First update of the day: Chapter 1019!
Xu Kun hurriedly bowed to the Cypress Tree. "Hello, Tree Sage!"
"How does this secret realm trial work?"
"Hehe, you're being so polite now. Just don't hate me to the bone later!"
Huh?
Xu Kun was confused, but Tree Sage offered no further explanation. The branches of the Cypress Tree rustled several times, needles drifting down and assembling into books in midair!
"These ten books are the introductory readers you need to study during the first stage. There is no time limit. Once you have thoroughly mastered the knowledge in all ten books, I will test you on the first stage!"
"Huh? There's an exam too?" Xu Kun's eyes widened.
Tree Sage said solemnly, "Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous!"
"Once you enter Qufu Academy, you become a student. As a student, reading and learning are your foremost duties!"
"To see one spot and know the whole leopard is merely a superficial understanding!"
"To know it by heart and recite it backward with ease is to have mastered it thoroughly!"
"Only by drawing inferences from one instance, pondering repeatedly, grasping the subtle meaning and greater principle, and putting forth entirely new insights of your own can one be said to have truly entered the hall!"
Uh...
Xu Kun looked at the ten books laid out before him and suddenly felt that this secret realm trial would not be so simple after all!
According to Tree Sage, "seeing one spot and knowing the whole leopard" meant being fairly familiar with the knowledge in a book. When someone mentioned a famous saying, you could immediately identify which book it came from and roughly summarize the book's contents!
For example: "My son Wang Teng possesses the bearing of a great emperor."