The semi-finals had entered the final stage, and the ten weakest people that Hua Kai had picked out included three secondary saints, six giants, and Hua Chengwen. The ten of them would fight in pairs, and the victors would become China's top 20 scholars.
Hua Chengwen drew lots to draw a famous secondary saint. When the audience saw this, they couldn't help but feel that it was a pity. The famous secondary saint was good at debating, and this famous secondary saint was believed to have the ability to enter the world's top ten.
However, when he saw the topic that he had drawn, Hua Chengwen revealed a confident smile.
This was a topic about the relationship between the savage beasts and humans. From the start, both of them had thought that the savage beasts and humans were competing and promoting each other. The savage beasts could promote the development of the human race.
However, their thoughts gradually diverged. The famous secondary saint felt that they should eliminate all demonic beasts, reduce the number of savage beasts, and keep a certain number of savage beasts for human soldiers and students to train. Otherwise, without competition, the human race might be defeated.
However, Hua Chengwen didn't think so. He felt that all savage beasts should be eliminated. There were many civilized countries and tribes in the world, and China should implement the Confucian school's concept of being a king on the outside but a saint on the inside. The experts should focus their efforts outside the Eastern Divine Prefecture and strengthen the basic infrastructure, allowing the human race's population to grow rapidly. Only then would they have the energy to eliminate the savage beasts outside the Eastern Divine Prefecture.
Having a perfect national policy to guide the public's opinion could maintain the human race's competitive spirit and avoid internal strife.
At this stage, Hua Chengwen had already led the relationship with the savage beasts to the development of the human race. The famous secondary saint could only keep on finding difficulties and setting up traps for Hua Chengwen, but they were all broken by Hua Chengwen.
After over nine hours of intense debate, the famous secondary saint was left with a flower petal. He took the initiative to stand up and admit defeat.
The famous scholars were all defeated, and no one could enter the top 20. This made many famous scholars very disappointed. The famous scholars still had a lot of room for improvement. Over the past few years, the Confucian school, Legalism school, and Novels school had been learning, improving, and perfecting themselves. This was why they had such results today.
When the final round of the semi-finals ended, it was already the second day of the ninth lunar month. The weather this year was warmer, and it was still very mild in September. It wasn't like before, where all the leaves had fallen.
The Hundred Schools Debate had entered the final round, and all the high platforms had been removed. There were only two debate platforms left on the last platform. The final moment that everyone was looking forward to had arrived.
In the finals, everyone would go through three debates. In the end, a ranking would be given based on the results of the debates. However, in the end, the strongest person from the Hundred Schools of Philosophers would have to be voted on by all the people in the Huaxia Country.
The number of votes of the strongest person in first place multiplied by ten would be his final score. The second place multiplied by nine, the third place multiplied by eight, and the tenth place multiplied by the number of votes.
The votes of the eleventh place were divided by 2, the twelfth by 3, the nineteenth by 10, and the twentieth by 20.
It was more reasonable to use this method to rank all the scholars.
On the fourth day of the ninth month, the finals of the Hundred Family Debate began. More than three hundred thousand people gathered at the Hundred Family Academy to listen to the debates.
The 20 contestants drew lots to choose their opponents. When the results were announced, many people felt that it was a pity.
Hua Chengwen drew Saint Ceng Can, Saint Kong actually drew Saint Meng, and Saint Laozi drew the Yin-Yang School's secondary saint. All kinds of infighting started.
The first debate was between the Confucian School's Yan Sheng and the big son of the School of Novels. The two of them were debating about the relationship between the mind and material things. Everyone thought that Yan Sheng would win, but in the end, Yan Sheng was always at a disadvantage.
This big son of the School of Novels was Hua Kai's ninth disciple. He was familiar with all of Hua Kai's sacred texts, had entered the Journey to the West three times, and had also entered the Three Kingdoms and the Dream of the Red Decks. He had a very deep understanding of the virtual world. Yan Sheng brought the topic to the conversion between the virtual world and mental energy, explaining that the willpower world was the foundation of the human race and that the willpower should guide people's actions.
On the other hand, Hua Kai's disciple put the human race in the perspective of a bystander in the world. He said that the human race and demonic beasts were both passers-by in the development of the world. The rules of the world had always existed, and the human race had always been learning and making use of the rules. Therefore, regardless of whether it was what they saw or felt, it was only a kind of representation of the world, a kind of portrayal of the world's energy.
This went on until the evening. Yan Sheng's petals fell more than the big son of the School of Novels. In the end, he could only cup his hands and admit defeat.
The third contestant was Hua Kai's eldest disciple, Cao Zirui. As the secondary saint of the School of Novels, he was thought highly of by many people. In the process of dealing with the big son of the School of Novels, he only used two hours to make his opponent raise his hand and admit defeat. The four people from the School of Novels had entered the finals, and the first two matches had ended with victory.
When it came to the eighth match, it was the match that everyone was looking forward to. It was Hua Chengwen versus the School of Confucianism's Ceng Sheng. Ceng Sheng was the person that many people thought had a chance to fight for the throne of first place.
Hua Chengwen stood opposite Ceng Sheng without a trace of fear on his face. At this time, it was possible for him to meet anyone. Many people were cheering for Hua Chengwen below the stage. Saint Ceng Can also smiled at him.
"Hua Chengwen greets Grandmaster!"
