Chapter 747: Each Displaying Their Divine Abilities

Chapter 747: Each Reveals Their Unique Talent

Gazing at Starfire True Lord on the platform, Kuang Tianqing thought inwardly, “Because Starfire has firsthand experience within a sect, many believe that following him offers the best chance of passing the Sect Examination and forcing open the gates to sect membership.”

“In fact, most people in this classroom right now probably think Starfire True Lord is the one most likely to succeed in this Sect Exam and finally ‘reach shore.’”

“But they’re wrong. There’s likely another person in this very room who understands sects far more deeply.”

A confident smile flickered at the corners of Kuang Tianqing’s lips. “That person… is Zhang Yu!”

“Judging by the memories I now possess—memories accumulated over decades within a sect—Zhang Yu is very likely the reincarnation of some great figure.”

“Only that could explain how he’s stirred such storms in the lower realms, accomplished so many earth-shattering feats, yet always emerged unscathed—and now even participates in this Sect Exam…”

“He may well be the one in this room with the greatest chance of reaching shore.”

Kuang Tianqing mused silently, “If I want to increase my odds of success in the Sect Exam, I should draw closer to him… learn from him.”

As for himself… he had absolutely no certainty of victory.

“Sigh… I joined a sect long before the ‘Mandatory Exam for All’ policy was implemented. I never underwent proper Sect Exam training at all.”

Though he’d never taken the exam himself, as the saying went, “Even if you’ve never eaten pork, you’ve seen pigs run.” He’d witnessed the madness of top-tier examinees firsthand.

“I just can’t do it…”

Kuang Tianqing whispered inwardly, “I can’t transform myself beyond recognition like those lunatics upstairs—denying my very self, trampling my dignity underfoot, letting the sect’s will flood my body until I burst, becoming a hyper-purified sect disciple… I can’t! I simply can’t!!”

To Kuang Tianqing, that fate was far more terrifying—even more horrifying—than enduring tutelage from the Eight Great Nascent Soul masters. It was utterly unacceptable.

“My son promised he’d find a way to help me pass the Sect Exam from up there. So why hasn’t his help appeared yet?”

“Could it be tied to Zhang Yu?”

Just as Kuang Tianqing’s thoughts churned like stormy seas, Wen Wuya of Tianjian University stepped into the Spirit Realm classroom.

“From now on,” Wen Wuya resolved, “it’s full-time exam prep.”

He understood perfectly well: quitting everything in Kunxu to focus solely on studying was an enormous risk—one that would inevitably bring pressure from every direction.

Especially since this full-time prep period lasted a staggering three months—a duration Wen Wuya had never dared imagine before.

After all, not working for three months? Was that even human anymore? And that three-month gap on his resume would be a massive disadvantage.

“If I fail…”

Wen Wuya shook his head, thinking firmly, “I must succeed.”

Meanwhile, Mo Shengjin looked at Tu Lishan in surprise. “Master Tu, you’re here too?”

Tu Lishan chuckled. “I’m not even two hundred yet—of course I can come!”

At that moment, Tu Lishan felt profoundly grateful for the University Wars. Without the credential inflation caused by those conflicts, he’d still be merely a Golden Core cultivator. And Golden Core candidates were barred from the Sect Exam after age 150—he’d have been disqualified purely on age grounds.

“Thankfully, I’ve already ascended to Nascent Soul. Under two hundred? This is the perfect age to fight for the Sect Exam.”

Several other instructors in similar situations had also arrived, now listening intently to Starfire True Lord’s lecture.

But soon, as Tu Lishan scanned the list of available positions, he couldn’t help grumbling again: “Damn it… why are there so few posts open to Civil Engineering majors?!”

Beside him, Mo Shengjin breathed an inward sigh of relief. “Good thing I switched to Artificing—there are way more positions available than for pure Civil Engineering.”

Elsewhere, Ying Mingchi of Tianyao University examined the roles suitable for descendants of yaoguai and thought, “There are actually plenty of positions open to yaoguai descendants—especially in the Mount Attendant track, where we hold an advantage and can get close to sect leadership.”

After a full day of study, Starfire True Lord immediately manipulated the Spirit Realm classroom to launch the first mock Sect Exam.

After all, under the Spirit Realm’s 20x time acceleration, they’d effectively studied for twenty days—it was time to test their progress.

In an instant, shifting lights and shadows plunged everyone into illusions, beginning their simulated Sect Exam preliminary round.

