Autumn, 303 of the Levant Era, Year 138 of the Intermission
Toriya had passed the national college entrance exam and enrolled at Lostic University.
Lostic University was completed in the sixth year of the Classical Era (44–240 of the Levant Era). In the royal capital of Luowenna, it was the oldest building still standing apart from Temple Mountain. At this university, textbooks were the most dispensable things in the classroom. Practice and the exploration of principles were its eternal themes. Even Soul Masters were not a profession here, but a subject of research for an interest group.
In the morning, professors rarely showed up. Students would stop by their classrooms just to mark themselves present, then head off to their various interest groups to work on their own projects. If a professor ran into a difficult problem, they would simply have an assistant write it on the blackboard. Interested students could work out a solution and submit it to the professor's office.
By afternoon, the whole university would be at its liveliest—and most prone to mischief—with explosions of every kind ringing across the campus. To protect these top students, selected from one in ten thousand, the kingdom's military had dispatched half a combined-arms brigade to be stationed at the university. Even the Dragon Clan Committee had sent Chiyang—the strongest Heavenly Sun Dragon—a genuine hundred-thousand-year-old member of the Dragon Race, to protect these little demolition geniuses.
At the end of each academic year, year-level advisors and military personnel would grade and evaluate the students' research, progress, and projects from the past six months in their various interest groups. Anyone who failed more than five times in ten years would be transferred to a technical college as a remedial student. But failing was only an issue for the idle types who treated