Chapter 186
The explosive popularity of medicinal cuisine was both expected—and unexpected.
It was expected because Xie Xingchen knew the medicinal dishes he put out didn’t taste bad. Setting efficacy aside, as long as he released them, they were guaranteed to win people over on flavor alone.
But it was unexpected because even Xie Xingchen himself hadn’t anticipated that, in such a short time, they would win the hearts of so many beings!
The most obvious sign was this—
In just a few days, the entry for “medicinal cuisine” in the lexicon was revised countless times.
And every revision was more accurate than the last, with the word count doubling again and again.
Forget everything else—just looking at how fast the numbers climbed, you could feel how hot it was, how insane it had become.
As the initiator of the medicinal-cuisine wave, whenever Xie Xingchen watched the flood of medicinal-cuisine livestreams, he had only one expression—utter awe.
Compared to his own dishes—which at least followed rules, with a basis and logic—other beings chasing hype were truly shameless: they’d toss random plants into a pot, stew them together, and still call it “medicinal cuisine.”
They were only getting away with it because medical technology was so advanced that it wasn’t easy to kill someone. Otherwise, Xie Xingchen figured he’d be showing up in the crime section of the news.
After thinking it over, he ultimately stepped forward and called for a “stop.”
But there were plenty of reckless fools in this world. Even after Xie Xingchen explained plant toxicity and drug incompatibilities clearly and thoroughly, he still couldn’t stop some beings from courting death and stirring up trouble.
So he chose to let them.
Kind words can’t save someone determined to die.
They were grown beings already—they should have their own judgment.
He had done his duty to warn them. If they refused to listen, what could he do?
Besides, compared to medicinal cuisine, he had something more urgent—recruiting a massive number of cultivators.
With Chinese herbal medicine and medicinal cuisine exploding in popularity, Xie Xingchen naturally realized his current cultivators weren’t enough.
He had never stopped trying to recruit this kind of rare and precious talent.
But previously, his hiring method was almost entirely referrals. That ensured the cultivators he brought in had solid ability and decent character—but it kept the numbers tightly capped.
Now Earth was a D-rank planet, and its development was on a completely different level than before. Its demand for cultivators was skyrocketing without limit.
So this time, he decided to change the recruitment approach.
—Open social recruiting, and go all-in on campus recruiting.
Right now, it was exactly the period when cultivation majors at major universities were about to start internships.
As a partner of several top universities, Xie Xingchen naturally had the qualifications to be one of their approved internship placements.
So when the university leadership received his request to participate in campus recruiting, they weren’t surprised at all—instead, they felt a sense of relief, like the second shoe had finally dropped.
That’s what they were saying!
What company partners with a university purely for one thing?
Normally, it’s all for the later pipeline—campus recruiting.
But Earth Trading had been collaborating for over a year without mentioning campus recruiting at all, to the point that they were starting to doubt reality.
After ending the call, a few administrators at the First Academy of Human Civilization couldn’t help sighing.
“Xie Xingchen really can hold his nerve.”
“He suppressed it for more than a year before bringing up campus recruitment. Now we’re almost embarrassed to make things difficult for him.”
“Too smart and too steady. Professor Ni is truly impressive to have taught a student like this.”
“…”
As they chatted, they brewed the tea Xie Xingchen had gifted them.
This thing called “tea” was genuinely good.
Ever since they started drinking it, these old men would gather whenever they had time to brew tea together.
The clear tea soup left a sweet aftertaste, and a special long-lasting sense of clean tranquility—perfect for elderly folks who were constantly being driven up the wall by students.
The First Academy of Human Civilization was Xie Xingchen’s alma mater.
Given how accomplished he was now, they weren’t going to block his campus recruiting qualification.
Not to mention he often sent gifts, donated equipment and supplies to the school.
So when they learned he wanted to run campus recruiting jointly across multiple universities, they finished their tea and then—still working hard—called their old rivals to lend a hand.
Only to find the other side had already agreed immediately.
And they even learned—
Not only had all the partner universities agreed, but even universities that hadn’t partnered with Xie Xingchen wanted to “share a slice of the pie.”
This kind of eager, unsolicited interest left the administrators stunned.
Faced with this, the leaders who had been relaxed a moment ago suddenly grew anxious.
Without waiting for detailed hiring requirements, the principal—who had permission to edit the official website—hurriedly added “Earth” to the list of internship placements available to current students.
Plenty of other department heads did the same.