Even Starfire True Lord himself took part in this trial, while Deng Bingding observed each individual’s performance within the illusions.

Watching Zhang Yu’s awkward, stiff reactions during sect social scenarios—his unconscious discriminatory behaviors and insufficient demonstration of dedication to the sect—Deng Bingding shook his head.

“Zhang Yu’s moral alignment with sect values is severely lacking. That’s likely to become his greatest weakness.”

Zhang Yu himself felt helpless. Even though he knew he needed to act in accordance with Wanfa Sect principles, his instinctive, deepest reactions were hard to suppress. Overcoming them required conscious effort and time—which inevitably made his responses too slow.

In another vision, Deng Bingding watched Bai Zhenzhen’s sword aura suddenly spiral out of control as she began fighting wildly within the illusion. He sighed again. “Bai Zhenzhen’s situation is also troubling. Her ‘Extreme Emotion Sword Dao’ background is already a demerit, and her behavior in the illusion will likely make the examiners upstairs view her as someone with a psychiatric history.”

“Yu Xinghan lacks deep knowledge of the Dharma Realm—he’ll need far more simulation time…”

“Why is Kuang Tianqing so slow to respond? Does he really need to ponder every question that long? Though… his accuracy rate is surprisingly high.”

Soon, everyone’s mock preliminary exam ended, and the results were released.

Starfire True Lord glanced at the projected scores and gave a slight nod. “As I expected—not a single one of you passed.”

“And currently, in the upper realms, the average score for this exact exam set is… 560 points.”

At that, even Starfire True Lord sucked in a quiet breath of shock.

He hadn’t realized that during his absence from the sect, the preliminary exam—once capped at 200 points—had been changed to an unlimited scoring system: within three hours, the more questions answered correctly, the higher the score, with only top-ranked candidates advancing. This fierce competition had driven the average score up to a staggering 560.

He couldn’t help but marvel inwardly, “Thank heavens I don’t have to take the real exam up there. The competition has become unimaginably brutal—we’d never stand a chance.”

Pushing aside his wandering thoughts, Starfire True Lord addressed the group: “This mock test should have shown you clearly where your weaknesses lie.”

“I hope you all cherish this opportunity and strive hard.”

Everyone stared at their own scores, feeling immense pressure weigh down upon them.

…

Zhang Yu, who’d scored only 55, frowned slightly. “An exam that demands you alter your instincts—even your core beliefs… what a nuisance.”

“This preliminary illusion selects candidates who are the most ‘sect-like’—it’s purely a contest of who embodies sect purity more completely.”

Rubbing his chin, Zhang Yu murmured, “If I had to compete with those sect elites upstairs on purity alone, even if I won, I’d just become another sect tyrant myself.”

“Fortunately, competition down here is far less intense.”

At the same time, a new question arose in Zhang Yu’s mind.

“The ‘Mandatory Exam for All’ policy has been in place for a long time. So how did our predecessors—who entered sects directly from the Ten Academies back then—actually succeed?”

“In their time, there were no sect exams down here at all. They were simply selected and sent straight to the 11th Layer to take the Sect Exam.”

“If I could master their methods…”

His gaze drifted once more to Zhang Pianpian’s name in his contacts, and he sent over his question.

Quickly, he received a reply.

Zhang Pianpian: One method I know is memory transplantation.

Zhang Yu’s heart stirred. Of course—if he could transplant relevant memories, wouldn’t that allow him to react in the most sect-aligned way possible?

Zhang Pianpian: But the side effect is that your original memories get completely compressed.

Zhang Pianpian: Say a candidate has 50 years of personal memories—they’d typically need to implant memories from someone who successfully passed the Sect Exam at 100x or even 200x that volume.

Zhang Yu was stunned: 100x? 200x?!

Zhang Pianpian: When this technique first emerged, many examinees implanted just 5x or 10x and got through. Later, to outcompete them, others increased it to 20x, then 30x—eventually climbing to hundreds of times over.

Zhang Pianpian: In such cases, the candidate’s original 50 years of memories become negligible. Most of their perceived life is spent cycling through thousands of years of Sect Exam experiences.

Wait—thousands of years of Sect Exam memories?! Zhang Yu thought incredulously. Has competition upstairs become so insane that this is what it takes just to pass?

And was this not, in all fucking honesty, a possession? Zhang Yu cursed inwardly.

