"Right, I recommended it. Is our child's name... Tang Xiaolong?"
Chen Ping immediately heaved a sigh of relief as his brain raced at top speed, while a professional smile squeezed onto his face. He quickly recalled which client the man was talking about.
As long as these big tough guys didn't start swinging fists the moment they arrived, anything was negotiable to him.
Once he explained the matter clearly, there was a good chance he could even trick the parent standing beside him into buying a few extra service packages for their child.
"Tang Xiaolong my foot! Our kid's got the family name Wang, remember that-it's Wang Xiaolong, taking my last name! Don't listen to his mother's nonsense."
In front of Chen Ping, the robust Soul Elder let out a somewhat disgruntled tone of protest.
Yet as if recalling something else, his expression turned rather grim as he hesitated and said, "Anyway, that Tang Sect is down to just a couple of cats and dogs. If my son takes the Tang surname, isn't that just jumping into a fire pit?"
Regarding matters involving client privacy, Chen Ping never took the initiative to pry, merely nodding hurriedly.
"Ah right, Wang Xiaolong. I remembered wrong: innate Soul Power rank two and a half, eight years old this year, Soul Power Level 5, and the goal is to get accepted into the Heaven Dou National Seventh Academy, right?"
"It's close to home, famous, and since it's national, the tuition isn't high. It's a pretty good school, and with some hard work, there's quite a bit of hope."
Chen Ping quickly rummaged through his bamboo basket for documents, speaking all the while to cross-check the information with the Soul Elder before him.
Seeing that Chen Ping could actually remember his son's details this clearly, the man's originally stern expression instantly softened quite a bit, though a trace of lingering resentment remained.
After all, Chen Ping's fees were simply too exorbitant.
"Everything you said checks out, but why on earth does a profiteer like you want my son to switch from the Control System to the Healing System?"
"Do you have any idea that my kid shares the exact same Martial Soul as the Sea God Tang San from ten thousand years ago? Plus with the Tang Sect Secret Arts, he's bound to..."
The middle-aged man chattered endlessly toward Chen Ping, but the latter simply pulled a statistical chart that still exuded the scent of printer ink from his basket.
"The Heaven Dou National Seventh Academy is an advanced academy ranked in the top twenty of the Heaven Dou Empire. Its entrance requirement for Control System Soul Masters is reaching the 20th rank in cultivation before age fifteen, and the graduation requirement is reaching Soul Power rank 30 before graduating at age twenty."
"But if he's an Auxiliary-type Soul Master, his Soul Power cultivation only needs to reach the 18th rank before age fifteen to meet the admission standards. If he wants to graduate and leave, he only needs to hit rank 25 before turning twenty."
"Over the past twenty years, the graduation rate of the Heaven Dou National Seventh Academy has been 91%. On average, out of every one hundred people, nine cannot graduate."
"Among those students who fail to graduate, the vast majority only have an innate Soul Power of rank two or three. They cultivated very diligently before entering, even reaching higher levels than peers with innate Soul Power of rank four or five."
"Yet once they slack off even slightly after entering, their rate of progress isn't fast enough to meet the minimum graduation requirement, leaving them with nothing more than a completion certificate."
"Good schools these days, apart from Shrek which advocates strict entry and strict exit, mostly practice loose entry and strict exit."
"Getting into a good school isn't easy, and getting a diploma is even harder-all the more so for Blue Silver Grass Martial Soul masters."
"Tang Sect Secret Arts are good, but they don't necessarily suit everyone."
"As parents, we certainly don't want our child to end up unable to even get a diploma just because of some avoidable problem, right?"
"Besides, while I'm not too clear on the situation at home, by taking the development route of an Auxiliary-type Soul Master, couldn't he still learn from the boy's mother?"
Watching this punk who was barely older than his own son toss out "we as parents" left and right, the middle-aged man's eye twitched a few times, yet Chen Ping's words genuinely sank in.
What Chen Ping did was simple yet effective: he laid out the most direct data and let the man weigh the pros and cons himself.
Though he had no idea where Chen Ping got his data, he had to admit that Chen Ping's words struck squarely at the pain points of being a parent.
Soul Masters these days looked at educational background when job hunting; many jobs required a regular Soul Master academy diploma to enter.
A Soul Master like him, who couldn't even scrape together an intermediate Soul Master academy diploma, was only able to do heavy labor down at the docks thanks to the blessing of his own Martial Soul, which naturally granted him greater strength than many peers of the same level.
"But the Healing-type..."
The middle-aged man still felt somewhat conflicted. Was taking the Healing-type route for a Blue Silver Grass Martial Soul reliable?
In response, Chen Ping merely flipped through his backpack again, pulled out a very fresh manuscript, and quickly scanned a few pages.
"Look here. This is the basic stat sheet for the Blue Silver Grass Martial Soul. Among Plant-type Martial Souls of the same category, its basic attributes like toughness, length, flexibility, and tensile strength are all at the very bottom."
"As for the extra bonus attribute column, the Blue Silver Grass Martial Soul is simply blank. We won't even look at things like toxicity intensity or elemental damage correction coefficients."
"We don't agonize over things it lacks-we can talk about that when the child's Martial Soul mutates into a Thunderclap Hellvine."
"Across the entire basic stat table, the best figures for the Blue Silver Grass Martial Soul are growth speed and recovery rate, allowing it to sprout a vast patch at once with very little Soul Power consumption."
"Under these circumstances, rather than competing for a position in the Control System against Soul Masters whose four-dimensional attributes heavily outperform his own, it's better to play to his strengths and avoid his weaknesses by choosing the Auxiliary System path."
"Don't forget, this is just the competition between Blue Silver Grass and other Plant System Soul Masters for roles in the Control System. Control System Soul Masters aren't just limited to Plant System Soul Masters."
"Against any random Elemental System Control Soul Master, a Blue Silver Grass Martial Soul Control System Soul Master basically loses any advantage entirely."
Chen Ping delivered these words with utmost sincerity. For a Blue Silver Grass Martial Soul to take the Control System route was sheer absurdity.
If not for the fact that Tang San's Blue Silver Grass was actually the Blue Silver Emperor with its bloodline concealed, coupled with two immortal herbs-the Octagonal Mysterious Ice Grass and the Infernal Delicate Apricot-
which forcibly brushed an ice-and-fire immunity attribute onto his Martial Soul,
an Elemental System Control System Soul Master of the same level would have hung him up and thrashed him to a pulp.
Judging from the middle-aged man's bowed head and pensive expression, the other party had already been persuaded by Chen Ping, save for lingering on a few alternative thoughts.
"Still, that Tang Sect ancestor from ten thousand years ago..."
Chen Ping waved a hand. Naturally, he wouldn't directly blurt out that Tang San's Martial Soul was the Blue Silver Emperor; instead, he opted for a more all-purpose reply: "Could the Blue Silver Grass in his hands possibly be the same thing as our Blue Silver Grass?"
"Allow me to ask presumptuously, is the child's maternal family from the Tang Sect?"
"Listen to me: go back and have the boy properly learn a few moves of the Tang Sect Secret Arts from his mother."
"Especially that Ghost Shadow Perplexing Track. An Auxiliary-type Soul Master with strong self-preservation skills is a hot commodity everywhere. By then, you can just sit back and enjoy the blessing."
Before you continue