"Absolute fairness, absolute justice! Regardless of gender, age, strength, or infirmity, regardless of noble or humble birth, and regardless of cultivation level—as long as you are a template, you have a chance! Ascending and attaining the Dao depends solely on comprehension and sincerity, nothing else!
"What? You aren't even a template?! Then go stand to the side and reflect properly on whether you haven't been working hard enough!"
Inside the great hall, an official Qingming cultivator stood atop the rostrum, vigorously waving a copy of the *Exegesis of the Four Divisions* in his hand as he bellowed at the hundreds of cultivators seated below.
"As long as you can understand this scripture, write down your understanding of its tenets, and possess a devout heart, you may trigger a response from an official rank. At that point, you will become a candidate for that rank! Whether you can ascend to the heavens in a single leap depends entirely on you.
"Once you sense an official rank, channel the cultivation art you were taught to commune with it. The stronger your aspiration power, the more likely you are to win the rank's favor, and the further along your seniority ranking will advance in the future! If you truly manage to attain the rank, you can even wield the mighty divine abilities inherent to it. Even if you don't secure the seat, it doesn't matter; so long as you are a candidate, you will still be bestowed basic divine abilities, widening the gap between you and ordinary cultivators from that moment on!"
Spittle flew from the lecturer's mouth atop the rostrum. As a template below listened, however, he suddenly let out a cold laugh!
The cultivator on the rostrum instantly turned solemn, a faint blue magical glow flaring around him as he barked, "This is an examination hall! Why are you laughing?"
The template, dressed as a scholar, straightened his back and stood up, declaring in a ringing voice, "I have already examined the cultivation art. The entire text speaks of nothing but offering aspiration power upward and bestowing divine abilities downward. Yet these divine abilities are clearly formed from the aspiration power we surrender! This selection process appears just on the surface, but in reality, only a few hundred official ranks are open, while the candidates may number in the tens of thousands!
"Taking the aspiration power of tens of thousands of people only to bestow divine abilities upon a few hundred—this is plainly plucking a single hair from nine oxen to grant back to the masses! I refuse to be exploited like this!"
His words resonated powerfully, causing the expressions of many examinees to shift, yet no one voiced agreement.
The chief examiner sneered. "You refuse, do you? Fine, then I'll grant your wish! Men, fork this fellow out of here and toss him into the street!"
Two bailiffs stepped forward to drag him away. As the template scholar struggled, he shouted at the top of his lungs, "Exploiting cultivators like this—aren't you afraid of divine retribution?!"
The chief examiner spat and cursed, "Exploitation? You're nothing more than a mere template! There are at least a million like you across Qingming. Exploiting you? To put it bluntly, one more of you changes nothing, and one less makes no difference! If you aren't willing, plenty of others are! Did you think you were some noble high cultivator, some rare commodity? Even a Golden Core cultivator like me has to rise at dawn and return at dusk, working conscientiously every single day! One moment of slack, and another Golden Core would take my place!"
The chief examiner turned to face the entire hall of examinees. "What are you templates gawking at? To be frank, being exploited is where your value lies. If the day comes when you don't even have value worth exploiting, think about it: how will you earn a living? How will you feed your wives and children, and support your aging parents? Hmph! Were it not for Qingming, would such an opportunity for exploitation even fall to you? The great aristocratic clans would have divided it all among themselves long ago!
"Don't want to be exploited? That's simple enough—reach Scenery Command, and no one will exploit you!"
The great hall fell deathly silent; no one raised another objection. Everyone had come here to vie for an opportunity. In this trial implementation of fruition-based official ranks, Qingming was releasing a few hundred positions initially, with explicit promises that more would follow. Even if one failed to secure an office, becoming a candidate carried a rank of its own. Leaving aside remuneration and benefits, the mere bestowal of a few magical arts was something everyone scrambled to obtain.
A short while later, the chimes rang out, and the examination began.
One by one, the examinees began by writing on their test papers, explicating the scripture's tenets, before sitting cross-legged in meditation to sense the ranks with devout focus.
