Chapter 59: Spare the Vanquished and Crush the Proud

Simon's speech was safe and conventional. He approached his topic from the perspective of universal education, citing a few statistics from educational history.

His strength lay in clear organization; his weakness, a lack of anything memorable.

After listening, you might say, "Not bad," but a few minutes later, you would forget what he had said.

Phillips focused his speech on the governance dilemmas in the New Continent colonies.

His grandfather was a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Colonial Affairs, so he had the administrative details at his fingertips.

The index numbers of colonial regulations, the appointment procedures for governors, the legal jurisdictions of autonomous regions... his specialized knowledge was solid, his logic clear.

But he turned his speech into a policy analysis report. From start to finish, he didn't make the audience's hearts beat faster once.

The judges took notes, their pens moving at an unhurried, steady pace.

Catherine's angle was much sharper.

She clutched her manuscript taking the stage, but after unfolding it for a single glance, she flipped it face-down onto the podium.

She spoke about the "cleansing" of the Gaelic Highlands.

Two hundred years ago, the Empire's government and the landowners of the Gaelic Lowlands joined forces to expel the indigenous highlanders, burning their villages and seizing their pastures.

"They called this 'progress.'"

The red-haired girl's voice echoed between the stone walls, every consonant carrying the distinct, sharp edge of a highlander.

"They called driving my ancestors down from the mountains 'introducing civilization.'"

She spoke faster than in the first round, but she wasn't rushed.

She left perfect pauses between every sentence, giving her anger room to breathe.

"But my ancestors had their own language, their own laws, their own land.

They lived for thousands of years before they were 'civilized.'"

"Thousands of years. Is that civilized enough?"

She hurled that question at the audience of over five hundred people. She offered no answer, using it instead as a launching point to ask a deeper question:

When one civilization eradicates another in the name of "civilization," can it still be considered civilized itself?

Several professors on the judging panel exchanged glances.

A girl from an old noble Gaelic family, standing in a hall of academia, indicting the Empire for what it had done to her homeland.

It took courage, but it also required restraint.

She managed that restraint perfectly.

It didn't devolve into a mere venting of anger; she used her accusation to construct a question everyone was forced to face.

When the applause erupted, it was far more enthusiastic than in the first round.

But Richard noticed that several judges were not clapping, just writing earnestly on their sheets.

On a scoring sheet, the boundary between academia and politics was blurred.

Montagu took the stage after her.

The blond young man stood in the center of the podium, the manuscript he had prepared in fifteen minutes held neatly in his left hand.

He glanced only at the opening line before setting the paper down.

He spoke about the dialectical relationship between the Empire's expansion and the spread of civilization.

His phrasing was beautiful, his structure rigorous.

He acknowledged that expansion brought violence, yet he pointed out that schools, hospitals, and courthouses did indeed rise from the ruins of that violence.

He did not shy away from the dark side, but he always managed to find a path beside the darkness leading to a bright conclusion.

It was a stairway paved in brocade, and every step he took upon it was both correct and elegant.

In the end, he quoted Virgil's famous lines from the Aeneid:

"Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento—parcere subiectis et debellare superbos!"

(Remember, Roman, to rule the peoples with authority, to spare the vanquished, and to crush the proud!)

The quote was chosen perfectly. Virgil's status in Roman literature lent the conclusion both academic weight and emotional impact.

In the parlance of Richard's past life, it instantly cranked the prestige through the roof.

Several people on the judging panel took frequent notes, their pens moving noticeably faster than when they had listened to the others.

When Montagu finished speaking, the applause was louder than for anyone before him.

In the Imperial Capital, inside this chapel considered a symbolic landmark by the academic system, in front of the professors and social elites sitting below...

The conclusion that "the Empire's expansion came at a cost but was ultimately beneficial" was the safest, and the most popular.

The last to take the stage was Richard.

With Montagu being so outstanding just before him, the pressure on Richard was the heaviest.

"Number twenty-three, Richard Williams, Greenwood School."

He stood up from the competitors' seating area and walked toward the podium, completely empty-handed.

The paper he had written on during the prep time had long since been crumpled into a ball and shoved into his pocket.

As he walked onto the stage, he passed Montagu, who was returning to his seat.

The two brushed shoulders in the aisle.

Montagu turned his head to glance at him and gave a brief nod.

Richard nodded back.

As he stood before the podium, the Seven Sages on the dome looked down at him.

In the mural, those seven philosophers were discussing the nature of the "veil" beneath the moonlight, though ordinary people only saw seven wise men debating philosophical questions.

Over five hundred pairs of eyes stared at him.

Mr. Holland sat in the front row of the audience, his hands resting on his knees, his bald head gleaming faintly in the afternoon light.

Mr. West sat beside him, his arms crossed over his chest, his face completely expressionless.

Ms. Grant sat further back, her glasses gleaming slightly.

Palmer and Hutchinson sat in a corner of the audience area, two paper bags resting in front of them.

These were likely the pies they had gone out to buy, intending to eat them during the break.

At the judging panel, all six pens were poised and ready.

Isabella Ashford sat on the far right, her cuff pressing down on her score sheet.

Her pen was tucked between her index and middle fingers in a casual grip.

Richard spoke. "When you stand in a room, you will say that the room is your world."

His voice expanded between the stone walls under the dome, clear and steady. The volume wasn't high, but every word reached the very last row.

"The walls are the borders, the doors and windows are the exits, the roof is the sky."

"You eat, sleep, read, and think inside this room. You believe you understand everything."

The people in the audience, having just listened to Montagu's lengthy discourse, were reeling their thoughts back from the grand narrative of the Empire.

With three short sentences, he pulled every single one of them into a room.

"But what if one day, you hear water pipes rattling inside the walls? What would you do?"

The air over the audience grew faintly still.

The previous contestants had all talked about colonialism, laws, cultural conflicts... Grand narratives. Elite perspectives. Looking down from on high.

His opening was a room, a wall, and a water pipe.

Everyone lived in a room, and everyone had heard noises of unknown origin coming from inside the walls.

"Most people would say, 'That's a water pipe. It has nothing to do with me.'"

His gaze swept from the judging panel across the audience area, then swept back.

"Their civilization is everything inside this room.

Within the walls is the known world. Beyond the walls? It doesn't exist."

"They can hear the sounds of the pipes. Occasionally, in the dead of night, a creak or a gurgle. But they choose not to investigate."

"Because investigating means acknowledging one thing."

His voice dropped half a pitch.

"Something is operating on the other side of the wall."

"It is always running. It was running before you were born, and it keeps running after you fall asleep.

Your room, your life, your entire daily existence—it is all built atop those unseen pipes."

"And you know absolutely nothing about it."

The stone walls returned the trailing end of his voice, spinning it once beneath the dome before it faded away.

On the judging panel, the Bald Professor's pen stopped.