In the end, the news spread at top speed.
Chao Xinyi was a fourth-year cultivation major at the First Academy of Human Civilization.
Today was his last day of classes.
After class, he would begin selecting an internship placement. Once he passed the placement’s interview, he would do a three-month internship. After that, he could receive his diploma smoothly.
He felt happy, but also a little sad.
Happy because internship time had arrived—sad because internship meant separating from his best friend.
The two of them wanted different placements. Their intersection would probably shrink little by little from here on.
Thinking of that, Chao Xinyi couldn’t help letting out a gloomy sigh.
After class, no one wanted to leave the classroom.
Because this was the final class of their student life.
They looked at one another unwillingly, talking about childish but sincere things.
But then a scream shattered that farewell mood.
“Chao Xinyi, what are you doing?!”
“Stop scaring people for no reason!”
“I almost got scared to death!”
“You better pray you’ve got a good excuse, or I’m definitely hitting you.”
“…”
Everyone glared at Chao Xinyi.
But at that moment, Chao Xinyi was already stunned.
Only after a long while did he come back to his senses.
Then he pounced onto his best friend and yelled wildly, “Big Head! Big Head! We can intern together now—hahaha! We finally don’t have to separate!”
The boy nicknamed “Big Head”: “?”
Before he could ask what was going on, Chao Xinyi spilled everything he’d just seen.
Chao Xinyi cried with emotion. “Wuwuwu—the thing the seniors waited for and never got, we finally waited for! Earth is finally an internship placement this year! So we’re not going anywhere—we’re going to Earth!”
The entire classroom erupted.
“Seriously?”
“You’re not messing with us, right?”
“We can really choose Earth as an internship placement?!”
Earth!
It was actually Earth!
They could apply to intern on Earth this year?
Ahhhhh!
Was this real?
Given Earth’s current fame, in students’ minds it was practically a god-tier existence.
So the moment they heard it, their eyes lit up. Even the least sociable students surged forward, all asking questions at once.
However—
Chao Xinyi didn’t actually know either.
He had just seen “Earth” on the school’s internship website and shouted in excitement.
Everyone: “…”
Fine. We’ll check ourselves.
One after another, they hurriedly opened the internship website.
Sure enough, at the very top of the selectable internship placements, they saw “Earth Trading.”
Although Earth had a “D” after it, indicating it was only a D-rank planet—
the moment they saw “Earth,” and that unmistakable blue-planet icon, they didn’t even bother looking at the planets ranked “B,” “A,” or even “S” ahead of it.
Everyone had one clear target—
they tapped into the “Earth Trading” requirements page.
“Huh? Why is it blank?”
“No requirements? That’s impossible. Did the school not have time to add the content yet?”
“This is awkward… should we go to the admin office and urge them?”
“Yeah! We have to choose internship placements tomorrow. If this isn’t ready, it’s so awkward.”
“Wuwuwu I just want to know if Earth Trading requires a written test or interview, and how many interns they plan to recruit…”
Painfully realistic questions.
But they were exactly what everyone wanted to know.
Because anyone paying attention to Earth Trading’s hiring knew this was a company that would rather lack people than hire subpar ones.
It used to be that way.
And now—even for interns—it was likely the same.
And besides—
On the school website, Earth’s listing was in normal black text, not red.
That meant their school wasn’t the only university cooperating with Earth Trading. Earth would be recruiting interns at other universities too.
Once they realized this, all that sentimental reluctance evaporated.
Reluctant about what?
The most important thing now was ensuring they could actually get an internship on Earth.
Only by becoming an Earth Trading intern could they have a real chance, after graduation, to stay on Earth as cultivators!
“Forget it, I’m going back to study.”
“Don’t invite me to tonight’s gathering—I’m reviewing what we learned these past few years.”
“Honestly, maybe don’t gather at all? Go study! Losing to classmates is one thing—losing to students from other schools? That’s shameful!”
“…”
No one knew how many interns Earth Trading would take, so everyone assumed the number would be low.
All the students who wanted Earth collectively got so nervous their hands shook.
Chao Xinyi dragged his best friend and sprinted back to the dorm.
Then he stuffed years of handwritten notes into the other guy’s arms.
Liang Fei looked at the thick stack of notebooks and felt his head swell.
He stared in disbelief. “Chao Xinyi, are you sick? You actually handwrite notes?”
In this era, someone still handwrites notes?
He was speechless.