After a moment, a faint radiance suddenly rose from one person. Overcome with excitement, he nearly leapt to his feet. Gradually, glows began shimmering from the chests of others. By the end, out of the hundreds in the hall, fully half had elicited a response.
Similar examination halls existed across all of Qingming's cities, with the largest cities requiring dozens of test venues.
Within Qingming Immortal City, Wei Yuan sat at the center, monitoring every cultivator resonating with the Heaven of Joy and Bliss. As the examination progressed, the tally of those who successfully established resonance leaped rapidly, crossing one hundred thousand in the blink of an eye and surging toward two hundred thousand without pause.
The expansion speed of this new system completely exceeded all expectations. The enthusiasm with which the template Daoists responded far surpassed anything before. On the very first day, nearly three hundred thousand people took the examination. Once the seven-day period concluded, the vast majority of templates would likely participate.
*From the looks of it, a few hundred official ranks are far too few. I need to release the second and third batches ahead of schedule. Then the examinations for Golden Cores must be held as soon as possible—waiting three months is too late; next month will do! And Scenery Command needs to be arranged as well...* Wei Yuan mused.
Wei Yuan tapped lightly on the desk, his divine sense deliberating at high speed.
There were not many Scenery Command cultivators in Qingming—presently only a sparse few, such as Chuhe, Zhang Sheng, and Ji Liuli. In addition, Baoyun and Feng Tingyu were just one step away, currently refining their foundations to contest supremacy against Ji Liuli's Glazed World. Feng Chutang, Xu Henshui, and Wang Hu were also perfected, merely awaiting an opportune moment. Thus, in Wei Yuan's original plan, the newly established system of fruition-based official ranks extended only up to the dharma idol realm, excluding Scenery Command.
The primary reason was that the Dao foundation realm allowed shortcuts; at the lowest threshold, one didn't even need light and shadow, needing only to manifest a wisp of clear qi. The Golden Core realm could also be bypassed through shortcuts; the core itself possessed only a pitiable trace of spirituality, just barely skimming the edge of a dharma idol.
However, a mind-manifested world was entirely different. If nothing else, the single requirement that a mind-manifested world must possess complete spirituality and generate its own inherent nature was enough to bar ninety-nine point nine percent of cultivators under heaven. If one's comprehension, bone structure, or karmic luck fell short in the slightest, one could not even construct the embryonic form of a world, let alone worlds that possessed formidable innate divine abilities, such as the Glazed World or the Destination of Ten Thousand Swords.
Wei Yuan's vision of "everyone like a dragon" had only extended as far as the Golden Pellet dharma idol. At most, he had wondered whether something else could be mounted atop the Golden Core to extend everyone's Dao path just a bit further.
Yet the essay in Wei Yuan's hands changed everything. Its significance was so immense that Wei Yuan felt a heavy weight in his hands, making his wrists ache just holding it. Ever since the populace's intellect had been awakened, Wei Yuan had known that many bizarre and peculiar ideas would surface, but he had never imagined something like this would appear.
This essay came from an obscure template. The person was solitary by nature, had few friends, and had spent his time doing unremarkable research. Compounded by mediocre bone structure, his Dao path had been cut short in the early template stages, leaving him perpetually passed over for promotions and raises.
Yet who could have foreseen that he would be the one to produce this essay? It was subsequently selected by the Splendor of the Many Realms, verified by multiple cultivators without error, and delivered directly before Wei Yuan. This was the beauty of the Splendor of the Many Realms: cold, dispassionate, and absolutely fair. As long as it determined a work possessed monumental significance, it would present it to Wei Yuan, leaving no possibility of mid-level interception or stolen credit. The only drawback was that it took quite a toll on the Realm Lord.
Because the matter was so momentous, Wei Yuan had braced himself to read through it all and had even spent several days mastering new mathematical tools before finally verifying the essay's contents. It was viable.
Naturally, prior to that, Wei Yuan had already used eight million strands of mortal karmic luck to derive the conclusion, and the conclusion was sound.
Drawing inspiration from the Sea of Bitterness and the Heaven of Joy and Bliss, the essay proposed an earth-shattering concept:
A shared mind-manifested world.
Chapter 1263