Different

Within the Metropolitan Graduate Hunting Ground, the Metropolitan Graduates of the Ten Kingdoms were scattered about, watching one another.

The atmosphere was somewhat strange.

Many Metropolitan Graduates from the four long-established great kingdoms—Shu, Qi, Cloud, and Wu—smiled as they looked toward the other kingdoms.

The rankings of the Ten-Kingdom Competition had always been very close to those of the Metropolitan Graduate Spring Hunt. For over a hundred years, the four long-established great kingdoms had firmly occupied the top four positions.

Meanwhile, Jia, Qing, and Yue had always remained in the middle tier, while Jing, Gu, and Shen had consistently brought up the rear as mere foils.

But last year's Ten-Kingdom Competition had seen a major upset. Qing Kingdom had been forcibly squeezed out of the middle-tier kingdoms and into the lowest tier, causing all its admission quotas, from Licentiates to Metropolitan Graduates, to be drastically reduced this year.

Most Qing Kingdom citizens both loved and hated Fang Yun. They loved him because, deep in their bones, they respected the strong and were grateful that he had raised the Human Race's overall strength. They hated him because he had tossed Qing Kingdom around too brutally—not only had he achieved Literary Suppression of a Prefecture, he had even squeezed Qing Kingdom out of the middle-tier kingdoms, making it the greatest humiliation of Qing Kingdom scholars.

Jia Kingdom had also been surpassed by Jing Kingdom, but since it still ranked among the middle-tier kingdoms, the people of Jia Kingdom bore Fang Yun no great ill will. Only the Lei Family of Jia Kingdom hated Fang Yun to the bone; their feud ran too deep to be salvaged.

Among Qing Kingdom's Metropolitan Graduates, one person suddenly clasped his hands toward Fang Yun and said, "I am Xun Cong. Greetings, Void Sage Fang. I have