Chao Xinyi shot him a look and let out a cold laugh, then shouted, “Stop changing the subject. Hurry up and read the notes and memorize. Don’t think being good at practical work is enough. Earth Trading’s first hiring round was always written tests. If you fail the written test, no matter how good your hands-on skills are, you won’t even get a chance to show them!”
Written test first, then interview, then practical assessment.
If you couldn’t pass the written test, your practical skill would never see daylight.
Chao Xinyi, determined to go to Earth with Liang Fei, could only “watch him like a hawk.”
Either way—there was still one week.
Reviewing notes and raising written-test scores could only help, never hurt.
No matter what the recruitment process ended up being, knowledge in your brain belonged to you.
Holding onto that belief, Chao Xinyi dragged Liang Fei into grinding with him.
Liang Fei couldn’t stand suffering alone, so he dragged the neighboring dorm’s classmates into grinding too.
Then those classmates dragged more people.
One pulled another, another pulled a third—until, in the end, the entire fourth-year class about to intern was forcibly turned into a pack of grind-kings.
It was only one week, but their effort was the greatest of their four years.
Their laser-focused study attitude—cherishing every second—made the faculty laugh and cry at the same time.
But it turned out they were grinding for the right reason.
Because Earth Trading’s final campus recruitment process really was—written test, interview, practical assessment.
The written test was done at each student’s own school.
They logged into Earth Trading’s mini-program under normal exam conditions and answered questions.
There were no essays or short answers—only single choice, multiple choice, and true/false—so the score requirement was relatively high:
Out of 1,000 questions, only those scoring 700+ could advance to the interview.
But for students at good schools, getting 70% wasn’t hard.
Seeing the requirement, everyone felt they could do it.
And seeing so many classmates apply, in the end, aside from those who truly couldn’t change internship placements, the rest were persuaded by peers to choose Earth Trading.
Internship selection wasn’t urgent anyway. They could apply to Earth Trading first—if they failed, then apply elsewhere.
After all, they had a full two months to choose placements.
Earth Trading’s first campus recruitment written test took place at each school and was no different from normal exams.
No whispering. No early submission. Bell rings, start. Seven hours later, end. At the end, the system automatically submitted the paper.
1,000 questions in seven hours—an average of 2–3 questions per minute.
The volume was brutal. Students had almost no time to think.
But the content wasn’t overly difficult: over 80% was basic knowledge. As long as you studied seriously, you could score. Truly hard questions made up only about 1%.
Even so, everyone felt like crying.
Too many questions—really, too many.
Even if the questions weren’t hard, the sheer number meant they couldn’t think. It became pure reflex answering.
And Boss Xie had said no early submission?
Honestly, under these conditions, even top students couldn’t submit early, right?
Two to three questions per minute!
And besides the basic questions, there were still some tough ones. What monster could hand in early?
At first, everyone was stunned.
In the first few minutes, complaints were endless.
But soon, they realized complaining was useless—it only lowered efficiency. So everyone forced their attention back onto the test.
By the end, the proctors noticed every student was fully locked in.
Even those little habits—squeezing hands, rolling necks—were gone.
When the seven hours ended, regardless of students howling that they hadn’t finished, the system automatically submitted all papers.
“It’s too hard… I still had fifty questions unanswered,” one student slumped on the desk, dead inside.
However—he was humblebragging.
“He Xiaoxiao, I think you’re asking to get hit. You only left fifty unanswered? I still had 148 unanswered!”
“Wuwuwu me too! I had over a hundred unanswered. The questions weren’t hard, but the time was way too tight!”
“Who didn’t? I had 129 unanswered! But I’m smart—when there were five minutes left, I went to the back and filled in random answers first. After that I went back to do what I could. So I submitted a fully filled answer sheet, hahaha…”
Everyone: “?”
Are you even human?!
They stared, dumbfounded.
Looking at… no, not one, but several people showing off that they’d filled everything in.
At this moment, please calculate everyone’s psychological shadow area.
Regret. Infinite regret.
But it was too late.
Because only a few minutes after the exam, scores were released.
The students who had filled everything in immediately started shouting excitedly.
“Ah! I actually got 856!”
“Hahaha I’m over 800 too—and I was just a tiny bit from 900!”
“Me too, me too! But not as high as you guys, I only got 803.”
Comparing their scores to everyone else’s—
Most were in the 700s. A smaller group reached 800s. And 900s were only a handful.
The problem was: those 800s and 900s were all top-ranked academic students.
