I’m Going to Take the College Entrance Exam

For the first time, the ashes in the incense burner at the Quiet Dust Temple had piled up into a small mountain.

Chen Shian crouched before the mourning basin, stirring the embers with the copper bell his master had loved most, wielding it with the practiced ease of someone turning over yesterday’s rice. He had assisted his master in countless funerary rites, yet never imagined that the first transcendence ceremony of his eighteenth year would be for his master himself.

Among all Chen Shian’s skills, he was most adept at conducting these rites. No wonder his master had so often taught him, and now, arranged for him to perform this final one.

A youth of eighteen, clad in a robe washed pale with age, the cuffs smudged with soot from burning paper money, looked at the throng crowding the hall. Suddenly, he felt his master’s departure was most unfair—running the temple like a branch of the Beggars’ Sect, debts stretching from the peak down to the foot of the mountain, and even at his last breath, leaving his apprentice a hefty "gift."

Indeed, his master had devoted years to cultivation, severing ties with worldly friends and kin; today, those who came to mourn were not relatives, but creditors... The old man had predicted the hour of his passing, and called these people the night before!

[Shian, the debts our master-disciple pair owes must be repaid. A man without trust cannot stand; so it is in life, and more so in cultivation. I did not avoid repayment, merely delayed it, but it must be settled. I leave this matter to you—]

[Ma