I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Simon's speech was conventional, approaching the topic from the perspective of popularizing education and citing several pieces of data from the history of education.

His strength is his clear and logical thinking, while his weakness is his lack of memorable points.

After listening, you might say, "Well said," but you'll forget what he said a few minutes later.

Phillips’s speech began with the governance dilemmas of the New World colonies.

His grandfather was a high-ranking official in the colonial affairs department, and he was adept at handling those administrative details.

The colonial administrative regulations numbering, the governor appointment procedure, the scope of applicable laws in autonomous regions... the professional knowledge is solid, and the logical chain is clear.

However, he turned his speech into a policy analysis report, and from beginning to end, he never made the audience's hearts race.

The judges were taking notes, their writing pace neither too fast nor too slow.

Catherine's angle is sharper.

She was holding a manuscript when she went on stage, but after unfolding it and glancing at it, she flipped it over and placed it face down on the podium.

She was talking about the "cleansing" of the Gaelic Heights.

Two hundred years ago, the imperial government and the Gaelic landowners joined forces to expel the Highland natives, burn their villages, and seize their pastures.

They call this "progress".

The red-haired girl's voice echoed between the stone walls, each consonant carrying the distinctive ridges of a highlander.

"They call driving my ancestors down from the mountain 'introducing civilization'."

She spoke faster than in the first round, but without any impatience.

Each sentence leaves just the right amount of breathing space, allowing the anger to have room to breathe.

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

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

"A few thousand years, is that enough of a civilized society?"

She posed this question to over five hundred people without providing an answer, and then used it as a starting point to ask a deeper question:

When a civilization uses the name of "civilization" to destroy another civilization, can it still be considered civilized itself?

Several professors on the judging panel exchanged glances.

A girl from an old Gaelic noble family denounces the empire's misdeeds against her homeland within the halls of academia.

This requires courage, but also a sense of proportion.

She had a good grasp of the appropriate boundaries.

It didn't become a simple venting of anger; she used her accusations to build a question that everyone must face.

The applause was even more enthusiastic than in the first round.

But Richard noticed that several judges didn't applaud; they were just writing something down intently.

The boundary between academia and politics is blurred on the rating sheet.

Montagu took the stage after her.

The blond boy stood in the center of the podium, his prepared speech, which he had prepared in fifteen minutes, neatly tucked into his left hand.

He only glanced at the beginning before putting the manuscript on the podium.

He was talking about the dialectical relationship between imperial expansion and the spread of civilization.

The wording is elegant and the structure is tight.

He acknowledged that expansion brought violence, and pointed out that schools, hospitals, and courts did indeed spring up from the ruins of violence.

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

This is a staircase covered with brocade, and every step is taken correctly and beautifully.

Finally, he quoted a famous line from Virgil's Aeneid:

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

(Romans, remember this: rule the people with authority, forgive those who submit, and punish the proud!)

The quotation is perfectly chosen; Virgil's status in Roman literature gives this ending both academic weight and emotional impact.

To paraphrase Richard from his past life, his sophistication was instantly elevated.

Several people on the judging panel were taking notes frequently, their writing speed noticeably faster than when they were listening to others.

When Montagu finished speaking, the applause was more enthusiastic than that of everyone before him.

In the capital city, in this chapel considered a symbolic building by the academic system, before professors and social celebrities seated below...

The conclusion that "imperial expansion has costs but is generally beneficial" is the safest and most popular.

Richard was the last to go on stage.

Montagu was so outstanding that he was under the most pressure.

"Number 23, Richard Williams, Greenwood High School."

He stood up from the contestants' section and walked to the podium, empty-handed.

The piece of paper he wrote during preparation time had long since been crumpled up and stuffed into his pocket.

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

The two brushed past each other in the aisle.

Montagu turned his head to look at him and nodded.

Richard nodded in return.

Standing in front of the podium, the Seven Sages on the dome looked down at him.

The mural depicts seven philosophers discussing the essence of the "veil" under the moonlight, but what ordinary people see is seven sages debating philosophical issues.

More than 500 pairs of eyes were fixed on him.

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

Mr. West stood beside him, arms crossed, expressionless.

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

Palmer and Hutchinson sat in a corner of the audience, with two paper packages in front of them.

They probably went out and bought the pies, and were preparing to eat them during a break.

All six pens were in place on the judges' panel.

Isabella Ashford sat on the far right, her sleeve tucked under the score sheet.

Her pen was casually held between her index and middle fingers.

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

The sound spread between the domed stone walls, clear and steady, not loud, but every word reached the last row.

"Walls are boundaries, doors and windows are exits, and the roof is the sky."

"You eat, sleep, read, and think in your room, and you think you know everything."

Those in the audience who had just listened to Montagu's long speech were pulling their attention back from the imperial narrative.

He used three short sentences to draw everyone into a room.

"But what would you do if one day you heard a water pipe making a noise in the wall?"

The air below the stage seemed to freeze slightly.

The previous contestants were all talking about colonization, law, cultural conflict... grand narratives, elite perspectives, looking down from a high place.

His beginnings consisted of a room, a wall, and a water pipe.

Everyone lived in the room, and everyone heard noises coming from an unknown source in the walls.

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

His gaze swept from the judges' panel across the audience area and back again.

"Their civilization is everything in this room."

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

"They could hear the water pipes, sometimes a creak or a gurgle in the dead of night, but they chose not to investigate."

"Because pursuing an investigation means admitting something."

His voice dropped slightly by half a octave.

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

"It's always running, it was running before you were born, and it's still running after you fall asleep."

Your room, your life, everything you do every day is built on those unseen pipes.

"And you know nothing about it."

The stone wall echoed back, circling under the dome before dissipating.

On the judges' panel, the balding professor stopped writing.