Book 2 Chapter 22

There's a storm coming

After the announcement of the entrants to the Ascension Festival, which left several people in a state of irreparable harm!

Right now, the night in Nanchang was so glamorous, hot, colorful, and ecstatic.

At all hours of the day and night, the streets were full of vice,

The sweet smell of liquor vibrated through the alleyways.

The lanterns and giraffes lining the streets never extinguished their lights, inside or out, when the month changed. They remained open day and night, twelve hours a day. The sun set, the moon rose, and the moon tilted again, but the excitement within the castle never seemed to abate. Even the cyclical rotation of the lunar calendar was not enough to restrain them.

A few festive days of defiance of the changing of the seasons swept across Nanchang like a fever, and at last the day had arrived: the day of the special entrance examination for the Heavenly Martial Academy, a chance for only a few chosen ones.

Expectant members of the top sects and promising late-stage exponents flocked in groups of three and four to the examination hall designated by the Heavenly Martial Academy. The rules forbade anyone without the Sealing Dragon Plaque from entering the testing grounds, so everyone here was a rival to Bi Ryuyeon, who had the Sealing Dragon Plaque in her possession. Of course, she couldn't care less. In fact, she was even more eager to wander through the halls.

Finally, the examination began. Compared to the Ascension Test, the Heavenly Martial Academy's special screening test was surprisingly simple, defying common expectations that it would be a step up in difficulty.

Unlike the Ascension Ceremony, which had many gates, mechanisms, and rules to follow, it was incomparably simple and straightforward. In fact, it was impossible to compare because there was no standard to compare it to. The process, rules, and criteria for passing the special screening test were easy to memorize and easy to follow.

It's about proving that you're better than everyone else. Prove your excellence in front of everyone. Whatever the means and methods……. However, the only way a person who is in the martial arts and walks the path of martial arts can do this is limited anyway, and that is to experience the opponent through direct physical contact, and to compete in hand-to-hand combat with weapons. It was a meritocracy of skill over words. Simply put, it was about competing against each other to prove the excellence of one's martial arts and the level of achievement.

Many of the tasks and difficult gateways in the Ascension Festival were tests to separate one from the crowd, to pick out the jade stone from the cobblestones, so the bimu in the Ascension Festival had to outwit and outfight their opponents.

Today, however, the bimu in this particular examination hall was a test in which you had to win a battle against yourself. The bimu opponent is merely a mirror of the self, so whether you win or lose, the examiner will decide whether you pass or fail.

A master can tell a lot about an opponent's skill from a single move or a half-second glance. And if you're a pinnacle master who has reached a higher level, you can even see a person's potential at a glance. A person's musculature, personality, and disposition to fight can be used to determine a certain level of quality and accomplishment. A master was not just anyone.

There was only one other place in the entire Hundred Island Powerhouse that could match the number of masters here, and that was the Martial Arts Academy of Heaven, so the examination judges were all peak masters themselves, and they could judge the candidates by simply watching them pretend to be martial artists. They would be judged by those who were said to have attained the level of a martial artist who was about to open a new horizon of nothingness through enlightenment. How could this not be enough?

However, the more difficult this test is, the more difficult it can be because the criteria are somewhat vague, elusive, and arbitrary. The eyes of an adept are different from the eyes of a criminal because they see things that ordinary people don't see and think about things that they don't think about. Peak Adepts judge people by their own standards. Often, minions would challenge their judgments and fail to win.

However, none of them could truly grasp Bi Ryuyeon's skill and potential; his True God power and martial arts level were like a divine dragon in the clouds, a mudfish swimming in a turbulent current, a swirling maelstrom of chaos, so chaotic and confusing that it was impossible to grasp their true nature.

五里霧中!

It was as obscure as a narrow path through a swamp in a thick fog, and no one had ever seen the end of it. That made the judges' decision difficult, for it seemed a gamble to let him pass. To take a gamble on a hand that might be the worst hand in the game, with the possibility of ruining one's fortune, that's what it was.

In addition, those who participated in the special screening were fundamentally different from the rest of the martial artists. Each sect, even those considered to be first-rate and above, sent out craftsmen who had spent decades pouring their hearts and souls into their cultivation. They had already passed the first round of verification and were like a seal of approval for their respective sects. Even the Heavenly Martial Academy recognized this.

Therefore, almost everyone passed with flying colors, and rejections were rare except in special cases. It was up to the examiner to decide whether the applicant passed or failed after a brief discussion. Since there is no specific number of people to be admitted, everything is at the discretion of the examiner, so this special test is only a test in appearance, but in reality it is only a simple skill classification assessment. Except for the fact that the group of people who are assessed are the peak masters. But then again, there are a lot of quirky, eccentric, and moody people among the peak masters, so it can be a bit of a surprise.

Still, in the history of the exam, the majority of endorsers have never disappointed the examiners. The number of defective silver certificates has been very small. Last year, and the year before, no one was rejected from this special selection. This is because a select group of prestigious schools have been nominating the best of the best every year.

If a disciple who was recommended as the best material was rejected not because he had lost in a battle, but because his talent and potential were unclear, the sect would be shamed into a ten-year ban.

But today was an exception. It probably goes down as the test with the highest number of rejections in the history of the Heavenly Martial Arts Academy's special screening. It will be hard to break this record for the time being. It is also a record for the first time in history that it was not a voluntary dropout, but an accidental (?) dropout.

