

 Just maintaining the state of internal spiritual sea vision could make his spiritual power recover quickly, and even his body could benefit to a certain extent.

 Internal spiritual sea vision is comparable to deep sleep, and even more effective than deep sleep.

 However, deep sleep can make people sleep deeply and not easily disturbed.

 Internal spiritual sea vision, on the other hand, is easily disturbed.

 Slight emotional fluctuations or uncontrollable thoughts could cause a sudden exit from the internal vision state, and it might be difficult to re-enter that state for a long time.

 This is also an important reason why low-level magicians find it difficult to improve their strength.

 To attract elemental light spots into the body, one must maintain the state of internal spiritual sea vision, and even divide attention while maintaining the state to perceive the elemental light spots outside the body.

 Once this state cannot be maintained, cultivation becomes impossible.

 The more one focuses on cultivation, the more likely they are to be troubled by thoughts of cultivation and unable to re-enter the state.

 On the other hand, cultivating without intention also prevents entering the state.

 Advanced magicians have more experience in meditation and know how to dissipate thoughts in order to maintain internal spiritual sea vision for a long time and absorb more elements.

 Du Mingna knew that the original body had more meditation experience, but the original body had not meditated for a long time.

 His first meditation tonight, being able to smoothly have internal spiritual sea vision, was a gratifying achievement.

 He did not have more expectations.

 This kind of mentality actually helped him, allowing him to unknowingly feel that he had broken through a thick and sticky barrier and entered a dark but safe space.

 Du Mingna did not know how long he had stayed in this state.

 He suddenly woke up and found that it was still dark in front of him.

 He gently exhaled and lay down.

 His intuition told him that it was enough, even if he meditated again, he could not enter the internal vision state, so he might as well have a good sleep.

 Magicians have always emphasized a balance between work and rest.

 Although he was not yet considered an official magician, he still needed to pay attention to proper rest.

 However, meditation brought excellent results to Du Mingna.

 He woke up early.

 The sky was not even bright yet, and he saw darkness through the window, but he felt refreshed.

 After hesitating for a moment, he sat back on the bed in a meditative posture.

 This time, he wanted to try to sense the elemental light spots.

 According to the world's classification, elements can be divided into the five basic elements of earth, water, fire, wind, and wood, which are elements that all magicians can perceive.

 In addition, there are countless special elements such as thunder, lightning, light, darkness, life, and death.

 Only magicians with corresponding elemental affinities can perceive these special elements.

 Du Mingna used his spiritual power to sense the world around him.

 Soon, he noticed the most obvious element around him.

 He perceived darkness all around him, and that element was also darkness, but he felt that the element was like a firefly in the dark night, emitting a bright and soft light.

 This feeling was particularly strange.

 Without a doubt, this was the element of darkness.

 It was nighttime now, and the power of the dark element was stronger than other elements.

 In the black light of the dark element, other light spots gradually lit up.

 Du Mingna felt surrounded by countless elemental light spots.

 With a thought, elemental light spots penetrated his body and entered his forehead.

 The elemental light spots smoothly entered his spiritual sea.

 Immediately, Du Mingna encountered the same problem as the original body had before.

 The elemental light spots that entered his spiritual sea were restless, all swirling around inside his spiritual sea.

 His elemental affinity was very high, but the original body had not undergone higher-level testing, so he did not know to what extent it had increased.

 He could command the elements to a certain extent.

 But when those elements received his command, they were willing to gather at the position he specified in his spiritual sea.

 When his spiritual power slightly did not notice those elements, the elements kept their distance from each other again.

 Du Mingna was busy running around, and his spiritual power, which was already at full value, was consumed by almost half, but still without any effect.

 He now understands why the original body gradually gave up cultivation and just wanted to let nature take its course.

 The original body was young and spoiled, and there was someone who seduced the original body by his side before.

 The original body never saw the results of cultivation from beginning to end, and mistakenly thought that it would be fine when he grew up, so the original body naturally refused to work hard.

 Even Du Mingna is now thinking about restoring his spiritual power first.

 He gave up controlling the elements, focused on introspecting his spiritual sea, let his spirit sink in the spiritual sea, and achieved the best recovery.

 By the time his spiritual power was fully restored, it was just getting light outside.

 Most of the villagers in Huisheng Village have the habit of going to bed and getting up early.

 Even if someone didn't go to bed early, they would generally get up early.

 Light is a valuable commodity, not everyone has the conditions to illuminate the night.

 Sunlight is a precious resource, and everyone wants to make full use of it for work.

 The weather is relatively comfortable now, but if it's midsummer, it's even more important to get up early and work late.

 After all, it's not suitable to work in the middle of the day, and the coolness of early morning and evening is particularly rare.

 Du Mingna has not been here for long, but has quickly adapted to the rhythm of life here.

 He had breakfast with Old John and then started looking for wooden boards.

 Today, he should prepare to carve the literacy boards.

 He also needs to prepare wooden boards for woodblock printing.

 After finding the wooden boards, Du Mingna asked Old John to help him collect various grasses and tree bark nearby.

 He also needed to find suitable papermaking materials.

 Old John didn't understand why Du Mingna needed these things, but he faithfully carried out Du Mingna's orders.

 Du Mingna already had some reputation in the village, and his relationship with some villagers had also become good.

 Old John no longer needed to worry that when he was not with Du Mingna, Du Mingna would conflict with the villagers.

 He could rest assured to do other things.

 When Du Mingna carved numbers from one to ten on a wooden board and then carved counting units like hundred, thousand, and ten thousand, preparing to carve words like months, he heard a crisp shout coming from the door.

 "Teacher!" Dora, who habitually held a grass doll, walked in.

 Her eyes were bright and full of curiosity.

 "I met Old John on my way here.

 I heard him say that he needs to cut many different kinds of grass and tree bark.

 Teacher, what do you need these for?"