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On the second day of the assessments, Chen Qing personally arrived at the Lyuzhou Academy’s site, attaching great importance to this assessment.

With the opening of the Dragon Palace drawing closer and the inevitable arrival of the 2.

0 version, after the recovery of the Spiritual Energy, Jiangnan must seize the opportunity to enter rapid development to catch up with the surging strength of the lurking demons and avoid becoming fragmented in natural disasters!

Chen Qing was well aware that what they would face in the future would only become more terrifying, so he wanted to stabilize the foundation as much as possible. The quality of the students from this academy would be a crucial part of the efforts to stabilize the divine nation in the future.

Each ancient profession appearing in the ancients was different.

The Dragon Palace focused on Array Masters and Rune Masters; there would be many more ancients opening up gradually in the 2.

0 version. As more complex professions emerged, individuals who could seize the opportunities had the potential to rise in power rapidly, almost enabling them to surpass the current top experts within a short time frame.

The professions of the Dragon Palace leaned towards construction, which fit perfectly with the divine nation Chen Qing wanted to establish. To ensure they kept pace with the version updates, an excellent reserve of talents was indispensable.

According to the data collected by Chen Ying, after the selection, over three thousand children from various Provincial Government Offices had participated in the assessments while the Capital City, Northern Aristocratic Families, and Northern Wasteland Families had sent over three hundred individuals.

Chen Qing planned to recruit a thousand individuals, which was the current limit that the academy could manage.

Cultivating outstanding 2.0 magicians required a vast amount of resources.

Although Jiangnan was developing rapidly, staying ahead of the version and training reserve magicians was still incredibly demanding—a thousand recruits were the limit!

Therefore, it was crucial to screen them carefully, trying not to overlook any child of exceptional aptitude. Good talents would be key to upgrading the divine nation in the future.

"Lord Chen has arrived?"

At the entrance, several masters were gathered together chatting. Seeing Chen Qing approaching, they quickly went up to greet him with respect.

Any master accepted into the Lyuzhou Academy was learned and open-minded, the kind of people who had long been oppressed and ostracized by the old-fashioned scholarly class. Now having become the leading scholars in Jiangnan, their lives had undergone a dramatic transformation.

They showed great respect to Chen Qing, who had granted them rebirth.

"Lord Chen is early today."

The person asking was Master Yang. Chen Qing looked at him with a warm smile, "Master Yang is quite early as well."

Among all the masters, Master Yang was the one who drew Chen Qing’s deepest concern. His identity remained a mystery, but more importantly, his memory seemed to be sealed, like a ticking time bomb. He wasn’t suitable for the academy, yet Chen Qing had not isolated him.

There were plenty of masters in the academy capable of teaching, and many could replace Master Yang. However, there was one thing to consider—if he truly was the once Mister Five Poison, Chen Qing wouldn’t dare let him roam free.

But this man couldn’t be killed either, because once Chen Qing thought of taking action, something hidden within the other party seemed to emerge, something Chen Qing couldn’t quite identify, but it made him hesitant to make a move for now.

"How is it going? Is the registration process smooth?" Chen Qing asked the group of masters.

"It’s quite smooth," said the masters, stroking their beards with a cheerful expression.

This year’s candidates were meticulously selected from across the seven states, the student body was exceptionally good. They had reviewed the examination papers from various places; many students had quite a bit of Spiritual Energy.

"It’s just that the balance among the branches for registration is somewhat off," one master couldn’t help but complain.

"Administrative officials from various Provincial Government Offices now heavily favor the students of the Mystic and Yellow Academies, and with most children with an aptitude for Art Calculation coming from merchant and artisan families, these people tend to be profit-driven, valuing immediate benefits.

This has resulted in the registration numbers for the Mystic and Yellow Academies being almost three times that of the Heavenly and Earth Institutes, especially the Heavenly Institute, which has less than two hundred registrants from Jiangnan, most of whom are offspring from Sorcerer Families with impure motives. .."

Chen Qing smiled upon hearing this. The magicians from the Mystic and Yellow Academies were closer to everyday life.

Whether it was Medical Practitioners who could cure all sorts of diseases or Feng Shui Sorcerers who could find auspicious land for farmers, or even the artisans from the Mystic Academy who could create a variety of profitable constructions, they were the most welcome by local administrative personnel, and the common people could benefit directly as well, naturally making them more popular.

As for the Heavenly Institute, Techniques like Array Mastery, always seemed out of reach for ordinary people, only being appreciated by a few Sorcerer Families who understood their value. As such, most of those who applied to the Heavenly Institute were from such families.

"That’s not necessarily a bad thing," Chen Qing commented with a smile. "The number of Array Masters that we need is actually quite small, and the children of Sorcerer Families generally have a higher aptitude for Meditation than ordinary children. As long as there’s no monopoly, there shouldn’t be a big problem. "

The others nodded slightly, but some raised doubts, "Lord, Rationalism is prevalent here in Jiangnan. Over this year, many local families have boosted their foundations in rational studies through good education, far surpassing the children from the Capital City and the Northern regions. In terms of competitiveness, they’re not even on the same level.

But then, reducing the difficulty of the assessments for children from outside families, would that not be somewhat unfair to the local children who have diligently studied? "

This matter has become the most contentious issue at present, causing a lot of dissatisfaction with this system among the local students, including many tutors as well.

Nowadays, many people come to Lyuzhou to study.

