Chapter 2323: Snow Melting Recruitment, Common Sense Assessment

Every contestant in this competition received a reward, but those who placed after tenth only received some Gold Coins as encouragement; for them, as they spend most of their time in the Mage Tower or Floating City, the greatest use for these was to give them to their families to help subsidize their living expenses.

Only the rewards for the top ten teams could be considered true grand prizes—

Every member of the first-place team would receive all rewards, including a Level 1 Laboratory in the Research Zone of Chang'an City (Floating City), Level 2 Permission Level for the Spirit Thought Network, a spot in the Inheritance Ritual, and resource quotas.

The second-place team would have fewer rewards than the first, lacking the Inheritance Ritual, while the third-place team would have even fewer resource quotas than the second.

As for fourth through tenth place, they would only receive Spirit Thought Network Permission Levels and varying amounts of resource quotas.

Although they lacked the Level 1 Laboratory that Xia Duo had equipped for them, the additional portable resource quotas would provide them with a significant starting advantage in the future, regardless of which laboratory they went to or if they used them for personal projects.

To summarize, only the first-place team received the Inheritance Ritual, while the Spirit Thought Network Permission Level upgrade was available to the top ten; after all, it was just a permission level, involving only the near-virtual computing resources existing within the Spirit Thought Network.

One of Xia Duo's next plans was to continuously expand the scale of the Spirit Thought Network, perhaps integrating it with the Communication Mythallar in the future to gain user resources outside the Nan Jing.

As for now—

Of course, it was time to get busy with the Snow Melting Recruitment.

This Steam Locomotive Design Competition was indeed underprepared; not only in the preparation phase and the execution phase, but even the conclusion seemed somewhat rushed.

But regardless, the necessary elements were basically all present, and by the time the various participating teams had finished collecting their rewards and Dien announced the end of the competition, the time had already reached the afternoon.

Xia Duo discussed the details of the next day's Snow Melting Recruitment with Laidon before returning to the Creation Mythallar Laboratory in the Floating City, where he remained busy until late at night before resting.

……

The next day was the Melting Snow Month, which was also the day for the Tower of Time to recruit new members.

The process was much the same as the Midsummer Festival recruitment in the past, only the questions were more standardized, and the number of participants was many times higher than in previous years, with almost everyone able to participate.

Under Laidon's planning, this Snow Melting Recruitment was almost turned into a grand, city-wide carnival.

Savile Town Central Square, Linshui Village Altar Square, and the Code Plaza at the southern end of the 【Daxia-Savile Passage】—these three large squares in the north and south were all packed with people today.

Those bringing their children, those watching the excitement, and the children themselves.

It was just that the school-age youths of Daxia Territory had already entered the Tower of Time through the previous "sweeps," which made the school-age youths in the less-populated Weier Territory seem more numerous.

On the square, the most conspicuous were the security officers arranged by Laidon; they wore orange-yellow uniforms and were not only responsible for maintaining order but also for directing the movement of personnel on the field.

Since it was a recruitment for the Tower of Time, the appearance of Tower of Time Mages was naturally indispensable; this time, in addition to the Official Mages who had received the recruitment assessment tasks as usual, there were also several Apprentice representatives from Weier Territory and Daxia Territory.

In previous years, there were certainly no Apprentice representatives; before the Tower of Time's reform, even those responsible for evaluation were just Apprentices similar to handymen, so naturally, there could be no Apprentice representatives, and this status did not represent any honor.

And the various expansions after the Tower of Time's reform were almost all carried out by directly drawing up lists of school-age youths, even omitting the assessment stage, let alone anything else.

But Xia Duo felt that "assessment" had become one of the most important elements of the current Tower of Time; assessments existed everywhere within the Tower of Time, such as the Apprentices' weekly exams, monthly exams, and the Job Rank Assessment for new Mages, and so on.

Restoring the recruitment assessment would also help those new members quickly get into the swing of things.

Clang—

At 8:00 AM, when the time arrived, the evaluation Mages in the three squares gave the signal simultaneously.

At the Code Plaza, the evaluation Mage here was served by Boli, the Magic Affairs Officer of the territory, while at the other Altar Square, it was Pide, who was also a Magic Affairs Officer.

Although Boli only made an appearance during the entry and award ceremony of yesterday's Steam Locomotive Design Competition, as a local and a Magic Affairs Officer who was frequently active in the territory, his popularity in Daxia Territory was far beyond that of an outsider like Xiluo.

And today, he appeared again to preside over the first Snow Melting Recruitment in the history of the Tower of Time—at one of the branch venues.

"Fellow villagers, quiet everyone! The assessment is about to begin. Everyone, listen carefully and watch carefully. After the children finish their assessment, everyone will have a chance to participate, but you must maintain order."

Afterward, Boli took a box-like Magic Artifact from his Dimensional Bag, and during this process, he also showed the Dimensional Bag to everyone and introduced it:

"Look, this is a Dimensional Bag; it can hold many things inside! Look, this is the auxiliary Magic Artifact for this recruitment assessment!"

The demonstration segment was not necessary, but as the territory's Magic Affairs Officer, Boli had the responsibility and necessity to popularize more magic knowledge to the residents, which of course included the Dimensional Bag.

In fact, before today, Boli had shown the Dimensional Bag to many people, even letting them touch it and feel it themselves, but in the past, there were rarely opportunities to demonstrate it to so many people at once like today.

If he didn't remember his real task for today, Boli would have wanted to hold a lecture on magic popularization on the spot.

……

Next was the formal assessment. Boli first placed the assessment auxiliary Magic Artifact into the hands of an Apprentice representative standing to the side, asking the other party to help hold it.

As for himself, he carefully opened the box, set it up inside, and then put on a Crystal Headband that didn't quite match his own attire.

After completing this set of procedures, Boli continued to take out the content for today's assessment from the Dimensional Bag and then asked questions to the school-age youths who had gathered into a square formation; they were all common sense questions, such as—

"What is the name of the territory we are in?"

Answer: Daxia Territory!

"Who can recite the first article of the Territory Resident Moral Code?"

Answer: Honesty and trustworthiness, self-improvement!

"What about the second article?"

Answer: Respect the elderly and love the young, equality between men and women!

"Very good! Who knows how many feet two rabbits and three chickens have in total?"

Answer: Fourteen!

……

The assessment content covered geography, arithmetic, literacy, magic, general life knowledge, and other aspects. Under the current situation of indiscriminately recruiting school-age youths, this form of assessment was more about substance than anything else, and how many they answered correctly did not affect their enrollment.

Of course, if the answers were too outrageous, these files that would follow them for life might lead to them failing in another assessment at some stage.

……

During the assessment process, every time Boli asked a question, he would first give the answer in his own mind, transmit it through the Inspiration Headband to the Spirit Thought Network, and then transmit it to the assessment auxiliary Magic Artifact connected to the Spirit Thought Network.

All youths whose answers matched his would be marked by the assessment auxiliary Magic Artifact; the more they answered correctly, the more marks they would have. By the end of the exam, the number of marks determined their ranking, although this did not affect their enrollment.