"Jiang Chenyi?" Fang Yu murmured to himself.
As a Wuling City native and a student of Wuling Martial Arts Junior College, he had naturally heard the name... A top scorer among martial students was a different thing from a top scorer among academic ones.
The top academic scorer might get into a good university, but what he made of himself afterwards was hard to say; plenty of them sank back into the crowd. So the academic champion was not someone many people truly followed.
The martial arts top scorer was another matter entirely.
Since ancient times: in letters there is no first, in arms there is no second.
In the martial entrance exam there was almost no room for tricks or luck. To take first place you had to be outstanding across the board — bodily talent, insight into skill, Void Star Aspect, combat instinct, even family background.
And there was another thing.
In martial training, the years from sixteen to twenty-five were when growth came fastest, which was why they were called the Golden Age Bracket; after that came twenty-five to thirty, the Silver Age Bracket.
To become the city's martial arts top scorer at around eighteen meant talent of the first order, and a future beyond measuring.
Which was exactly why.
Any martial student who became the top scorer turned into an absolute focus of attention, ten times, a hundred times more dazzling than the academic champion; the media and the independent streamers all fought to cover him... You could see it in the rewards the two of them received.
As far as Fang Yu knew, the state's direct reward to a city academic champion was generally somewhere between tens of thousands and a few hundred thousand Star Coins, while a city martial champion got several million at the least.
And that was only the first step. After it came cultivation by his university, the chance to sign early with a great martial conglomerate, even endorsement deals for various brands.
It was a bright, glittering road.
Next to Jiang Chenyi, a junior-college martial student like Fang Yu was far, far dimmer... even though he was already an outstanding junior-college student.
"Comparing yourself to other people will kill you." Xu Chenyang sounded envious. "This Jiang Chenyi has only just finished his first year and he's already that strong. By the time he graduates he might have a shot at Earth Warrior."
Fang Yu was thoughtful.
Before the Great Sky-Burning Era, humanity had not yet met its great evolution; Void Star Aspects had not awakened, and martial training was not the mainstream. Warriors were graded only by martial skill — Manifest Force, Hidden Force, Transforming Force and so on... and in truth, even a Transforming Force warrior hailed as a grandmaster, however superb his martial skill, was not lesser in skill than many Earth Warriors.
But limited by their environment, those men tempered their bodies to the utmost and still generally reached a single-arm punch force of only one or two thousand kilograms.
On raw strength alone, they could hardly match a Mid-Rank Warrior of this age.
It was not until after the Great Sky-Burning Era.
Especially across the sixty years since the New Calendar began, the martial path developed at speed. Bolstered by Void Star Aspects, the martial path reached the divine, and warriors came to possess a might beyond imagining... and in the end a unified division of warrior strength was drawn up again: the Six Warrior Tiers.
Levels 1 to 9 fell within the range of ordinary people.
Levels 10 to 19 were first-tier warriors, also called Low-Rank Warriors, with a punch-force standard of 300 kilograms at the lowest.
Levels 20 to 29 were second-tier warriors, also called Mid-Rank Warriors, with a punch-force standard of 2,000 kilograms at the lowest.
Levels 30 to 39 were third-tier warriors, also called High-Rank Warriors, with a punch-force standard of 10,000 kilograms at the lowest.
Levels 40 to 49 were fourth-tier warriors, honoured with the name Earth Warrior. The extraordinary force they commanded could no longer be described in simple kilograms of punch force, and some heavy thermal weapons had already ceased to work on them.
The higher tiers — fifth-tier Sky-Patrol Warriors and sixth-tier Starry Sky Warriors — were myth walking into the mortal world... and past anything an ordinary person could picture.
And graduation came at around twenty-two.
Becoming an Earth Warrior by then?
For junior-college students like Fang Yu it was simply a fairy tale... but for someone like Jiang Chenyi, it was possible.
After all, punches thrown that fast, and every one of them past six thousand kilograms — going all out he might well put out seven or eight thousand. That was why Xu Chenyang had said he was at least Level 25.
"I talked to my supervisor a few days ago. Apparently, at New Moon Martial Arts University, Jiang Chenyi counts as a fairly ordinary student." Xu Chenyang lowered his voice, marvelling. "I really can't imagine how strong the top university students inside New Moon must be."
"The strongest martial arts university under the stars. Of course they're strong," Fang Yu said calmly. "Take any university student out of there and drop him into Huguang Martial Arts University, and he'd be an absolute celebrity."
University students differed from university students, too.
The two martial arts universities in Huguang Province took ten thousand undergraduates a year, and Huguang was only one province of the Xia Nation.
Blue Star's whole population was thirty billion, and the Xia Nation's alone was over five billion; so on Blue Star more than a million martial undergraduates were admitted every year — not many, set against Blue Star's entire population.
And then there was New Moon Martial Arts University.
It was the absolute first martial arts university of the New Moon, and of the whole civilization... It took only ten thousand students a year, which does not sound so few — but bear in mind that the New Moon, with a population under two hundred million, took half of those places.
The quota shared out among the nations of Blue Star was a mere five thousand.
In an ordinary year, only a thousand-odd people in the whole Xia Nation could test into New Moon Martial Arts University... spread across every province, that generally came to a few dozen places each.
As for Wuling City? One or two a year was doing well. Some years, not one.
From that alone you could judge what New Moon Martial Arts University was worth.
Martial geniuses needed the best environment too, before they could bloom.
Over the years, martial arts top scorers from all over the Xia Nation had tried for New Moon Martial Arts University; only after that would they consider the other ten key martial arts universities of the New Moon.
And only after those would they think about Modu Martial Arts University, Yandu Martial Arts University, and the rest of the Xia Nation's finest.
"True enough."
"Most university students set their sights on becoming High-Rank Warriors." Xu Chenyang sighed. "But I hear that at New Moon Martial Arts University, a student who isn't an Earth Warrior by thirty is considered a disgrace to the school."
"Next to that, we're just too ordinary." Xu Chenyang shook his head.
"Don't sell yourself short." Fang Yu clapped him on the shoulder and laughed. "A diploma is made of paper; ability is your own. University students are strong, true — but we junior-college students aren't bad either."
"And don't forget."
"The champion of the last martial arts tournament was a junior-college student, from our own Xia Nation." Fang Yu turned and started down the stairs again.
"Oh, right. Brother Fang, your skill's at Great Completion in Subtlety — what you make of the martial path might not be any worse than a university student's." Xu Chenyang hurried to turn and follow him, talking as he went. "Not me, though. I'm an academic junior-college student, and an arts one at that. I threw a few hundred CVs onto 91 Classifieds last time, and everything the system pushed back at me was a sales job..."
"Oh — hang on."
"Brother Fang, this tournament you're talking about, is it the Alliance Martial Arts Tournament, the one with a billion Star Coins in prize money?" Xu Chenyang caught up suddenly. "Wang Heng is a junior-college student?"
The Alliance Martial Arts Tournament, one of the most dazzling martial spectacles of the whole civilization.
Naturally Xu Chenyang followed it, and naturally he knew who the champion was.
"Mm."
"Wang Heng of the Xia Nation. The youngest Sky-Patrol Warrior in history, and by common consent — the strongest junior-college student alive!" Fang Yu had already reached the ground floor.
One glance.
Fang Yu's eye went to the line written on the wall at the far end of the ground-floor lobby.
"The evolution of a civilization is cruel. But crueller than evolution is the refusal to evolve. It is the same with life. — Ye Xinghe"