Luo Yu read until late.
The Earth Penguin read until late too.
It had a book of its own. Even though it could hardly recognize any characters, it stubbornly plowed through it.
Of course, its book had pictures and text, so it might have been looking at the pictures.
"Time to go back." After the sky grew dark, Luo Yu pulled the little penguin, which still wanted to read more, away and rode home with it.
After a night's sleep, Luo Yu came early the next day to take the breeding qualification assessment. As for July, he clearly hadn't woken up yet.
Outside the assessment venue, Luo Yu saw more than twenty other candidates wearing admission passes just like his.
They were mostly in their twenties and thirties.
Wait, no? There seemed to be someone his own age too.
"L-Luo Yu?" The other person noticed Luo Yu as well. It was Chen Bo.
"About yesterday, I'm sorry... I really didn't know something had happened to your parents." He came over, stumbling over his words.
"It's fine. How about you pay me 100 Alliance Coins?" Luo Yu was a grown man. Could he really hold a grudge against a kid? It was just that the exam registration fee hurt his wallet a little...
"100 Alliance Coins? I don't have any money." Chen Bo looked bewildered. What did he mean?
"Pay me back when you do." Luo Yu chuckled.
Chen Bo fell silent for a moment and guessed that Luo Yu had probably gone mad.
"Speaking of which... why are you taking the breeding qualification assessment too?" Chen Bo changed the subject. He was very curious: after such a huge upheaval, how could Luo Yu still be in the mood to take this exam?
He didn't doubt Luo Yu's abilities, though.
Luo Yu's mother and his own mother were both famous on Mirror Moon Island as model tiger parents. Neither was willing to let her child be outdone, and their control over their children was utterly inhumane.
"I want to inherit the Luo Shui Research Institute and rename it the Luo Yu Research Institute." Luo Yu stated his purpose for taking the assessment directly and clearly.
"This..." Chen Bo sucked in a breath. He was still only his father's research assistant, yet Luo Yu could already inherit a research institute?
Awesome!
That was great... He began to consider what inheritance he could receive if his own parents died in an accident...
Meanwhile, inside the examination room, the three examiners were flipping through the candidates' files and whispering among themselves.
"There aren't many applicants this time."
"The youngest, Luo Yu, is Scholar Luo Shui's son..."
"Next is Researcher Chen Zhuo's child, Chen Bo, sixteen years old..."
"This Chen Bo has taken the exam several times in a row. His ability isn't bad, but he frequently makes small mistakes because he lacks experience. I wonder how he'll do this time."
"If he passes, he'll set a new record."
While the three were talking, the assessment began, and the candidates entered the examination room together.
A moment later, the chief examiner standing in the middle raised his head and said, "The test papers will now be handed out. You have ninety minutes."
With that, a female examiner beside him handed out the papers one by one.
After receiving his paper, Luo Yu quickly scanned the questions.
Four types of questions: multiple choice, true or false, fill-in-the-blank, and short answer!
Judging by the questions, none were too difficult. They could even be called free points for basic common knowledge.
The first round of the breeding qualification assessment reportedly had a question bank of 3,000 questions, with each exam drawing from it at random. As such, they all covered fixed points of knowledge, with only the wording of the questions changing at most.
As long as one hadn't slipped through the net of nine years of compulsory education, one wouldn't get too many wrong, even without a perfect score. The second round was the hard part.
"Question one: how many Beast Taming levels are there currently..."
Luo Yu counted them in his head: Trainee Level, Junior Level, Intermediate Level, Senior Level, King Level, Abyss Level, Cataclysm Level...
"C, seven."
"Question two: under normal circumstances, how many pet beasts can each Beast Tamer contract..."
"A, one."
Each human could awaken only one Beast-Taming Space, and each Beast-Taming Space could contract only one pet beast.
But on the mysterious seas, there were many ways to increase the number of contracted pet beasts or Beast-Taming Spaces.
The question specified normal circumstances, though, so the answer was one.
