When the scholars arrived, they all thought they would be teaching the brightest talents in the world, embarking on the grand path of pursuing knowledge and truth. Who could have guessed that, after coming here, all they did was the work of zookeepers—truly an insult to their scholarly dignity.

The three deans sat together, using their six eyes to accuse Principal, the great swindler.

Benjamin Foster remained unmoved: “This should be an issue with the textbooks and curriculum outline. Previously, I only mentored a few students privately. This is our first official year running the school, so we lack experience. Next time we encounter something like this, we can promptly call a teaching meeting and make adjustments as needed.”

“Principal Foster,” the director of mecha operations said, “do you know how much an elementary diploma costs?”

The education system in the Eighth Star System is different from elsewhere—much simpler, with only two levels: “elementary” and “advanced.” Elementary is basic education; you can go through fifteen years in a public school step by step, or become self-taught and then take the government exam at a designated location. Once you obtain the elementary education certificate, you can participate in vocational training and choose employment, or you can choose to continue your studies and enter advanced education.

Of course, advanced education isn’t something you can just choose. Across the entire Eighth Star System, there are residents on eighteen planets, but only eleven higher education institutions, six of which have already closed down, leaving only bare campuses and a couple of security guards to prevent vagrants and criminals from turning the schools into hideouts.

The vast majority of people probably don’t even know what a university looks like.

Going to school is useless—that’s common knowledge in the Eighth Star System.

Under these circumstances, in its first year, Xinghai Academy had over a hundred students enroll. In the second year, it received more than three hundred applications, and even had something like an “acceptance rate”—truly a miracle in the Eighth Star System. The miracle wasn’t because Principal Foster was especially handsome and charming, but because it was rumored that Xinghai Academy’s backer was Fourth Brother.

After all, this was an era when universities had to cling to the protection of gangsters.

“Thirty credits for a fake diploma, guaranteed quality and authenticity. Add another one hundred and eight, and you can get a full set of application materials, guaranteed admission—want to meet Fourth Brother? Want to enter the black hole? Only one hundred and thirty-eight, you won’t get ripped off or cheated,” said the dean of the School of Information Science. “Yes, it’s the group who dropped out from our school who are doing this.”

Benjamin Foster: “……”

The dean of the School of Design was born with drooping, sorrowful eyebrows, and now they hung even lower, looking even more miserable: “Principal Foster, the students you recruited basically all came just to catch a glimpse of that gentleman. It’s one thing if they’re just hooligans, but they’re illiterate hooligans. While we’re committed to being gardeners, if you insist on making us plant a whole garden of live rats, isn’t that asking too much?”

Benjamin Foster quickly calculated his own “selling price” in his mind, then smiled and began to play the sage: “That’s not the right way to look at it. Every great journey is paved with thorns at the start. Every sage was once seen as a foolish man trying to move mountains. As the old saying goes, ‘Only the road to hell is paved with well-meaning flowers.’ Aren’t hardships the only way to reach our dreams?”

The three deans drooped their heads like frostbitten eggplants. The “chicken soup” from Principal was truly hard to swallow.

Benjamin Foster: “I know you’ve all worked hard, so I’ve decided to give every faculty and staff member a raise this year—everyone gets a twenty percent increase.”

The eggplants quietly sprouted new buds, regaining a bit of vitality.

Benjamin Foster played both good cop and bad cop by himself. After the good news, his face turned cold: “According to incomplete statistics, the dropout rate at elementary schools across the major planets of the Eighth Star System is as high as ninety percent. The vast majority of applicants haven’t completed elementary education, and their certificates are fake—I know this. But dropping out isn’t always voluntary. How do you know there aren’t students among them desperately trying to seize a glimmer of hope? Colleagues, do you know that in other star systems, not far from us in the same world, elementary education is no longer even necessary?”

“Eden…” someone murmured.

“Eden,” Benjamin Foster stood up, hands behind his back, speaking eloquently, “In Eden, children have basic knowledge directly implanted into their memories by the mental network before the age of ten. They call this ‘painless learning.’ Lie in a nutrient pod for a month, and it’s like enlightenment—they naturally master knowledge. Can you imagine? They don’t have to repeat memorization and forgetting like us, wandering down the wrong path, struggling to find someone to guide them. You complain that the students’ foundations are poor, but in this sense, every one of us here has a poor foundation. We lost at the starting line the moment we were born. But so what? We can revise the textbooks, take it step by step, teach slowly, and let the students learn slowly. If you give up on others so easily, can you face the confused and lost person you once were?”

The meeting room was silent. It was unclear whether they were awed by Principal Foster’s concern for the nation and its people, or if their consciences had been awakened by the salary increase.