The majority of the candidates participating in the exam are the proud pupils of these tutors.

When they think of their own students staying up late and studying hard every night, only to potentially be sifted out by this unfair system, they feel quite disgusted.

After all, the pursuit of exams is fairness.

If even this is corrupted, what is the purpose of the academy’s education?

"This is naturally different..." Chen Qing explained with a smile, knowing full well that this policy would be questioned. Like Huazhong in his past life, there were significant inequalities in the college entrance examination regions across the country. In some matters, when weighing pros and cons, it’s really not possible to ensure absolute fairness.

Take, for example, this external recruitment exam.

To a certain extent, it is indeed unfair to local candidates because, due to time constraints, foreign candidates only need to take the basic magic test, whereas the content for local candidates is much more difficult and complex, at a level equivalent to the difference between primary school promotion exams and college entrance exams.

But there’s no helping it, he urgently needs to collect excellent family techniques.

Once the spiritual energy bursts forth, there will be too many applications for the various family techniques, and Lyuzhou Academy has almost no reserves in this area.

If they don’t start collecting early, when hidden demons eventually invade, many magicians will be born, and the cost of vying for techniques will be great!

"Although the exams are more difficult for local candidates, once they enter the academy, they don’t need to make up for any deficiencies in their theoretical foundation and can directly keep up with the curriculum.

Moreover, we do offer preferences for local examinees.

That is, once a student achieves excellent results, they can unconditionally choose a technique to inherit.

In contrast, foreign candidates must exchange their family techniques.

In this respect, they can’t compare, can they? "

"This..." Some tutors showed hesitation on their faces, it sounded like there indeed was preferential treatment, especially the ability to inherit a technique specialization without exchanging a family technique, which is extremely friendly to local ordinary students, and also a consideration shown by Jiangnan Academy to the local students.

"Moreover, this is just a temporary measure," Chen Qing added. "It is only due to the extremely tight schedule that we are making this exception this year. From next year, foreign candidates who wish to enter Jiangnan Academy must have a solid theoretical foundation just like the locals."

Upon hearing this, the faces of the other tutors improved slightly.

If it was just special treatment for one year, they could barely accept it.

These tutors were quite proud of themselves, confident in the students they have taught.

Even if outsiders were given a year’s head start, they were more confident in their own students.

Seeing that no one had any more objections, Chen Qing breathed a sigh of relief.

However, he wasn’t just giving them lip service.

By next year, the situation in various regions would be quite different from now.

Chaotic times would arise, and many people thought that this year would be Great Jin’s most turbulent year, but that’s not the case.

Compared with the chaos at the time of the spiritual energy burst, the current disorder was nothing at all!

By then, with a stable environment, Jiangnan would be even more attractive to outsiders. No matter how stringent the enrollment conditions proposed then, there would be people desperately trying to enroll.

After chatting with the tutors for a while, Chen Qing then proceeded to the preparation area for the academy’s assessment.

At this time, students from all over were already in battle formation, making preparations before the exam, each entering deep meditation, striving to be in the best mental state during the exam.

It goes without saying that, in terms of meditation, the descendants of aristocratic families with years of meditation training are far superior to ordinary citizens’ children.

However, meditation depends mainly on talent.

As long as the commoner’s children have this talent, they can quickly catch up.

But among the crowd, there were still some supermodels who were not so easily surpassed.

Chen Qing glanced over and saw that the ones with the best meditation aptitude were in a few places: one being the descendants of the nine high-ranking families from the Capital City, whose meditation accuracy was more than five times that of others, especially a few core disciples.

These individuals not only have excellent talent for inheriting techniques but also managed to bring their theoretical foundation to the level required for the assessment within a short month, truly living up to the reputation of carefully selected talents of their families.

Which is a completely different concept from the dud at Shen Yuan’s house.

In comparison, the descendants of the Northern Aristocratic Families were much poorer.

Some core descendants who occupied spaces had atrocious theoretical foundations and were likely to be eliminated.

However, Chen Qing was quite envious of their excellent inherited techniques and wondered how to guide them to stay in Jiangnan without causing resentment among other successful candidates.

The group from the Northern Wolf Country was very impressive, especially Murong Bingyun.

If Chen Qing wasn’t mistaken, his inheritance was likely the Ice Wolf Demon Brahma of the Northern Wolf Country, which was a key factor for some monster planning to descend to this side.

In his view, this was even more valuable than Murong Yunji’s Gale Sorcery.

On the side of the commoner’s children, the most outstanding was Yuke Ke who had the Spirit Eye talent.

With her Spirit Eye, she not only had an outstanding Art Calculation talent but also a far superior meditation efficiency compared to her peers, almost on par with the descendants of the nine high-ranking families.

Although far behind in precision, given some time, she still has the ability to catch up with those prodigies.

All in all, it could be said that there was an abundance of talent.

But it was not very stable...

The children entrusted with the interests of their families were intrinsically less innocent than those of the commoners, and it was inevitable that a class hierarchy would form, and they might even view each other with hostility.

How to adjust in this respect in the future is also a great question. ..

In his past life, Chen Qing was merely a high-ranking corporate executive; to ask him to handle such extensive class conflicts, truthfully, was quite difficult. If he had that kind of capability, he would have become the Penguin Vice-President long ago...

Sigh, if only Wang Ye were here, that fellow’s political talent was far richer than his own. Speaking of which... where exactly had that fellow gone?