"I went back for a visit." Ning Rongrong walked over to her desk, set her small bag on the corner, and sat down. "Nothing major. Just exchanged a few words."
Settling into her seat, Ning Rongrong opened the stack of files awaiting processing on her desk.
They were the first batch of faculty records submitted by academies across the various duchies after the handover.
Every file recorded the former instructor's name, Martial Soul, Soul Power Level, and years of teaching at the academy in detail.
Her gaze swept quickly over the entries. Most of the instructors had Soul Power Levels between Soul Ancestor and Soul King. A handful of veteran teachers at the Soul Sage level had been marked separately, with a red note beside them: "Recommend coordinating to retain employment."
The office fell quiet for a while, with only the rustle of turning pages and the faint scratch of pen tips across paper.
After some time, Ning Rongrong set down the file in her hand and looked toward Zhu Zhuqing. "Zhuqing, have you been busy lately?"
Zhu Zhuqing looked up from her file, her tone as steady as ever. "Not bad. The rosters from the Awakening Bureaus in various regions have been coming in one after another. There's quite a lot, and verifying them takes time. Still, it's much easier than traveling and fighting back when I was in the military."
Ning Rongrong noticed the vague sense of distance in Zhu Zhuqing's tone when she mentioned "the military," so she did not press further. She merely nodded. "That's good."
The office quieted down again.
Several months later, the Teacher Qualification Examination was held in Bright Moon City as scheduled.
The examination venue was a dedicated Ministry of Education testing site in the east of the city: a three-story