Dragon Canon

It was a tad embarrassing, but a True Lord’s promise was worth one thousand jun[1]. It was one thing if he hadn’t nodded his head, but now, changing his mind was no longer an option. He was curious about one thing, however. “Since when did the Bright King Hall become so wealthy?”

The Bright King Hallmaster had been waiting for this question from the beginning. He let out a laugh and declared, “This is just the beginning! Give me a bit more time, and the Bright King Hall would be standing on equal footing as the Heavenly Mysteries Hall and the Mother Nature Monastery. Do you know what’s the most valuable thing in this day and age? Talent!”

True Lord Xuan Yue did not really understand what he was saying, but the Bright King Hallmaster was now his chief creditor. It would be unwise of him to question his words.

The Bright King Hallmaster did not linger. He took his leave after slapping another two jade pendants on the table.

True Lord Xuan Yue pondered for a long time after the Hallmaster was gone. He just couldn’t understand why the man had invested so much. The immortal realm stone Qingming was precious, but it wasn’t that precious, was it?

Suddenly, he recalled something. A few days ago, during the quarterly meeting between the True Lords of the Halls, someone had pointed out that the centralized curriculum had produced remarkable results in the past two terms, and that more and more disciples were participating in it. Less than thirty percent of the disciples had attended during the first term, but that number had grown to over fifty percent by the second term. Assuming that the trend continued, the number was likely to exceed sixty percent during the third term.

Seeing that the centralized curriculum was working, the Reform Party decided to make their second move: The master chooses their disciple, but the disciple also gets to choose their master.

To be specific, the recruitment of disciples was now wholly managed by the Palace. When a disciple was recruited, they were no longer directly assigned to a specific monastery or hall. Instead, there was now a mutual selection process between the two. During this process, each temple and hall was given the opportunity to choose the disciples they wished to recruit. Just the same, the disciples were given the opportunity to choose the temple or hall they wished to join.

Not only did the motion receive the approval of many True Lords, the strongest support came from the highest-ranked halls. It was basically a done deal at this point. Initially, True Lord Xuan Yue was indifferent toward this motion. The Skyblue Hall had produced an unusually large number of prodigies over the past few decades. Resources had already been stretched thin after Zhang Sheng appeared. Their financial situation had only grown much worse after the emergence of Wei Yuan. If a couple more prodigies like this showed up, he truly did not know where he was going to find the resources to nurture them. He had already exhausted his reserves as it was.