The Days of Getting Ten Thousand Are Numbered

"2297 China College Entrance Examination Admissions Guide."

The guide in his hands was incredibly thick, practically as hefty as a Chinese-language textbook.

Yet when they opened to the first page, they found not a table of contents as expected, but a line of poetry.

Written in China's flowing calligraphic script, the mere sight of those fourteen characters sent a surge of hot blood rushing at them:

"Clad in bright robes, astride a furious horse in youth; cherish your golden years as you journey and learn."

"Putting a poem on the opening page is a tradition from past years, meant to admonish everyone to cherish their time. Teacher has told you more than once that, whether you take the Liberal Arts College Entrance Exam or the Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, the years before you graduate from university are your golden period for improvement..."

As Liu Simin rattled on, Shen Qian found himself thinking about something else.

He had read this poem before, yet he had never felt the impact he had just experienced. Judging from the expressions of his classmates, they had clearly been shaken as well.

The issue probably lay with the person who had written the poem.

Sure enough, there was an annotation in the lower right corner. The poem had been inscribed by Wu Wei, Minister of the Martial Arts Department.

Having broadened his horizons lately, Shen Qian guessed at something.

But wasn't this mass-printed? Could Mental Power really linger in it?

Still, questions like that were clearly a case of reaching too high, so Shen Qian did not dwell on it and continued reading.

The second page contained the actual table of contents. Shen Qian swept his eyes over it and saw roughly four sections. The first listed information on all Liberal Arts, martial arts, and vocational colleges nationwide participating in this year's admissions.

He skipped the vocational colleges outright. Though Shen Qian had never paid much attention to them, he knew their defining traits: high tuition, low entry requirements, and an easy target for discrimination...

Put plainly, if you attended some Civil and Martial Vocational College, you would very easily end up becoming a security guard after graduation.

Old Hu, the security guard at Xingfu Residential Area, looked exactly like a vocational college graduate.

As for purely liberal arts colleges... heh, were they still worthy of the current him?

Thus, Shen Qian flipped directly to the page introducing Martial Arts Colleges.

The page immediately looked far cleaner. Compared with the dense sea of liberal arts institutions, all of China had only 670 martial arts colleges openly recruiting students.

Some schools with special admissions processes were not included in that number.

Last year, fewer than four hundred thousand students nationwide had been admitted through the Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, spread among those 670 colleges.

"Teacher Liu, I have a question." A bespectacled boy raised his hand.

Shen Qian glanced at him. It was Dai Wen, an ordinary classmate... In Shen Qian's definition, an ordinary classmate was someone who was not outstanding in any aspect, but not particularly bad either.

"Go ahead." Liu Simin nodded.

"At least seven or eight million people take the Martial Arts College Entrance Exam every year, right?" Dai Wen said. "Isn't that acceptance rate far too low...? But I feel like there are actually quite a lot of martial artists in society."

There was nothing strange about the low acceptance rate. Everyone knew it was low. The key was the latter half of Dai Wen's statement.

Many students looked thoughtful. Indeed, without exaggeration, the minimum requirement for hiring security guards in many halfway decent residential areas these days was Beginner Martial Artists, yet the competition for the Martial Arts College Entrance Exam was so brutal.

Leaving aside the five-hundred-yuan registration fee, poor scholars and rich martial artists—that had been true since ancient times. Even if one got into a martial arts college, a year's tuition cost at least ten times that of studying liberal arts.

For a moment, many students with decent physical ability but average family circumstances felt somewhat lost.

If they could slowly advance to become martial artists without entering a martial arts college, then what was the point of the college entrance exam? What was the point of spending at least hundreds of thousands on tuition?

"You can tell none of you have properly studied social conditions." Zhang Liangwei, the class's liberal arts ace, could not help standing up. He spoke before Liu Simin could. "Yes, there are quite a few Rogue Martial Artists in society, but you've overlooked one issue..."

"Many Rogue Martial Artists only advance after they have been in society for a long time. Yet both martial arts theory and biology have taught us that the golden age for the human body to cultivate martial arts is before thirty!"

"In other words, if we have any aspirations in martial arts, then for ordinary families like ours, entering a martial arts college is the only choice!"

"Let me give everyone an example. You've probably all heard the rumor that once you advance to a Beginner Martial Artist, you can receive a subsidy issued by the Martial Arts Department."

"I know about that. You get ten thousand yuan every month, right?" Shen Qian's eyes lit up.

He remembered that it was precisely after seeing this claim online that he had first established his grand goal of becoming a martial artist.

"That's right, but this subsidy comes with restrictions. Only those who become Beginner Martial Artists before the age of twenty-two can receive it." Zhang Liangwei grinned.

"After eighteen, the subsidy decreases year by year. For example, Beginner Martial Artists under eighteen can receive ten thousand per month, but at nineteen they can only receive eight thousand, at twenty it's six thousand... all the way down to two thousand at twenty-two. Once you pass twenty-two, the subsidy is gone."

Liu Simin added, "There are many Rogue Martial Artists, but most of them are grassroots martial artists. Just like the Liberal Arts College Entrance Exam, the Martial Arts College Entrance Exam is the only chance for the vast majority of ordinary people to change their fate."

Many students in the class showed looks of realization, with Shen Qian's expression becoming the most resolute of all.

Ten thousand a month—that was a fortune... Fuck, System, why hadn't you appeared earlier?

Thinking about how he had only just turned seventeen, Shen Qian felt somewhat melancholy.

There were not many days left when he could receive ten thousand...

In short, Liu Simin's meaning was obvious: most Rogue Martial Artists had passed their golden age. They were trash used to make up the numbers.

The students who had registered for the Martial Arts College Entrance Exam thus rekindled their fighting spirit. They began excitedly discussing one martial arts college after another, comparing previous years' admission scores and secretly estimating how much hope they had.

Before long, everyone gathered in twos and threes. Wang Yangming came over as well, clutching his booklet with a troubled expression.

"Shen Qian, the more I look, the more hopeless I feel. My parents hope I can get into Southwest Martial University, but Southwest Martial University is a second-tier martial arts university. Last year, its minimum physical admission requirement was 127 kilograms of strength. That's way too hard..."

"Why don't you apply to our local Jingcheng Martial University with me? It was established recently, but they say Marquis Jingcheng is listed as its honorary principal, and its admission threshold is low. A strength score of 120 kilograms is a sure thing!"

Shen Qian said nothing, but Zhou Xu chimed in.

"But Jingcheng Martial University's tuition is too expensive. I heard it starts at a hundred thousand a year..."

Wang Yangming shook his head.

The two sighed and discussed it for a while, only to realize that Shen Qian had not paid them any attention. Instead, he was frowning deeply, tapping the desk as he stared at the admissions guide on it, as though he had encountered some difficult problem.

Zhou Xu leaned over curiously for a look, then gave a soft cry. "Shen Qian, why is your page different from ours?"

Wang Yangming was also startled. He craned his neck to look and found that it was indeed so. Shen Qian's page was even cleaner, because it contained information on only four universities.

"How the... Holy shit!"

"Northern Martial University? Hua Martial University? Suke Martial University? Shenwu University?"

Zhou Xu and Wang Yangming looked as though they had seen a ghost. No wonder Shen Qian's page had only four universities—it had listed the nation's very best ones separately!