Over a month, Qin Ruqing successfully graduated from the “small class” to the “Regular class.”

During this month, she diligently worked on improving her third aunt’s favorability and smoothing the relationship between her third aunt and her mother.

This effort earned her ten more points.

Speaking of the system’s stinginess, despite her hard work in boosting family unity, the system didn’t always reward her.

Typically, it only gave her points once for every three attempts, and only one point at a time!

Qin Ruqing felt very tired of this: “So exhausting.”

Moving from the small class to the regular class didn’t make much difference to Qin Ruqing, except that there were more classmates and the lessons were more advanced.

Incidentally, joining the big class meant she had to “choose a major.”

Yes, choose a major.

The Qin family was a well-established family with a focus on alchemy, but their approach to family education was quite progressive.

They followed the principle of prioritizing alchemy while developing other fields as well.

The family school offered tailored education, recommending majors based on students’ strengths.

If you had fire and wood spiritual roots, you were naturally suited for alchemy.

Since the Qin family was an alchemy family, it was the obvious choice.

If you had a metal affinity, you could go into artifact forging, which was a high-paying, secure profession (thumbs up).

Additionally, the Qin family had specialized instructors for popular but costly paths like sword cultivation, niche but useful fields like array and talisman crafting.

Even if you were uniquely talented and suited for the less common path of body cultivation, the Qin family had you covered.

Although no family members practiced body cultivation, they could provide a free manual for self-study.

In short, the Qin family was very open-minded when it came to choosing majors.

Qin Ruqing had once secretly calculated out of boredom that about half of the twenty or so students in the family school were alchemists.

This high proportion was impressive!

This wasn’t due to any deliberate guidance from the Qin family, but rather a matter of inheritance.

With half of the Qin family’s children possessing fire and wood spiritual roots, pursuing alchemy was almost inevitable.

As for Qin Ruqing, with her heavenly fire spiritual root, she initially thought she couldn’t become an alchemist.

However, the Grand Elder told her, “Although you don’t have a wood spiritual root, you have wood energy in your body and exceptional talent for alchemy.”

Here, the requirements for becoming an alchemist come into play.

Becoming an alchemist isn’t particularly difficult.

The key requirement is having fire and wood attributes in your spiritual roots: fire for controlling flames and wood for nurturing pills.

Both are indispensable.

Of course, there are always exceptions. Some people naturally fall outside the normal range, like Qin Ruqing.

She had a heavenly fire spiritual root, lacking wood, which normally disqualified her from alchemy.

However, she had a special physique.

Although the exact type of her special physique was unknown, it was related to wood.

Her blood contained wood energy, completing the fire and wood attributes needed for alchemy.

After discussing with her parents, Qin Ruqing honorably became a prospective alchemist.

The “prospective” part was because she hadn’t yet initiated qi into her body.

In her daily classes, aside from studying the most basic cultivation techniques, human acupuncture points, and meridians, she also had to memorize alchemical formulas and herbs—

So numerous and complex that they were no less difficult than English words and chemical equations from her previous life.

This both delighted and pained Qin Ruqing.

Another day after class.

Today’s class was taught by the Grand Elder and focused on sparring.

Typically, the Grand Elder would teach sword techniques or spells for the first half, then let everyone spar with each other for the remaining time.

Sometimes, the Grand Elder would also bring in some low-grade young demon beasts for the students to practice on.

This world was far from peaceful, and the Qin family in the Nanling County often faced threats from demon beasts and demonic beings.

Raising children who only knew how to perform flashy moves was a waste of resources and of no use to the family, so the Qin family didn’t hesitate to let the children experience bloodshed.

However, this class didn’t involve Qin Ruqing much.

Since she was still in the nurturing phase with weak meridians, she only needed to observe the sparring sessions.

At that moment, she and Qin Qirong stood on the edge of the training field, watching others spar.

Suddenly, a servant hurried over and whispered something to the Grand Elder, who then stood up and told the students, “Continue sparring among yourselves.”

He then left the training field, presumably to handle some matter.

With the Grand Elder gone, the students visibly relaxed and began to talk more freely, but none dared to slack off.

Qin Ruqing was watching her older brother, Qin Ruyu.

Her brother was talking to a cousin from a branch family, seemingly discussing their sparring match, and had already taken their stances.

But then, the cousin was suddenly bumped from behind, causing him to stumble forward and nearly fall.

The person who bumped into him initially pretended to apologize, “Oh, sorry, didn’t see you there.”

Then, he looked him up and down and mocked, “Your stance is so weak. I barely touched you and you’re already falling over?”

Bumping into someone was one thing, but following up with taunts was clearly an act of provocation.

Qin Ruqing frowned deeply.

She hadn’t been in the “Regular class” long enough to know everyone well, but she had a vague impression of this person.

He seemed to be associated with her second brother, Qin Luxuan, and was called Qin Moli—a henchman.

The thing was, conflicts among the seniors naturally influenced the juniors.

Moreover, the students, being young and hot-blooded, formed cliques, which was quite common.

Even Qin Ruqing, having just joined, knew that the school had two main factions:

One led by her older brother, known as the First House faction, and the other led by her second uncle’s son, Qin Luxuan, known as the Second House faction.

The rest of the students were scattered, and the newcomers like Qin Ruqing were too insignificant to mention.

Currently, it seemed that the Second House’s people were provoking her brother’s side.

How would her brother react?

Qin Ruyu first frowned but then relaxed his expression.

He let the cousin from the branch family step aside and said to Qin Moli, “If it was an accident, then let it be. Be more careful next time.”

The cousin from the branch family glanced at Qin Ruyu, hesitated, but eventually lowered his head and stepped back.

Qin Moli, emboldened by this, said smugly, “Young Master, I think he’s not worthy of sparring with you. How about you spar with me instead?”

Qin Ruqing was furious.

“Stand up. Who do you think you are? If he’s not worthy of sparring, what makes you think you are?” Qin Ruqing clenched her fists, shouting in her mind: “Brother, fight back, give him a good thrashing!”

But Qin Ruyu remained composed.

He merely gave the provocateur a cold look, which made him hesitate for a moment, then said, “No need. You can leave now, stop causing trouble.”

Qin Ruqing was frustrated.

“Brother, such a soft response won’t intimidate anyone. Now, he’ll just get bolder and push further.”

As expected, Qin Moli bowed slightly, appearing humble, but his demeanor was even more arrogant.

He pointed to the cousin and said, “Young Master, you’re afraid that after sparring with me, there’ll be no one else left to spar with you. So why not…”

“Why not let me spar with Brother?” a voice interrupted.

A pale, jade-like youth with narrow eyes stepped out from behind Qin Moli.

It was Qin Luxuan, the second uncle’s son.

“If I spar with Brother, and they spar with each other, the skill levels would match. Brother, what do you think?”