Tianyi Academy was enormous—so enormous that Shen Sui was surprised such a vast campus could exist in land-scarce, exorbitantly priced Magic City.
As Shen Sui entered the school, he could not even see the end of the campus at a glance.
This was no longer merely a matter of financial resources. Tianyi Club clearly enjoyed considerable attention from Magic City's upper ranks.
Directly opposite the main entrance stood the academy's tallest building. Following the traditional layout of universities, it had to be the academy library. Beside the library was a bowl-shaped structure resembling a stadium. This was Tianyi Academy's duel arena.
"Tianyi Club is seriously rich." Upon seeing the duel arena, one examinee could not help sighing. "No wonder they're planning to challenge for the National Champion title this year. Even the academy's duel arena is more luxurious than the main venues in some first-tier cities."
"You're right. I looked it up before—the duel arena was built to the standards of a main venue in a first-tier city. I heard it'll be open to the public for tournaments."
The academy had a clear count of its examinees and distributed examination rooms throughout the campus to split up the crowd. Before long, the packed masses had been separated, and the academy immediately seemed much more spacious—spacious enough to spare.
Considering that different Soul Card Worlds might counter one another, the examiners were assigned at random, ensuring no student could blame bad luck.
Examination Room Three, Xu Tianzhi.
Shen Sui glanced at the examination room and examiner he had drawn, then curiously asked the volunteer beside him, "Excuse me, does this examiner have a good temper?"
"Wow, classmate, your luck is a little bad." The volunteer looked at the number in Shen Sui's hand and said sympathetically, "He's the highest-ranked examiner of them all. Xu Tianzhi is Fifth-Order and a very powerful player in the club."
"A Fifth-Order Soul Card Master." Shen Sui nodded, then asked again, "So, does he have a good temper?"
"Classmate, don't entertain such naive ideas." The volunteer grinned. "No matter how good his temper is, you'll still be ruthlessly eliminated if you perform poorly. No examiner will show favoritism."
"I understand all that. So, does he have a good temper?" Shen Sui asked again.
"Why are you so concerned about the examiner's temper?" The volunteer could not understand it, but after thinking it over, he answered Shen Sui's question anyway. "Senior Xu is the most popular person in the club, so of course he has a good temper. He's known as the Benevolent Gentleman of the Duel Arena."
"Oh, then if he loses a duel, he probably won't challenge his opponent to a real-life duel, right?" Shen Sui muttered while rubbing his chin.
Hearing Shen Sui's words, the volunteer could not help rolling his eyes. From the sound of it, this young man actually intended to defeat Xu Tianzhi in the Duel Exam.
Was that possible? It was impossible!
A Fifth-Order Soul Card Master—even if his deck had been cut down to twenty cards, his dueling experience and the foundation of his deck were more than enough to crush a rookie like this.
Once he heard that the examiner had a good temper, Shen Sui's final concern vanished. He nodded in satisfaction, asked for the location of Examination Room Three, and left with light steps.
Meanwhile, Tianyi Academy's dean, Liang Hui, was receiving reporters from Magic City TV Station.
Magic City Tianyi Academy was a project highly valued by Magic City's upper ranks. As one of Huaxia's most economically developed cities, Magic City had not produced a National Champion for several consecutive years.
Thus, with a stroke of the pen, several projects related to Soul Card Duels were launched, all aimed at turning Magic City into the nation's center for Soul Card Duels.
Tianyi Academy was the most important of these projects and the key to Magic City's development of Soul Card Duel talent.
Although the best students had all been taken by the established Duel Academies, if they carefully sifted through the remaining dregs, they could always find gold. That was also why Tianyi Academy did not restrict theoretical exam scores.
Some people dueled through talent and instinct. Their theoretical scores might be poor, but their dueling talent was certainly not. Those were precisely the people Tianyi Academy wanted to recruit.
[Hasn't this damn old man finished talking yet? Hurry up and show the exam rooms! I want to watch duels! I want to see blood flow!]
On the livestreaming site, viewers were already impatiently spamming bullet comments.
[Yeah, yeah, yeah! I want to see blood flow!]
"All right, Dean Liang." The reporter had not looked at the bullet comments, but he knew what the audience wanted to see. Smiling, he said, "This is a rare opportunity. Shall we take a look at the examination site? I'm sure the viewers in front of their screens are also eager to see the Duel Exam in action."
"Of course, of course." Liang Hui nodded repeatedly. He had prepared for this long ago and had specifically added Xu Tianzhi to the examiner roster. A Fifth-Order Soul Card Master would not embarrass them on a nationwide broadcast. "Then let's go to Examination Room Three."
"Examination Room Three?" The reporter had clearly done his homework in advance. "The room overseen by Fifth-Order Xu Tianzhi? Player Xu has been in the spotlight recently. At the ZeTian Cup, he drew the perfect card at the crucial moment and turned the tables against He Zhong, a seventh-tier player from Hangshi Nongquan Club, to claim the championship. I imagine he'll pass the Tier-up Tournament next year and advance to seventh tier, won't he?"