Hua Chengwen bowed to Ceng Sheng as a disciple. Many of his ideas were inherited from Hua Kai, and many of Hua Kai's ideas were learned from Saint Ceng Can. Therefore, the pressure on Hua Chengwen to fight against Ceng Can was imaginable.
"You are very good. Among the princes and princesses born by His Majesty, you are the one who values learning the most. It is only a matter of time before you become a saint.
However, each school of thought has its own strengths. Although you are representing the School of Novels, Confucianism, Legalism, Mohism, and more than 30 other schools of thought have already been promoted to great masters. They are not inferior to your father at all.
Try to understand the various schools of thought. They are the essence of the human race's tens of thousands of years of experience. Although there are some mistakes and deviations, the direction will not be wrong, "Saint Ceng Can said to Hua Chengwen.
"Thank you for your guidance, Grandmaster!" Hua Chengwen thanked him. He knew that Saint Ceng Can was sincerely guiding him.
"Then please!" Saint Ceng Can let Hua Chengwen start first.
The topic of discussion between the two was the influence of Huaxia's citizen hierarchy on the country, as well as the areas where Huaxia still needed to improve in terms of citizen management and the distribution of rights.
This seemed simple, but it actually included an analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of various national systems, as well as an analysis of Huaxia's current situation.
Hua Chengwen was at an absolute disadvantage from the start. Saint Ceng Can could answer the advantages and disadvantages of various systems in one go. He guided the topic of discussion to the Confucianism's moral and cognitive education of the common people, highlighting the importance of the Confucianism to Huaxia's system. The citizen system was actually a system that allowed more people to speak up and solve all the problems in the world. The Confucianism played a guiding role in this.
In less than three hours, Hua Chengwen surrendered. As the dean of the Confucian Academy, Saint Ceng Can's strength was witnessed by everyone.
In the tenth round, Meng Sheng defeated Kong Sheng. This caused everyone to raise their eyebrows. Kong Sheng was a person that scholars had heard of, but he was actually defeated by Meng Sheng, who had just become a saint.
Other than these focused battles, Li Si of Legalism defeated Secondary Sage Shu of Confucianism, which caused many people to raise their eyebrows.
After ten days, the first round would definitely be completed. The contents of the Hundred Schools Debate began to spread throughout Huaxia every day. Many people learned a lot of knowledge from the debate quotations. Many officials of the Top Three Schools of Huaxia even traveled thousands of miles to Xia City to watch the grand debate.
After two days of rest, the second round of the debate continued. This time, the contestants were relatively weak. After many people failed in the second round of the debate, Hua Kai quickly arranged for them to compete in the third round, putting the strong contestants at the back. Everyone had a rough ranking of their strength in their minds. It was just a matter of whether there would be any accidents in the future.
Hua Chengwen faced Mo Sheng in the second round. Everyone thought that Mo Sheng would win, but the two fought until the last moment. Hua Chengwen actually won by a small margin. Many people could not help but go crazy for him to be able to defeat a saint in the realm of everyone.
After the debate, Hua Kai saw that Hua Chengwen's spiritual power was greatly depleted, so he asked him to come find him at night.
Hua Kai gave his son a spirit pill to recover his spiritual power and gave him some pointers. That night, Hua Chengwen broke through to become a giant of the school of Novels.
On the first of October, the weather had slowly turned cold. The debate that had lasted for three months was finally coming to an end.
Half of the contestants had completed all three rounds of debate. Hua Chengwen was idolized by many young people because he was only 29 years old this year.
There were only a few crucial matches left. The six contestants left were all winners of two rounds. They were the Scholarly Sage Ceng Can and Mencius, the Secondary Sage Cao Zirui, the Legalism Sage Guan Ran, the Legalism giant Li Si, and the Taoist Sage Lao Zi.
Li Si was able to win two rounds as a Giant, which was enough to show his strength. Only by winning the last round could they have a chance to fight for the throne of the world's number one.
The Academy of the Hundred Schools was crowded. Everyone listened carefully to every sentence of the debaters. As long as they could understand a sentence, they would benefit immensely.
The first round was between the Legalism Sage Guan Ran and the Taoist Sage Lao Zi. This was known as one of the strongest battles. Lao Zi had never taken the initiative to attack since the beginning of the debate.
The two of them were debating the relationship between the country and the family. This seemingly simple topic had many conflicts. How to balance the interests of the family and the country became the focus of their debate.
Taoism emphasized inaction. Inaction was not to let everything take its course. Instead, it was to do everything that one could do to make things develop in a better direction. As for the ending, everything had to follow the rules. This was similar to Hua Kai's request for the country of Hua Xia to stand in the position of guiding the people.
Lao Zi's answers to Guan Ran's questions were watertight. Guan Ran only lost two petals, but Lao Zi did not lose a single one. Guan Ran's management of the people was based on the law. Lao Zi believed that the law was only the last means of social management. Moral education was the key to the prosperity of the human race.
In the afternoon and evening, Lao Zi only had two more petals than Guan Ran. Their battle had just begun.
Everyone was intoxicated and did not want to leave. Hua Kai did not stop the debate and let it continue.
For three days, the two sides were evenly matched. The two of them debated from the understanding of the Sages and ordinary Golden Core cultivators to the future of the Soul Formation cultivator. They discussed everything, but it was always the core of the debate. On the afternoon of the third day, Guan Ran surrendered. This debate was won by Lao Zi.