64: forum

Xu Yan became somewhat interested in this, so he took his phone out from his storage device and opened the Third Academy's forum.

Upon entering, before Xu Yan could even initiate a search, several posts with "hot" tags were already pinned to the forum's homepage.

"Day one of the entrance exam: Let's review the juniors who achieved ten consecutive victories on the first day."

"Keep the Cultivation Department great: The Cultivation Department may produce another genius Breeder."

"Sixteen years old, General Rank Cultivator, top-tier journal paper: The first 'golden thigh' of this year's freshmen has appeared."

Although Xu Yan's name didn't appear directly, just by reading the content of those post titles, he could tell that at least half of the hot posts were related to him, to one degree or another.

Too lazy to check them one by one, he had Wuxiang apply directly for access to the campus forum's search and sorting permissions.

Before long, the application was approved, and Wuxiang projected the origin and progression of the events onto the screen in front of Xu Yan in chronological order.

The general situation was that someone, following tradition, had reviewed the individuals who performed exceptionally well on the first day of the entrance exam, taking the opportunity to expand upon publicly accessible information and fill in their personal details.

Xu Yan, who had completed ten consecutive battles in a single day, winning every match with a single move, naturally found himself included in this review.

Originally, due to Zhu Yan's relatively plain attack style and the fact that he hadn't revealed much of his actual strength, Xu Yan wasn't particularly conspicuous among the seven who achieved ten consecutive victories, initially ranking only sixth.

However, after digging deeper, even just the publicly available information caused the attention on Xu Yan to completely crush the other six. This was true even though several of the other six came from families and factions with long-standing traditions, and one was even a Space Element Beast Tamer from an ordinary family.

A fourteen-year-old Soldier Rank Cultivator, a sixteen-year-old General Rank Cultivator, who discovered a new evolutionary form of the "exam question" Wind Flame Lion during his General Rank assessment, and completed research and successfully published one top-tier journal paper and one first-tier journal paper within the following three months.

That's right, Xu Yan's two papers had already been successfully published within this past month.

Because they were not mainstream, hot research topics, and were not groundbreaking achievements, although one passed for a top-tier journal and one for a first-tier academic journal, they only garnered a certain amount of attention within a small circle and had not yet fermented into the public eye.

Even so, it still injected new heat and vitality into the previously niche field of Wind Flame Lion research.

As the "investors" in Xu Yan's research, Zheng Hui and Feng Jie were naturally extremely delighted. The banners reading "Congratulations to our school/association student/member Xu Yan for..." were still hanging at the entrances of both establishments, not yet taken down.

Of course, this was only hung up after asking Xu Yan and obtaining his consent.

Well, this was also the reason why Xu Yan's information was exposed so quickly.

On Blue Star, Breeders themselves held an extremely high status. Furthermore, the Third Academy's ace major was the Cultivation Department, which was also the strongest Cultivation Department among all universities. While being pursued by students with Innate Talent in cultivation, it was also constantly pursuing genius Breeders.

Therefore, once the publicly available information was exposed, the other six so-called "geniuses" no longer mattered, and the vast majority of the attention on the forum was cast upon Xu Yan.

There was no other reason; compared to people in society and ordinary institutions who had to constantly struggle for resources, and in the end, might not even have the connections to find someone to help process those resources to maximize their effects.

Being able to enter the Eight Great Academies meant that, no matter how poorly one was doing, there was no shortage of some conventional resources.

Especially at their Third Academy, with the Cultivation Department as an ace major, there was no lack of channels for processing and creating resources.

Those with connections could latch onto a "golden thigh," and those without could spend some academic credits to ask for help; the price they had to pay was always far lower than those other people.

It was reliable, had a higher output-to-input ratio, and didn't even require waiting in line.

After experiencing the benefits, they naturally had a clearer understanding of the function and importance of the Cultivation Department.

"Senior students" who had truly spent some time in the Third Academy and had enjoyed the "all-you-can-eat" feeding provided by the Cultivation Department generally held an attitude of "latch onto a golden thigh if you can, and if not, at least build a good relationship" toward students in the Cultivation Department.

Even students with lower grades in the Cultivation Department could receive considerable respect in the outside world, not to mention those true geniuses.

Moreover, just based on the abilities that this freshman, Xu Yan, had displayed on the surface, he had already reached at least the requirements for a third-year student in the Cultivation Department.

Under these circumstances, his Spirit Beast's strength and whether he was hiding his true power no longer mattered.

Consequently, while not many students of Xu Yan's cohort had yet realized his strength and importance, the sophomores, juniors, and even seniors had already begun to secretly find ways to get closer to Xu Yan, aiming to make him their "golden thigh."

Unfortunately, after finishing those ten battles, Xu Yan had vanished without a trace, not even returning to the dormitory area, leaving a group of seniors who wanted to visit and build connections empty-handed.

Looking at the various posts about himself on the forum, along with a pile of comments below like "Golden thigh, let me hug you" and "Big shot, please carry me," Xu Yan found it somewhat amusing, but didn't pay too much attention to the matter.

He had already been prepared for the exposure of his personal information ever since he successfully passed the Soldier Rank Cultivator assessment.

It was just that the commotion that should have occurred at that time had been directly suppressed by Xu Du using his own strength and connections.

But now, having successfully entered the Third Academy and about to have a big-shot-level mentor, Xu Yan no longer needed to deliberately hide his own brilliance; he finally had the confidence to face all of this.

As for the big-shot-level mentor, listening to the knocking on his office door, and then Mo Yi walking in after Xu Yan gave his consent.

Xu Yan had Wuxiang put away the projection in front of him, exited the forum, and stood up to welcome him, thinking, "Well, isn't the big-shot mentor here now?"