Single-Handedly Lowering the Enrollment Rate

This year's incoming class set a new record low for enrollment numbers.

Proportionally, the average strength of this year's new students also hit a record high.

Don't misunderstand.

Lu Yuan and Qing Yan Jing were not yet capable of raising the average strength of several thousand people by themselves. The reason these thousands of new students were so strong was because the slightly weaker candidates had all been eliminated.

In previous years, those people would have muddled through.

That was, they would have successfully enrolled by clinging to someone stronger.

But in this exam, led primarily by Lu Yuan and Qing Yan Jing, those unfortunate children first went through Lu Yuan's initial screening. Only candidates with genuine ability could survive and enter the Safe Zone. Even then, those capable candidates were terrified out of their wits by the pursuit. There was even less chance they could protect the freeloading lackeys who wanted to cling to them. Afterward, those candidates who had barely avoided elimination were forced to slaughter one another in the relatively cramped Safe Zone alongside other candidates who had also barely survived. They were all people with real talent. In any small place, each of them would have been a genius who monopolized glory. Thus, both the spectacle and brutality of their battles vastly surpassed the previous years, when geniuses earned admission by eliminating ordinary candidates and hunting spirit beasts—methods with little difficulty and far less competition.

It was like a group of ants and a group of venomous insects.

Let a group of ants devour one another.

You could obtain one venomous insect.

Let a group of venomous insects devour one another.

You could still obtain one venomous insect.

But could you say those two venomous insects were equally formidable?

Obviously not!

Perhaps the venomous insect obtained