Translator: Kazeyuki_ Editor: Jimmy_
He looked at Wei Yi again with a pair of meaningful eyes and suddenly the Head Palace Master sighed: “Currently, Qin Wushuang is also a piece of unpolished gem. Many aspects of his personality still need to be trimmed. There is a saying of how the strong ones tend to break easily. Although his actions was a form of revenge through the Subordinate countries, he is suspicious of killing too much. Yes, it would not be a bad thing for a young man to have hot-blood. For you two, maybe we will see which one is better after you’re both forty years old…”
Wei Yi was surprised. He knew that Qin Wushuang was tough. However, through all these times, he felt that since he was the only one with the Spiritual Roots, no other disciple could match up to him on this aspect. Thus, he was used to being ahead of others and riding in the front.
Currently, he heard that his teacher admit that Qin Wushuang could compete with him on an equal level. In fact, he actually had the strength to surpass him. Of course, Wei Yi was extremely surprised and inwardly, he could feel cold sweat constantly emerging. He would not dare to act sloppy again.
The heights would determine your insights and your insights would decide your understanding. And what you understood would determine your future!
He dwelled on these meaningful words spoken by his teacher and gradually, he understood something.
After walking out his teacher’s secret chamber, suddenly, Wei Yi felt that his chest had opened up. Those knots that had tangled up in his head had also untied itself.
…
The third day of the exam was still a cold day with the northern hunting wind. However, the exam atmosphere within the Stargaze Palace was heated and rich with excitement.
All the Advanced disciples had finished gathering and stood in waiting somberly. Qin Wushuang stood among the crowd in a calm mood. After the bath from the previous five rounds of exams, he had been relieved of any pressure for this exam. Instead, he would treat it as a form of entertainment.
The last round was a comprehensive exam and the most crucial one.
“Everyone, I believe that you have been expecting this last round of examinations for a long time. This test is not complicated. To put it simply, it will be—hunting!”
Hunting? Qin Wushuang’s emotions stirred.
That examiner smiled: “In the Virtuous Cloud Summit, we have a few dozen testing areas and these areas were off limits to anyone. It would only be opened during the year-end exam. Six hundred of you will be divided into ten groups and enter ten different testing areas. In each area, we will drop the same number of Upper Sky Spiritual Beasts at the Initial Stages. These Spiritual Beasts are different than the wild ones in that the Palace nurtured them. Regarding their Spiritual Qi, they are weaker than the wild ones. However, their defensive and offensive abilities are similar. Each testing zone will have sixty Spiritual Beasts at the Initial Stage. For each one you capture, you will get twenty points. For each one you killed, you would ten points!”
“Ah? Aren’t there more people than beasts?”
“Yes, on average, each person would only get one, this score…”
Those Advanced disciples kept discussing amongst themselves and could not understand this rule. Especially those with weaker strength who had a low score in the martial arts exams voiced their opinions strongly.
On the contrary, those Upper Sky Advanced disciples remained calm. Apparently, being an Upper Sky, they had too much advantage in terms of fighting over resources.
That examiner nodded with a smile: “All of you are right! More people, less beasts. It means that for many of you, you will come back empty handed in the end. You would not even get half a point. And some people will most likely get another perfect score! This is the meaning of the exam. We want you guys to compete to classify the strong and the weak. For you guys, besides using all your effort, all your complaints are useless.”
As soon as he said those words, those disciples who complained closed their mouth obediently. It was the rules of the Stargaze Palace. Everything depended on competition. If you were not stronger, don’t rely on the rules to be on your side. The rules were formed to give prominence to the strong ones and encourage the weaker ones. There would not be any favoritism nor sympathy.
Suddenly, that examiner shouted: “You must be aware of one point. There is one rule to this hunt and everyone must obey it. That is—No one may rob Spiritual Beasts from the hands of the others. In other words, if you’ve already acquired one Spiritual Beast, then congratulations, you get the corresponding points. If anyone comes to rob you, you would still get the points. The robber will be disqualified.”
Once he mentioned this rule, the expression of a portion of the Upper Skye elite warriors darkened. Apparently, most of them had carried such thoughts.
However, they were forbidden by the rules to do so.
“This rule will guarantee that all of you have the room to perform and you would not need to worry about your peers stealing from you. Of course, if two person found the Spiritual beasts at the same time, then either of you are eligible to fight for it. In this situation , there is no first come, first serve rule. Before one of you acquire the beast, whoever gets it will get the points.”
Inwardly, Qin Wushuang thought about the rules: “Since we cannot loot each other, then this exam will emphasize strongly on who makes the first move. I must maintain my power from the beginning and aim to find the beasts. I need to prevent waiting at my ease. The perfect score is one hundred points. I will get these points by capturing five living Spiritual beasts.”
Indeed, that examiner said: “At last, I must repeat myself. The perfect score for this exam is still one hundred points. In other words, you can choose to withdraw after you’ve gotten one hundred points. If you were to get more beasts afterwards, your points will not exceed one hundred. Of course, if you wanted to use this fact to suppress your competitors, you could stay inside and fight with them to prevent them from acquiring more points. This is all allowed in the rules.”
