When Lu Mingyuan met Elder Cui's disappointed gaze, he didn't flinch.
As Lu Xun once said, medicine couldn't save China.
In this extraordinary world, teaching couldn't save the people, either.
And even if it could, it would only save a handful, a few dozen, perhaps a few thousand at most. Compared to the billions of people in the world, that was hardly anything.
So Lu Mingyuan had no regrets about his choice.
Still, he didn't explain any of this to Elder Cui.
Elder Cui, of course, had no idea what his student aspired to do. But when he saw the bright look in the young man's eyes, he didn't keep scolding him. Instead, he continued explaining the matter they'd been discussing.
"Actually, some academies once hired only teachers who had embarked on the 'Path of the Teacher.' But they're all gone now. Do you know why?"
"They're all gone? Did they all decline?"
"Yes and no. Some fell into ruin completely, while others chose to change and stopped clinging to the 'Path of the Teacher.'
"Take the renowned Songshan Academy. It originally hired only teachers with ideals and convictions.
"But in the end, it suddenly changed its ways. Do you know why?"
Lu Mingyuan had heard of Songshan Academy, though he didn't know what it had been like in its early days.
As for now, it was one of the few comprehensive advanced academies in Great Gan.
Academies in this world were much like universities in his previous life: some were comprehensive, while others specialized in one field.
A comprehensive academy covered the Confucian, Daoist, Buddhist, Agricultural, Medical, Mohist, and Mathematical schools, along with the other hundred schools of thought. It embraced everything and excluded nothing.
Specialized academies, as the name suggested, focused on a single school, such as an