The List

"It's out?" Fang Yu spotted the pinned post at a glance—"New Calendar 60: Public Notice of the First Batch Junior-College-to-Undergraduate Upgrade Recommendation List"—and his spirits surged. He clicked it open at once. The list wasn't long. Only ten names. Wuling Martial Junior College enrolled five thousand students per cohort, and each year the Upgrade quota was fifty in total, twenty of them recommendation quotas, with the recommendation list split into two batches. Ten people per batch. "Not me?" Fang Yu's eyes dimmed slightly, and then he was back to normal. "That's right." "The first recommendation list was decided on the third-year end-of-term assessment results from the end of June." Fang Yu thought it over. "By Life Level, my overall ranking is only a hundred-something." "But my martial technique score puts me in the top ten." "By age, I'm on the younger side for this cohort." "All told, I should be in the top fifty." Fang Yu said to himself. "My chances of being picked were slim to begin with, and on top of that I still haven't awakened a Void Star Aspect, so the odds of being chosen in the first batch were very, very low." The Upgrade quota. First they looked at every student's Life Level and martial technique score—neither of those could be faked—then at the tier of their Void Star Aspect, which represented a kind of future potential. Last, age counted as a reference point. For instance, between two martial junior college students with similar scores, the younger one naturally had the advantage... For a young martial artist in the Golden Age Bracket, even an extra half year of training made a clear difference. So not being on the first recommendation list was exactly what Fang Yu had expected. Only... Human nature being what it is, even when you know the outcome, so long as nothing is truly settled, you still cling to a sliver of hope... Fang Yu was no exception, but he had his feelings in order in an instant. "Still." "If there's another assessment to pick the list, my chances will be much better." Fang Yu was calm. Ten days ago his martial technique had broken through to Great Accomplishment of Entering the Minute. Great Accomplishment of Entering the Minute was not rare among Martial Undergraduate students. After all, more than half of the Void Star Aspects awakened by Martial Undergraduate students were mid-grade. Few had low-grade ones. The power of the Void Star Aspect made their star-force tempering of the body highly efficient, and with more training resources on top of that, by the end of third year their Life Level was basically level 16 and climbing, with the strong ones reaching level 20 or even higher. A powerful body nourishes a stronger spirit. It becomes easier to sense and perceive the body's bones, tendons, and muscle bundles—and they had better martial arts teachers to guide them besides. For all these reasons, their martial technique naturally improved quickly. Life Level and martial technique—the two reinforced each other. But junior college students were different. Ninety-nine out of a hundred Void Star Aspects awakened by martial junior college students were low-grade... their star aspect tier was low and their training resources fewer; among third-year Martial Junior College students, few even reached Life Level 14. Add to that worse teachers. And junior college students were generally less willing to work hard, so their martial technique was generally poor. "The gap between an outstanding undergraduate student and a low-grade junior college student is bigger than the gap between a man and a dog." Fang Yu said to himself. Only by being in a Martial Junior College did one learn just how bad junior college students could be. Were junior college students worse than undergraduate students only in Void Star Aspect? No! In Fang Yu's view, the Void Star Aspect was actually the smallest of the differences between them... A student who awakened a low-grade star aspect but had decent talent for technique and worked hard enough would have stood out during three years of high school; they'd never have sunk to junior college. The truly outstanding junior college students were usually people like Fang Yu... with good talent for martial technique, who simply hadn't awakened a Void Star Aspect before the College Entrance Exam. "As for hard work." "As for dedication, I'd say I'm no worse than those undergraduate students. What I lack is a chance." Fang Yu mused. "Didn't awaken a Void Star Aspect? Great Accomplishment of Entering the Minute gives me good hope of making up for that." Before the breakthrough, Fang Yu's martial technique score was already top ten... After it, he reckoned that across the whole of Wuling Martial Junior College, he had a shot at competing for first place in martial technique. After all, the fourth-years had already graduated. "The first recommendation list—I didn't make it." "A month from now, on August 15th, before the fourth-years formally begin the school year, there will be another assessment." Fang Yu drew a deep breath. "That will decide the second recommendation list." "If I miss that one too, the last list won't come until the September practical selection... A month's delay means a month less spent as an undergraduate, and that affects your training progress." For years now, the High School Entrance Exam, the College Entrance Exam, the second-year selection assessment, and now this Upgrade—all of it had long since taught Fang Yu one truth: a person's margin for error in life may be infinite, but that refers to the bottom. A junior college student could live very happily too. But if you wanted to climb to the peak of martial arts, the truly good opportunities were few. "The good chances left to me are getting fewer and fewer." "All I can do is give it everything." ... He closed the laptop. Grandpa was still in the recliner reading a magazine, so Fang Yu soon went down to the basement. The basement of a normal detached villa had two levels, usually a card room, a home theater, a storage room, a wine cabinet, and the like. But Fang Yu's basement had only one level, eight meters high and 150 square meters in floor area. Apart from a row of freezers, there were weapon racks, wooden dummies, a punch-force tester, a vital energy detector, a technique imaging analyzer, and plenty of other equipment and instruments. It was unmistakably a small indoor martial arts room. "Dad really did put his heart into it," Fang Yu said to himself. This indoor martial arts room was likewise something Fang Ping'an had sacrificed a great deal of ordinary home comfort to build, so that Fang Yu and his younger brother and sister could train in the martial arts... Most fathers couldn't have done that. Granted, since starting school he spent less and less time at home. But every time he came to the basement training room, Fang Yu remembered how, back in middle school, his father—busy with business as he was—would still insist on sparring with him and helping him practice his saber technique. After all, hiring a martial artist as a sparring partner cost far too much money. "Hah!" He opened the freezer. Fang Yu took out the box on the top layer: a crystal box with a red base and white lettering, an abstract silhouette of some exotic beast printed on the front, and in the upper right corner the fiery red logo of Star Radiance Group. The box felt stiff and sturdy in the hand, coated in a matte film. Vital Energy Compound. "Small-group goods do look a grade lower than what the Eight Great Groups put out," Fang Yu said to himself. "But they're cheap, and that's what counts."