I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 858: The New Education Reform

It was rare for the academy's conference room to be this crowded.

By the time Jie Ming pushed the door open, the room was already packed, and even the front rows were nearly full.

There were so many people, in fact, that several extra rows of chairs had been added along the back wall.

A few mentors who looked like newcomers of relatively low level had to squeeze in there, trading news in low voices as they tried to work out what this abruptly convened meeting actually meant.

“What is this about?”

“No idea. The dean sent out the notice himself.”

“Could they have discovered another large plane?”

“Surely not. There would be no need to summon every mentor for a plane war. The last batch of students is about to graduate anyway, so they could simply use them.”

“Then it is strange…”

All manner of discussion and speculation drifted through the conference room.

Jie Ming swept the room with a glance from the doorway, and could not help raising an eyebrow.

No wonder there were so many people this time. Several fifth-level wizards who almost never showed their faces were present, and even the mentors responsible for the academy's internal resource management, apprentice records and logistics had come.

Most of those people, after all, held the title of mentor in name only, mainly so that they could borrow the academy's laboratories.

A turnout like this… hardly looked like ordinary academy business.

But Jie Ming relaxed all the same, because a turnout like this did not look as though something had gone wrong either.

He picked an empty seat toward the back at random and sat down. He had barely settled when a fifth-level mentor beside him lowered his voice and asked:

“Wizard Jie Ming, do you know why the dean suddenly called everyone in?”

“No.” Jie Ming shook his head. “But judging by the look of it, it should not be bad news.”

“I hope so.” The mentor gave a wry laugh.

“This is the first time I have seen the dean gather every last one of us. It feels as though something enormous is about to happen to the academy.”

Jie Ming smiled and did not take up the thread.

And just then, the light screen above the podium lit up.

The entire conference room fell silent in an instant. Every gaze turned to the front at once.

Dean Avery Knight stood at the center of the podium.

His hair was combed without a strand out of place, his black robe without the slightest crease.

What was different this time was that Jie Ming had rarely seen emotion so plain on this dean's face.

The mental energy spilling off him carried excitement in it too, and impatience.

Only once the last mentor had sat down did Avery tap the tabletop lightly.

“Since everyone is here, then let us begin.”

As always, with no interest in pleasantries or preamble, Avery came straight out with it:

“I have gathered you all because the academy is preparing to carry out an education reform.”

As the words fell, a momentary blankness flashed across the face of every wizard in the room.

Jie Ming narrowed his eyes slightly.

An education reform?

For Noren Academy No. 147, that phrase by itself meant something out of the ordinary.

Several thousand years had passed, after all, since this academy was founded.

Admission standards, the apprentice training process, the mentor system: nearly all of it had been tested and retested over long ages.

Although the times kept changing, the academy's foundational education system had never truly been altered.

Or rather, never mind Noren Academy No. 147; the same held for the whole of Noren Workshop.

In all of Noren Workshop, the only reform of the education system Jie Ming knew of was the one he had caught himself, back in the day: the “elite combat unit evaluation system.”

And now… they were actually to carry out a new round of education reform?

A sixth-level mentor could not help asking, “Dean, what reform, specifically?”

Avery did not keep them in suspense. He raised a hand, and a light screen unfolded above the podium.

On it was a notice from Noren Workshop, and its very first line seized everyone's attention:

[Effective immediately, all children possessing the minimum wizard aptitude are to be brought within the academies' scope of admission.]

A wave of stifled gasps went up through the conference room.

Avery continued, “Beginning with the next intake, the academy's admission target will no longer be to sift out the handful of children with outstanding talent. It will be every child who possesses the minimum aptitude!”

“Once they enroll, the academy will arrange uniform Blood Sacrifice Method modification for them, raising these apprentices' own wizard aptitude to its theoretical limit!”

Hearing Dean Avery Knight say this, Jie Ming's first reaction was not delight but puzzlement.

From a technical standpoint the academy certainly could do it; the Blood Sacrifice Method itself presented no technical problem.

What genuinely limited the spread of the Blood Sacrifice Method was cost.

Cloning a body by itself did not consume many resources, and even duplicating a soul was not a large expenditure.

The problem was that for a transcendent, the greatest cost of duplicating one's own soul was the resources consumed in the duplication, whereas for an ordinary person the greatest cost was the process of collecting the soul sample.

An ordinary person's soul was far more fragile than a wizard's, and to guarantee that it took no damage during sampling consumed resources that already approached the cost of duplicating a first-level wizard's complete soul.

If every single apprentice at every academy of Noren Workshop needed several matching clones prepared, and one accounted for the vast increase in apprentice numbers once the admission criteria were widened…

then never mind Noren Academy. Throwing in every plane Noren Workshop held would not supply enough resources!

After a brief silence, the whole conference room erupted.

“All of them?”

“Dean, do you mean every child who meets the minimum standard?”

“What is to be done about the cost of the Blood Sacrifice Method?”

“This simply is not realistic!”

“Wait…”

One mentor suddenly caught on and jerked his head up.

“Could it be… that the cost problem has already been solved?”

Every voice stopped at once.

“Correct.” Avery nodded.

“Some time ago, a low-level wizard over in the Crimson Court completed a low-level soul cultivation technology.”

The light screen above the podium shifted again, and a technical file surfaced.

“The principle behind the technology is not especially complex. In essence, a sample of both soul and body is collected from the fetus before it is born, and the clone is then completed from that sample.”

“Because a human soul in the fetal stage is not yet fully developed, its structure is far simpler than an adult soul's. What is more, the soul grows extremely quickly at that stage, so as long as technical precision and nutrient supply are assured, the sampling will have no effect on the individual.”

“Hiss!!!”

At Dean Avery Knight's words, the atmosphere in the conference room changed at once.

The assembled mentors began going carefully through the details of the technical material displayed there.

Jie Ming, too, quickly confirmed the plan's feasibility.

The greatest cost, after all, had already been dealt with.

The most troublesome part in the past had been how to obtain an ordinary person's soul sample safely.

With this technology, all it took was one standardized sampling procedure added to the course of prenatal examinations, and the sample collection could be completed in advance.

As for storing the samples afterward and manufacturing the clones… that much resource consumption was nothing at all to a wizard.

A single experiment by an ordinary sixth-level wizard probably consumed more than manufacturing clones for an entire plane's worth of ordinary people.

As for manpower, that was even less of a problem!

The major wizard powers managed their ordinary planes mostly through standardized artificial human systems, so manpower simply did not enter into it.

When the Blood Sacrifice Method had first been made public, it could only serve as an enhancement technique an individual might opt into.

But now… with the two technologies combined, it had become a technological pairing capable of transforming the entire wizard civilization!