"Question three: after a Beast Tamer's contracted pet beast dies, approximately how long does it take to recover naturally before they can contract a new pet beast..."
"A, one year..."
Soon, Luo Yu reached the true-or-false questions.
"Question one: are mermaids born from crossbreeding beautiful women and fish?"
"...False."
What kind of question was that? It was quite bizarre.
"Question two: some evil pirates have contracted zombie sea beasts. Therefore, it can be concluded that Aberrant Corpse Beasts are a type of virus-type pet beast and can be contracted."
"...False."
They couldn't be contracted.
Although some Beast Tamers did have contracts with zombie beasts, those zombie beasts had all started out as normal living creatures. Only after experiencing certain special circumstances had they undergone a mistaken evolution and become zombies.
In such cases, the contract wouldn't break, but zombie beasts couldn't be contracted directly.
"Question three..."
The questions didn't get somewhat harder until the fill-in-the-blank section.
"The age at which a Wave Dog reaches sexual maturity is..."
"The average annual rainfall on Mirror Moon Island is..."
Luo Yu worked straight through to the short-answer questions without pausing.
This time, the short-answer questions were simple too.
After the torrential rain apocalypse, people discovered seven mysterious sea regions on the ocean. Their locations were not fixed; they appeared at random somewhere on the sea and were treasures that navigators had always sought.
Name the seven mysterious sea regions and briefly explain which one you would most like to encounter and why.
A highly subjective question like this, with no standard answer, generally had a simple purpose: to infer what kind of person the candidate was from their answer.
"The Sea of Evolution, a golden ocean that can cause mutated beasts to evolve unconditionally and raise their species level."
"The Sea of Contracts, a silver sea region that can grant a Beast Tamer an additional Beast-Taming Space and another chance to form a contract."
"The Sea of Ghosts, a vast black sea where departed souls can be found and ships can be transformed into treasure ships with 'ship spirits.'"
"The Sea of Eternity, a white expanse of water shrouded in mist, where one day outside is a year within and those who enter can comprehend the power of time."
"The Sea of Void, a gray sea region where those who enter can comprehend the power of space."
"The Sea of Merfolk, a purple expanse of water where bathing can transform humans into special life-forms called 'merfolk.'"
"The Sea of Dreams, a green ocean with the world's most delicious seafood ingredients, where any food can greatly increase a mutated beast's life level."
After writing down the seven mysterious sea regions, Luo Yu began to think about how to answer the subjective question.
This kind of question was just like an essay. Whether or not it reflected what the candidate really thought, it had to be positive and uplifting.
If you wanted to gain great power, you couldn't write that you wanted it for money or to build a harem. That was too direct, too blatant.
You had to write that gaining power would let you better protect ordinary people and build up the island. That was how you got a high score.
Never mind whether that was what you really thought. On paper, you absolutely couldn't make a mistake; it had to be true, good, and beautiful.
As for Luo Yu, he naturally wanted to encounter all of them.
If he had to pick one, it would be the Sea of Evolution. He wanted the little penguin to evolve into something even more formidable.
A Beast Tamer on the island had once been lucky enough to encounter the Sea of Evolution, and their pet beast had evolved directly from a Common Species into a Monarch Species.
It was also one of the few opportunities ordinary people had to soar into the heavens in a single leap.
On paper, however, Luo Yu chose the Sea of Ghosts. After all, he had to fit the persona of someone who had just lost his parents.
Besides, he had to make the content of his answer stand out...
"I would choose the Sea of Ghosts." Luo Yu drew directly on his high school essay-writing skills.
"I remember it was a day of torrential rain... I had a fever... Mom carried me on her back to the hospital..."
He dashed off several hundred words with ease. After all, he had used this template more times than he could remember.
He elevated the theme at the end: "In the Sea of Ghosts, perhaps I could see them one more time."
At a time like this, playing on people's sympathy was the way to go. Faced with an orphan whose parents had just died, would they even be human if they didn't give him a high score?