"Hahaha, he's preparing to advance to sixth tier. His deck still isn't strong enough for seventh tier, so recently he's been working hard to guide his Soul Card Followers." Liang Hui was not only the dean of Tianyi Academy, but also a manager of Tianyi Club, so he was very familiar with the condition of the club's players.
The group chatted and laughed as they arrived at Examination Room Three.
Examination Room Three was located in the teaching building of the Duel Academy. The air conditioning inside was cranked up high, and a faint chill met them as they entered the corridor.
Examinees waiting for their tests sat all along both sides of the hallway, and every one of them wore a trace of despair.
[Wow! Wow! They look so hopeless!]
[Hahaha, of course they're hopeless. Their Duel Exam examiner is a Fifth-Order Soul Card Master. Anyone would despair, wouldn't they?]
[Serves them right! A bunch of poor students who applied to Tianyi Academy because they couldn't score well on the theory exam. Do they really think a Duel Academy is some kind of shelter that takes in any trash?]
[Where's the duel? Hurry up and show the duel! I want to watch an expert crush noobs!]
The bullet comments continued discussing it as the camera moved forward.
The closer they came to the examination room, the heavier that aura of despair became. By the time they reached the door, faint sobbing could be heard through the camera.
It was the sound of an examinee who had just emerged from the room crying. Clearly, he had failed to win his Duel Exam.
Through the transparent floor-to-ceiling windows, the group could clearly see the duel taking place inside.
Xu Tianzhi looked refined and scholarly. He was very fair-skinned and wore rimless glasses, with a gentle smile always resting on his lips, giving people the feeling of a warm spring breeze.
However, his playstyle was completely at odds with his temperament. This Android Deck, originating from a sci-fi world of interstellar space, always brought suffocating pressure during duels. Once Xu Tianzhi found an opportunity to develop his board, even a seventh-tier Soul Card Master could not escape that suppression.
Inside the examination room, Xu Tianzhi's field was already filled with Life Cards: five Followers and five set cards. He had no intention of going easy, while his opponent, a pitiful examinee, had absolutely nothing on his field.
[Wow! So pitiful. He's practically a plaything.]
The viewers in the bullet comments gloated over his misfortune.
[Could you stop mocking him? They're all duelists with dreams, after all.]
[A duelist with dreams shouldn't have such terrible theory scores. Trash is trash. Stop making excuses for them.]
[Yeah, yeah, yeah! I heard plenty of people with single-digit theory scores shamelessly came here to take the Duel Exam. I have no idea who gave them the courage.]
[Look at his expression. He's about to have a mental breakdown.]
[Why do you think this examination room is completely bare? It's to stop examinees from having mental breakdowns and doing something irrational.]
"Dean Liang, if every examiner is this strong, can your academy really recruit all three hundred students through the Duel Exam?" the reporter asked curiously. "Not everyone is like that genius young lady from the Xinyuan Family, who had the ability to defeat a Fifth-Order Soul Card Master right after graduating high school."
[Xinyuan Family? From Little Japan?]
[The person above! Xinyuan is a Huaxia surname too, okay? Have you ever even watched Soul Card Duels? The Xinyuan Family is a legacy family of the 19th Sci-Fi World. They've produced several National Champions.]
[I know that genius. She was completely fed cards by her elders. She only defeated a Fifth-Order player through deck strength; it's not convincing at all.]
[Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so too. Soul Card Duel competitions are getting more and more boring these days. It's always the same few major families over and over. I even suspect they throw friendly matches to hand each other championships. No wonder they haven't won many world championships over the years. There's no pressure at all in the domestic scene.]
[The person above is right! Rather than watching domestic duel competitions, I'd rather watch foreign leagues. Those are the good ones—the Followers are blonde, blue-eyed, and have huge boobs!]
[Go on, go on!]
The topic of the bullet comments seemed to have quietly gone off track, but that did not affect the on-site interview.
"Only strict selection can identify true talent. If the first round doesn't work, isn't there still a second round?" Liang Hui said with a genial smile. "Magic City has already specially approved it. We can hold a second round of Duel Exams, specifically for examinees who failed the Duel Exams at other academies."
In common terms, picking through trash.
Of course, what Liang Hui did not say was that Tianyi Academy was also waving around a big stick of money to recruit examinees who had passed the exams at other academies but came from poor families. That was their real recruitment target.
Tianyi Club might not have results, but it definitely had money.
"Examinee Number Thirty-Seven, Shen Sui, please enter the examination room!"
At that moment, the announcement for the next round rang out through the corridor.
[Look, look, look! Another piece of trash is going up to die!]
[Everyone, guess how many turns before he loses?]
[I'm betting on turn three! I'll stake my spicy strips!]
[I bet he can win! If I'm wrong, I'll become a catgirl!]
[The person above, just say you want to become a catgirl.]
The bullet comments were instantly filled with a cheerful atmosphere.
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