Those who failed did not fail because they wanted to fail. Who would want to fail such an important examination, where all the honor of a master is at stake? The mind is so eager to fly, but the body is too weak to crawl, so they are forced to abstain. How could he enter the academy with four broken limbs when his body was still intact and he could train hard in martial arts?

The person who caused this situation was the troublemaker Bi Ryuyeon, who had nothing better to do than look around. She was a troublemaker whose specialty was to constantly cause trouble before the divine test.

At first, I didn't intend to make it this bad. She was solemnly planning to end it gently. However, some of the participants started to talk about how they were from a prestigious political party and didn't know how to be polite and respectful, which finally touched her delicate (?) nerves. She couldn't help but notice, so she overdid it a bit.

The first opponent was a man who claimed to be from Hua, one of the Five Evils, or from the falling flower peaks of some mountain, and who boasted that his sword was the best in the Five Evils, and even the best in the entire realm. His face was pale, and his clothes were of stained silk, with five red plum blossoms embroidered on his left breast.

This proved that he was a high ranking member of the Huashan Sect and was expected to be a master, but Bi Ryuyeon, whose eyes were darkened by the state of the Martial Kingdom, had no way of knowing such things, and even if he did, he didn't want to know.

This guy got a blow to the jawline, a mandibular comminuted fracture (a condition in which the lower jawbone is broken in several successive sinus cavities), and a bunch of teeth knocked out of his mouth that will probably kill him for the foreseeable future, or worse, leave him dead and living on water for the rest of his life. Poor guy!

The second one was a swordsman of the Jumchang school, and he was also a fellow student of the above. If one's sect is a prestigious sword school, why would a prestigious sword school be rampaging, rampaging. This guy's limbs were pointing in directions they shouldn't, so he was forced to abstain. For the time being, his bones are misaligned and his muscles twisted at will, and it will be a while-perhaps a year and twelve months-before his skeleton is properly repaired.

The third one is the second son of the owner of some kind of golden hut or something, and apparently this golden hut is a place where a lot of money gets turned over. His whole body was covered in gold and silver treasures, his face was dripping with dog grease, he had a disgusting appearance that deserved to be shunned, and he looked like something out of a dream. Moreover, he bragged about his virility, saying that he had spent gold like water since he was a child, and that he had eaten the elixir of life, which he had obtained with great difficulty, to the point of bursting his stomach, and that his virility-which was formed from a weak foot-was like the Great Sea, and that he could not count the women he kept for the night with his two hands and two feet, which was not at all like an unattended man. So, with my eyes closed and a self-sacrificing heart, I resolutely dealt with the filth, beautifying the environment, and protecting nature.

He said he had eaten everything that was good for him, but when he experimented, he found that unlike Zhang Guangxue, he had a very frail constitution, and when he received a blow to the stomach, his intestines were immediately twisted, and when he tried to squeeze his limbs a couple of times, the bones of his limbs were shattered. He must have taken an overdose of a bad elixir when he was younger, otherwise his bones would be so brittle. Perhaps the side effect was that he became a weakling with such a fragile skeleton. That's why it's said that medicines should be taken in secret. It is a self-inflicted wound for those who do not observe the old adage.

The last one was a master from the Pearl Clan, a famous family of fencers, whose fist was crushed by a single punch from Bi Ryuyeon, and he lay on the ground in a heap with a bloody fist, before being rushed to the council chamber by the servants. This is the same guy who, before entering the examination hall, had led a group of servants to the front gate, claiming to be the scion of a famous family, and had been seen by Bi Ryuyeon.

The words of the four men who had offended Bi Ryuyeon and made him look bad were shocking and miserable. They may have taken the entrance examination too lightly; they were ungrateful, unmannerly, overconfident in their abilities, and, crucially, too careless; and they were too arrogant to realize that there might be someone like Bi Ryuyeon in the world, someone with a bad temper.

They overlooked the immutable truth that the prestige of a master and family is not a shield to protect one's body, but only one's skill is the source of one's strength. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that such an outcome occurred.

For this reason, the four of them were unable to practice martial arts for the time being, so they gave up their candidacy and returned to their respective schools. Since all four were no longer able to return on their own, they had to be carried like burdens on stretchers or palanquins by other alumni and attendants.

It was as if the fact that Bi Ryuyeon was going to have to deal with the four great first-class sects was sealed. But in reality, she didn't give a damn about any of that, and was happy and carefree.

With a seemingly simple and playful gesture, Bi Ryuyeon's ability to send the four promising Late Indexes to the brink of irreparable harm, though cruel, was nothing short of awe-inspiring.

The examiners had considerable doubt and deliberation about his character and personality, but they could not dispute his ability. So. Ryu-yeon Bi passed. It was a no-brainer. Thus, Bi Ryuyeon easily passed the examination and was admitted to the Heavenly Martial Academy, but his radical and brutal hand became a point of concern for the examiners, and he was labeled as a person of interest upon admission. As a result, he was labeled as a special case and placed under the Academy's strict surveillance and management. It would not be long before all eyes would be on him.

However, no one knew then that Bi Ryuyeon's entrance was the harbinger of a storm that would shake the Heavenly Martial Academy, and by extension, the entire Jianghu Clan, to its core. The wind began to blow. But it was still a gentle breeze.