At six o’clock the next morning, before the sun had even climbed over the eastern city wall, a massive crowd of parents and children had packed the street outside Dry-Well Public Cultivation High School #1.
The school building was huge—four stories of solid red brick and white stone that Ye Guhan and Perfected Nine-Swords’ road crew had built in just forty-eight hours. Above the wide iron gates hung a red silk banner with big gold letters:
FREE TUITION! FREE TEXTBOOKS! FREE SPIRIT-BEEF LUNCH! EVERY CITIZEN UNDER TWENTY MUST ATTEND!
Simultaneously, across all thirty-six provinces of the Dry-Well Commonwealth, ninety-nine identical three-story brick campuses had opened their gates at the exact same hour, making 100 Free Public Cultivation Schools in total.
Still, outside School #1 in the capital—where many newly arrived border families and former Great Yan townspeople lived—half the parents standing at the gate looked nervous and doubtful.
“Old Zhang, do you really think this is free?” whispered a weathered blacksmith named Iron-Arm Zhang, holding the hand of his twelve-year-old son, Little Hammer. “Last year, when a wandering Rank 3 martial master came to our town, he charged five taels of silver just to let Little Hammer stand in his courtyard and watch him punch a wooden post! Now Lord Pei says he’s going to teach our kids genuine Rank 4 Qi Gathering and Rank 5 Foundation Establishment arts for zero copper coins?”