Now look at the “test-taking-strategy” students.
Yep. Great. Every single one of them was in the 800s.
Everyone: rage.jpg
Throw the table!
This is toxic.
The students felt stifled seeing the scores.
Xie Xingchen, seeing the scores, went numb.
Sure, he designed this massive question set to test the students’ true knowledge reserves.
But… he really didn’t expect that 99.9% of candidates hadn’t even finished the questions.
You should know: the system could generate scores instantly the moment it submitted.
Those few minutes of “waiting” were purely because the chief examiner (Xie Xingchen) was so “shocked” by the empty sections on the papers that he forgot to press the [Publish Scores] button.
Dozens of schools. Tens of thousands of papers.
And only a dozen-plus fully completed papers?
Xie Xingchen almost wanted to criticize the teachers.
But when he pulled up those few fully completed papers, he realized the scores were only in the mid-800s anyway.
And for some candidates who failed the cutoff but still scored 650+, they had left 100–200 questions blank—
Xie Xingchen genuinely covered his face.
Oh my god.
Were Star Alliance beings really this… honest?
These were multiple-choice and true/false!
For this format, isn’t it standard to spend a few minutes at the end randomly filling in answers if you’re out of time?
A full 100–200 questions!
With good luck, grabbing fifty points wouldn’t be hard. With bad luck, you could still get a baseline 10–30 points, right?
Xie Xingchen: numb.jpg
His expression at that moment was bizarre.
He didn’t look like a boss about to welcome a huge wave of cultivation interns.
He looked more like… a teacher furious at students for not living up to their potential.
The beings who had never experienced Huaguo exam culture couldn’t understand that suffocating feeling: seeing piles of multiple-choice and true/false left blank when you could’ve guessed.
They assumed the boss’s strange expression was because he was dissatisfied with student performance, so they didn’t dare speak.
Well…
Although the boss’s requirements were harsh, it was true there was no perfect paper.
The Earth Trading cultivators—who hadn’t personally endured seven hours of 1,000 questions—imagined that test and couldn’t help sighing along.
So when Xie Xingchen finally came back to himself, he was even more confused.
He asked, “What are you sighing about?”
This time they finally spoke, rushing to comfort him.
Xie Xingchen: “?”
He couldn’t help laughing and explained, “No, I’m not sighing for that reason. And I believe the lack of perfect scores isn’t because students couldn’t do it—it’s because we didn’t give enough time. Two to three questions per minute… probably not many students today can adapt to that.”
Two to three questions per minute?
Everyone stared at him in shock.
What kind of demon are you?!
If you don’t convert it, you don’t realize. Once you convert it, you’re terrified.
Isn’t that exactly 2–3 questions per minute? And 1% were ultra-hard questions—getting a perfect score would be weirder!
After all… compared to written knowledge, cultivation training focuses far more on hands-on practice.
“So, boss, what are you worried about?”
“Yeah, with that volume and time, I think students were already amazing. If it were us, we might not score that high either.”
“Exactly. By that math, boss, you should be happy.”
This was a generation gap.
Xie Xingchen opened the statistics page, tapped a certain value, and asked them, “Don’t you think this number is a problem?”
Looking at the line—
[Completed all questions: 18]
—and remembering the insane test volume, everyone shook their heads in unison.
Xie Xingchen tapped the line again and said helplessly, “How can you think there’s no problem? This is over ten thousand papers, and only eighteen beings finished!
How can that not be a problem? It’s a huge problem!
Those are points! How can you leave them bald and empty? If everyone still had 100–200 questions unanswered on average, why couldn’t they spend a few minutes randomly filling answers first, finish the sheet, then come back to do questions properly? Random guessing could still give you dozens of points! Our questions are all multiple-choice and true/false!”
Xie Xingchen truly didn’t understand.
Hearing him, everyone suddenly realized.
Holy crap!
Yeah—why?
They hadn’t even thought of it just now!
But… you can do tests like that?
Xie Xingchen: ? smile
If you met any Huaguo teacher, you’d get scolded to death for leaving free points on the table.
You won’t even take free points—so what do you want?
Are you all idiots?
Xie Xingchen felt both angry and amused.
Especially when he saw those papers that were just a few points short of 700 but had dozens upon dozens of questions left blank—his eyes hurt, his heart hurt.
But there was nothing he could do.
The rule was set: only 700+ passed. So only 700+ could pass.
And now that the scores were out, he had to prepare the second-round interviews and shift his focus there.
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