Chang'an City.
It was precisely noon, and the blazing sun baked the earth without restraint. Some of the soldiers standing guard were already drenched in sweat, occasionally grumbling to their comrades, "This damned weather just keeps getting hotter. What month is it even?"
Yet not one of them dared slack off, because the place they guarded was called the Supreme Academy. Inside were students who read the classics of the sages and would enter official service in the future. If a moment's negligence offended those students now, they were sure to pay for it later.
Since Emperor Xiaowen's death, the Youxia who had once disappeared seemed to have shown signs of a resurgence around Chang'an in recent years. In the countryside, men carried swords and called themselves great heroes of one name or another. Dragons and fish mingled among them: although some truly possessed righteousness that reached the clouds and resembled the great Mohist heroes of old, more were lowlifes who then strayed onto the evil path of banditry. These guards were there to keep such people out.
The Imperial Academy.
It was one of the sacred places in the hearts of everyone in the Great Han Empire whose ambitions embraced the realm. The other was the Luo Clan Academy in Zhao City. One stood in the East of the Passes, the other in Guanzhong; these two academies were twin pearls in the hearts of scholars throughout the realm.
There were still differences between them, however. The Imperial Academy was a place to study the classics and gain quicker entry into official service through one's status as an academy student. The Luo Clan Academy was more like a place for advanced study, because it held the world's most complete collection of texts, the greatest number of commentaries by Senior Worthies,