Qin Wushuang smiled lightly and said to himself: “How boring would that person be to do it? Besides, it’s possible that those competitors with the matching scores would not be in the same area.”
After the rules were announced, ten exam groups arrived before their testing zone under the lead of the examiner. This time, in Qin Wushuang’s group of sixty disciples, there were two other Upper Sky besides him. Indeed, the spread of the strength was balanced.
That lead Butler pointed to that entrance and said: “After you enter, you must be aware that unless you planned to withdraw ahead of time, you must not walk towards the outside carelessly. Once the testing zone is started, Spiritual Qi will block the exterior and you will not be able to get out easily. This Spiritual barrier is to prevent the Spiritual beasts from escaping. And they will not be able to pass this barrier and you don’t need to worry about the problem for the loss of numbers. The total number will not change. It will all depend on your own performance.”
“Understand?”
“Understand!”
That Butler waved his hand: “Go in!”
Immediately, sixty Advanced disciples rushed in. Qin Wushuang was extremely calm among this large wave. However, once he had entered, he instantly sped up. In one jump, his figure had disappeared within this lush exam forest.
This testing zone lasted hundreds of miles. The difficulty was still great to find sixty Spiritual beasts. However, this exam was different from what he had at the Bai Yue Country. In that exam, they were asked to find the jade plates. Plates were dead and Spiritual beasts were alive.
When finding the jade plates, they could loot it off each other. Thus, there were a lot of trickery and evil intentions.
They were not allowed to loot each other’s Spiritual beasts. Thus, they could concentrate on hunting the animals.
To Qin Wushuang, the difficulty level of this hunt was much easier than finding the jade plates. After all, Qin Wushuang was not in the Upper Sky Realm at that time as he did not acquire the sensing ability.
And now, once he initiated his Upper Sky Qi, he would detect subtle changes from a range of ten mile around him. To speak the truth, even if he were to use a carpet form investigation, he would find all sixty Upper Sky Initial Stage Spiritual beasts with enough time.
Compared to Initial Stage martial artists, regardless of attack of defense, they were much weaker than them. However, to the Pre-Sky Realm warriors, they were dangerous beasts.
Fortunately, these were beasts raised by the Stargaze Palace. Although they may be hostile, the Animal Trainer had communicated with them to never kill any Stargaze disciples.
Or else, with a large group of Pre-Sky warriors among these Advanced disciples, most likely they would not be able face them individually. They might even get eaten by these beasts.
Qin Wushuang rushed forward rapidly and used the snake shaped soft whip to open the path. Just when he pretend to charge forward, he suddenly twisted his body and shoot to the right side.
He used the snake shaped soft whip to wrap three swings to loop one of the lush branches.
Grumbling…
When a piercing cry had emerged, like a giant rat, a furry snowy sable got bound by Qin Wushuang soft whip and dragged before him.
Qin Wushuang laughed and controlled this snowy sable to throw it to the knapsack.
“Twenty points!”
When Qin Wushuang touched the knapsack, he suddenly remembered something. He extended his hand in and grabbed out an ancient looking scroll. It was that <Catalogue of Beasts> when he had acquired after he had killed that man in black during his first time training at the Virtuous Cloud Mountain Range.
He still remembered clearly in which at that time, that man in black only moved his lips and lured out large groups of poisonous snakes after speaking some words of beast languages.
Qin Wushuang pulled open the long scroll and glanced it from beginning to end. Inwardly, he thought that beast language was too complicated. It would take him at least three or five years to study thoroughly. He would look for some quick words to communicate with the Spiritual Beasts or to lure them.
After a moment of exploring, Qin Wushuang’s eyes lit up. Indeed, he found something similar.
It was a page of communicative words between the Spiritual beasts. There were a dozen of short sentences specialized to greet with the Spiritual beasts. Qin Wushuang looked at those words and started to mimic by following the pronunciation written on it.
“Wu li gu la, ha cha ni bo wa, chun cun’er…” Qin Wushuang spoke these strange pronunciations and did not know any of its meanings. Only, he felt that these incongruous pronunciation could not be described by human languages at all.
After reading a few times, Qin Wushuang finally grasped one sentence. Next, he read it silently and was not confident whether it would work or not.
Like a child learning how to speak, Qin Wushuang felt somewhat embarrassed to speak. Fortunately, this exam area was vast and no one was watching him. This had give some Qin Wushuang some courage to speak.
In a neither slow nor fast tone, he started to speak word by word: “Wu li gu la…”
At first, Qin Wushuang felt that his pronunciation was not correct. Next, he twisted his tongue and repeated two times. Gradually, he found some feelings and could not help to feel weird inwardly. He thought: “Talking to animals is not something anyone can do.”
However, to his surprise, being the monk who had just learned how to chant the scripture, he did encounter some luck. After speaking the words of the beasts, he immediately sensed something was moving around him. Waves of footsteps sounded from Spiritual beasts were rushing over.
It worked? Inwardly, Qin Wushuang was feeling hopeful.
