Following yesterday’s conversation, I decide to really put my Techniques to the test, understanding now is a good time to see how long I can cycle through and use all my Techniques for as long as possible before I am out of Qi. Like normal, I am blazing through all of my study material, but this time I am using [Split Focus], [Perfect Memory], and [Cultural Translation] simultaneously. On one of my three “screens” I have a scroll on their Confucianism style teachings on how a citizen of the Empire should act, on the middle “screen” I have one of the last books I need a refresher on, while the last piece of my focus is on an encyclopedia of the most common spirit beasts in the Empire. I am updating [Cultural Translation] and [Split Focus] every time the Techniques runs out time, while also ensuring [Perfect Memory] doesn’t inactivate by quizzing myself slowly throughout the readings on everything I have read over the past week.

All this Technique training starts paying dividends, as I open a fourth “fuzzy screen” for [Split Focus] allowing me to focus on four things, albeit in the more mundane “multitasking” sense. Despite the gains, it is still a tiring and Qi expensive endeavor, requiring me to take a few minutes to rest every other hour to rest my brain while deactivating a Technique, usually [Cultural Translation], for about 15 minutes, to get my Qi feeling “fullish” again before going back to the grind. After a while, I begin to get a feel for the amount of Qi a Technique uses, noting that the only reason I could keep this pace was that it seemed all my Techniques are very Qi efficient and require very little actual Qi, which made sense when I thought about a Scholar would likely be using all their Techniques much more often than other Paths, as well as the recent cultivation increases bumping up my Qi levels a bit.

Half the day goes by before I stop for a longer break, using this as a good stop for lunch, eating some delicious Qi infused salmon and rice, which was rare for the village. I mean it is a coastal village, so fish wasn’t rare, but it is still just a relatively low rank village, so Qi infused foods was not common for anyone but Clan leadership, and even then, only Lady Zhou had anything with substantial amounts of Qi. After that refreshing meal, a second wind occurs for me, and with the refresher material done, I decide to devote some time to actual writing. I stop the spirit beast reading for a bit to work on becoming ambidextrous, because while I could write English with my left hand, it would not be up to par with this world’s Chinese. While reading more Confucian philosophy and way of governing, I used my left hand to translate that text, since I already got a mental translation, it was more for comparison than true recording, while my right hand wrote down hundreds of questions I could use to test myself between now and the true Zucai test.

Hour after hour passes, once I get 200 questions down, I switch back to the spirit beast encyclopedia, but still translating with my left hand. If I was back on Earth, people would be horrified of what I was doing, the sheer amount of paper I was using in these writing pursuits would have given an environmentalist nightmares. I was intentionally writing a bit bigger so I could more easily see my mistakes, making the paper mountain forming off the side of my desk grow faster than normal. By the time nighttime arrived, even I was feeling a bit guilty about the paper, but luckily I made decent progress, with my writing reaching what I called “legible”, as I could read them, even if they weren’t really up to “Clan standards”. When I went to dispose of the paper before it became truly dark, I am pretty sure the servant briefly had a disgusted look on their face, and I definitely felt a pitying gaze from the shadows along with an implied “tsk tsk” that I swore sounded like Lady Zhou.

I was a little disappointed when I got no rank up from that day long struggle, and especially no [Ambidextrous] notification when I woke up, but even I couldn’t get lucky from just one night of moderate struggle. I continue with the same strategy for another day, with the morning focused on dual writing, and the afternoon focused on finishing up the last of my reading material.

I was a bit proud of myself today, I went through about half the paper that I went through yesterday. My writing improved once more, as I could now at normal size characters and be legible, even if a bit slower than I preferred. On the downside, my hand was hurting by the end of the day, with Qi not even being able to completely stop it after a full day of meticulous writing. Deciding tonight would not be a good idea for chopsticks, I devour some steam meat buns for dinner. Those steamed buns hit differently that night, as they gave me my first real dose of homesickness since I arrived in this world. The meat buns was one of my Mom’s favorite dishes to make when she had extra time to cook, so they always felt special back home. The rest of the night passed in a sort of lethargic haze. After sitting in bed for over an hour, I finally managed to fall into a dreamless sleep, with the only notable thing occurring was a rank up in my Path.

[Path of Knowledge Rank 8]

The final day before my mock Zucai exam passed by in a blur. I finished the remainder of my readings fairly early in the day, so I spent the majority of the day “dual wield” writing, getting more practice questions down with both hands throughout the day. While I stopped keeping count, I definitely passed 500 questions, probably covering every possible subject that I could be quizzed on. Despite the day passing in a blur, I did not fail to notice that my handwriting with my left hand became sufficiently acceptable. It also helped that my right handwriting in Chinese had also improved over the past few days, going from acceptable, but slow, to speedy and elegant. By the end of the day, I was proud with my achievements thus far, deciding to have an early dinner of duck soup. I spent the last couple of hours leisurely reading through the spirit beast encyclopedia. I took a warm bath before bed, almost falling asleep in all the relaxation that I briefly nodded off. Taking this as a hint, I went to bed early, with my notifications congratulating me.

[Path of Knowledge Rank 9]

[Technique: Ambidextrous obtained]