To think that after a single sleep, he had become someone who had cycled through the sect exams for thousands of years, and his former life experiences had blurred and faded in his heart, like memories from the first grade of elementary school.

Zhang Yu could not help but shake his head: "These fellows... to enter the sect, is it truly necessary to go to such lengths?" ...

Just as Zhang Yu was asking, Tiansheng Gong of the Immortal Armament University posed a similar question to the orthodox god who had contacted him about joining a cram class.

And the other's reply made his heart sink.

"Remodel the body, install an external brain, hand over complete control of one's body and mind to the sect's artifact spirit in the upper spirit realm, and sever all conscious control of one's own awareness?"

"If I do this... even if I pass the exam and enter the sect, will I still be me?"

"Did I pass the exam and enter the sect, or did the artifact spirit pass it?"

"Will I be able to change back when the time comes?"

"If it goes on too long, with body and mind out of sync and thought utterly alienated, will I become a puppet entirely?"

Tiansheng Gong sighed inwardly: "Are the seniors truly willing to pay such a price to enter the sect?"

...

Inside the Blissful Union University.

Lian Tianji saw a newly issued notice within the university—it turned out that the sect disciples who had descended, now the new head of Blissful Union, were willing to guide the sect exams and teach the methods by which the university's predecessors had entered the sect.

Upon seeing this, Lian Tianji's heart stirred at once, but she quickly discovered that registration had filled up in an instant.

"Damn it!"

From then on, Lian Tianji waited each day for the registration period, longing for a chance to receive guidance from the sect's people.

...

At the Heavenly Demon University, Kuang Tianqing looked at the orthodox god who had proactively contacted him and said, "You don't need to tell me; I already know."

"Though no new population is being born up there, every year there are still many old-timers reincarnated through the cycle of rebirth who are reborn in the sect."

"Before these old-timers die, they all sell off a copy of their memory rights, and some people will cut out the sect exam memories from within, then splice them together and sell them to other exam candidates."

"Hmph... these memory-spliced hybrids, with the slightest carelessness, suffer memory derangement and go mad. Even if they enter the sect, they're just expendable material. I could never choose such a method."

...

Netherworld University.

Under the guidance of the Yin Spring Divine Lord, Wang Yin met the orthodox god before him and inquired about how the predecessors of Netherworld University had passed the sect exams.

The other replied flatly: First, go down to the sect's grassroots level as an outsourced worker to gain practical experience; accumulate that, and naturally you'll have an advantage in the exam.

Wang Yin said in surprise: They could even go to the sect's grassroots for practice? Such a good thing exists?

The other said: Become a public-use physical body for the disciples of the Netherworld Palace, experience sect life, and you'll quickly grasp the Netherworld Palace's philosophy.

Wang Yin exclaimed: A public-use body?

The other said: The entire Netherworld Palace is composed of mountains of corpses and seas of blood; a public-use body counts as a kind of infrastructure.

Wang Yin said: Wouldn't that be just like a brick or a door? Too grassroots, isn't it?

The other said: The physical bodies of top students from the ten universities would certainly not be wasted like that; they'd definitely be assigned to a good post.

The other continued: But don't even think about it. This year's outsourced posts at Netherworld Palace were snatched up long ago; it won't be your turn.

...

Inside the Myriad Laws University.

A faint flicker passed through Yun Zhiguang's eye relic, and the results of Zhang Yu and the others' first mock exam surfaced.

Gazing at the scene where not a single person in the class had passed, Yun Zhiguang was not the least bit surprised.

"The difficulty of the sect exam—how could you possibly comprehend it?"

"Don't speak of insufficient preparation time..." Zhang Yu's figure rose in Yun Zhiguang's mind: "How long has it been since you reached the Nascent Soul stage? Your cultivation isn't even complete, and you're already thinking of taking the sect exam."

"Go and crash against it, crash until you're utterly defeated, your forces scattered."

Yun Zhiguang sighed in his heart: "If you don't take the sect exam, you see me as a frog at the bottom of a well gazing at the moon in the sky; once you take it, you'll see me as a mayfly beholding the blue heavens."

...

Inside the research society of the Great Hollow.

Zhang Yu's consciousness was immersed in the Supreme Clarity Realm, his main body and sixteen thought-forms each busy, catching up on the master's degree coursework.

Apart from the first day's supplementary lessons, Starfire True Monarch's subsequent lessons were no longer twenty-four hours a day but twelve hours, which, with the twentyfold acceleration of the spirit realm, amounted to two hundred and forty hours of study.

