He spent the following days accompanying both old men while practicing his music skills together with Xiao Lu. Cang Lang was quite fascinated by Xiao Lu as he had never seen or heard about its type and also concluded it to be a mutated spirit beast. He was also shocked by Jiang Mang's illusion technique which made Li Yang quite proud as he was not the only person to be shocked by the technique while also seeing its potential uses. Cang Lang had even deemed the technique to be of the same level as low Xuan tier techniques which shocked Jiang Mang. As qi techniques were divided into four tiers namely Huang, Xuang, Di, and Tian in ascending order, and each tier is divided into low, mid, high, and peak stage techniques. An example of a technique would be hidden moon traversal which was a peak Xuang tier movement technique. Although this one was a signature technique of his master through his frequent usage of them, his master was still in the possession of some Di tier techniques which could fully demonstrate the potential of a saint realm cultivator. The same rules worked for other tiers of techniques or qi songs as each tier correspondents with a cultivation realm. This was also the reason that Jiang Mang was still unable to unleash hidden moon traversal and shooting leaf techniques full potential with his early foundation stage while having to exhaust a huge amount of qi to be able to use the techniques. He was lucky for his fast recovery rate of qi as it would have otherwise impossible to become proficient in even one technique in just two months.
The day of the welcoming ceremony arrived and Jiang Mang had the privilege to be escorted by vice-department head Cang Lan, who had promised to take good care of Jiang Mang to Li Yang, while also keeping an eye on the prince as his attitude could be prone to troublemaking, like when Ming Yan sought trouble with Jiang Man when they had never met. When Jiang Mang arrived under Cang Lang's escort, he attracted quite a bit of attention from the students and teachers in charge of the ceremony, which also induced reactions from the other new students. The crowd started guessing his identity until a person from the Kingdom of swords disclosed Jiang Mang identity as the blind prince with thrash musical instrument type twin spirits which earned him the contempt and disdain from his peers while the teachers and students responsible for welcoming became disinterested.
These reactions had no effect on the prince who could hear all the discussions, but they earned some of Cang Lan's ire and which should not be underestimated considering his high position in the academy. Jiang Mang and Cang Lang kept quietly waiting until the welcoming ceremony started. The headteacher responsible for all foundation realm students stood up and walked on stage to give the following speech: "Welcome new students of our prestigious Imperial Academy. Starting from today, all of you will be a part of the Imperial Academy. The academy will guide you on your cultivation path and help unearth all of your potentials. The academy is divided into four houses and four departments of which the four houses are responsible for guiding its students while the four departments are responsible for keeping order in the academy. Every one of you will be divided into four groups depending on your awakened profound spirit. The four houses are divided into the knight house, the sorcerer house, the musician's house, and the mystery house."
The headteacher stopped for a moment to scan through the crowd before continuing: "The academy is a ground for growth and rivalry and thus encourages competitive behavior. The point that I want to make the clearest is that every student is equal and everyone's status will disappear when they set foot into the academy. Every student will be given 100 Tiancai points upon entry, Tiancai points will be the only available currency in the academy and can only be acquired through completing certain tasks or through other official channels. Tiancai points are both a test and opportunity because the Imperial Academy is known to have one of the three greatest collections of martial techniques available to the public. Every student can acquire any technique as long as they have sufficient Tiancai points."
The headteacher left after his speech but the newcomers had become encouraged and competitive by the incisive given from the academy. Everyone was looking around them with competitive eyes filled with provocation at those around them but they were quickly calmed down as the teachers in charge of the ceremony started inspecting everyone's profound spirits. Those with weapon or tool type spirits sent towards the knight house, while those with elemental type spirits would be sent towards the sorcerer house. These two distinctions were the most common and only a small minority with uncommon profound spirits in the form of gods and demons, unidentified beast types or even ghosts would be sent towards the mystery house. At last, it would be the musical instrument type profound spirits that were even rarer and more uncommon than those going to the mystery house. These people would be sent towards the musician's house. The musician's house is the smallest but also weakest among the four houses due to its unique nature. The students from the musician's house were never required to participate in the combat and wilderness trials conducted by the academy like the other students who viewed the house and its students as a joke.
In this batch of new students, there were only two new students assigned to the house of music. The first person was Jiang Mang while the second was a girl who too had awakened a zither profound spirit. The girl's name was Xia Ruoyin and she was a princess from the Kingdom of ice. Her zither profound spirit also had an elemental affinity towards ice which was quite uncommon as this would allow her to participate in combat unlike other musical cultivators if she were to master some ice elemental martial techniques. This type of profound spirit is normally only seen once every hundred years if not longer. This made Xia Ruoyin much more important to the house of music than Jiang Mang who had twin spirits with two unknown types of qi, which seemed to specialize in illusions like most musical cultivator's profound spirits. However, Jiang Mang wasn't bothered by it as he knew that his profound spirits were much more mysterious and probably stronger than other people's profound spirits but he wouldn't disclose this secret to people he didn't trust. This would allow him to grow stronger without people's notice and he would be able to safeguard himself better this way.