The remaining twelve hours in the real world were left for the examinees to arrange on their own—whether to intensify training on their weaknesses, complete their studies and quickly obtain their graduation certificates, or advance their own cultivation.

One's own cultivation also provided considerable help in the exam: on one hand, the level of cultivation was itself part of the exam content; on the other, raising cultivation helped enhance a cultivator's cognitive processing ability, which was also greatly beneficial for the exam.

At this very moment, Zhang Yu was accelerating his study of the master's courses.

During the earlier university war, although the school had given him a green light on exams, he had still missed many courses.

But now, within the Supreme Clarity Realm, he was studying madly at a speed of seventeen times twenty, and coupled with the cognitive speed of the Nascent Soul realm, he was confident he could finish all remaining courses today, and complete the school exam content and thesis writing ahead of schedule in the next two days.

And under the auspices of the Magnetic Pole Divine Lord and the Green Wood Divine Lord, the entire Myriad Laws University gave him the green light, helping Zhang Yu complete the procedures at the fastest speed.

Thus, after obtaining his master's degree certificate at astonishing speed, Zhang Yu began new cultivation.

The damaged magical treasures had been entrusted, through the Magnetic Pole Divine Lord and Zhang Yu's own influence, to the Artifact Refining Department and the research society for repair.

Zhang Yu focused on his own cultivation.

In the quiet chamber of the research society, Zhang Yu's main body was tempering his physical strength, while his sixteen demonic descendant clones were cultivating the Mystic Yellow Mountain-Sealing Seal from the Seven Ultimate Arts of Earth and Wood.

"With the Nascent Soul sacred body, plus these sixteen clones, I estimate I can raise the Mystic Yellow Mountain-Sealing Seal of the Seven Ultimate Arts of Earth and Wood to level forty in just one day."

"In seven days, I'll be able to push the Heavenly Kunlun Mountain-Moving Divine Power to level forty, the peak of Nascent Soul."

Ever since breaking through to the Nascent Soul realm, Zhang Yu had felt that he always had endless tasks to attend to, never able to devote himself wholeheartedly to self-improvement.

As a result, in terms of his basic stats and many martial arts and Daoist techniques, he had never been able to fully bring out the effects of the Nascent Soul peak.

Only now could he finally fill in the gaps in his cultivation one by one, to participate in the sect affairs clerk exam in a better state.

"The preliminary exam tests personal cultivation, moral level, and aptitude for sect affairs..."

Zhang Yu thought to himself: "Given my progress, personal cultivation isn't much of an issue, but the latter two..."

At that moment, the Hell Soul-Washing Scripture surfaced in Zhang Yu's mind, along with the past operations of Fu Xiantian and Zhanxian True Monarch.

He could not help thinking: "Could it be that I need to cultivate the Hell Soul-Washing Scripture?"

"I wonder if the Hell Soul-Washing Scripture can connect to some sect exam memories and infuse them into me."

But Zhang Yu also knew there was a risk of his own will being altered or contaminated, and for the moment he had not made a final decision.

Just then, a flash of lightning flickered over Bai Zhenzhen beside him, mingling with the sword qi of extreme emotion to burst forth with a gleam.

Zhang Yu knew that after Fuji's status had been elevated, Bai Zhenzhen's potential had also risen, and that surge of thunder mana had become increasingly fierce.

However, the acceleration of this thunder mana, placed alongside Bai Zhenzhen's own Green Lotus Sword Embryo and extreme emotion sword qi, seemed unremarkable.

And apart from Bai Zhenzhen, Yu Xinghan on the other side had also seen his potential elevated once more; the divine power of his third eye had fallen into dormancy, as if brewing some kind of metamorphosis.

Observing the boost in potential manifest within Bai Zhenzhen and Yu Xinghan—two starkly contrasting outcomes, one weak and the other formidable—Zhang Yu could not help but sigh inwardly at how utterly nonsensical the evil god's power truly was.

With that thought, he raised his hand and stared at the dark symbol nearly filled to completion upon his palm, musing to himself, "What sort of effect will this new page of the Feathered Book bring?"

Two days later, as the symbol on his palm was entirely completed, the next page of the Feathered Book unfurled slowly before him.

Caught a cold, got a headache, and my brain is struggling to think, so that is all for today, I will try to write more tomorrow.

(End of Chapter)