Chapter 691: Righteous-Proper Martial Academy, Opening (2)

The candidates for this second exam could be grouped, roughly, into a few kinds.

First, the bamboo lovers.

As the destructible items rose in difficulty in the order of bamboo, then planks, iron bar, stone slab, thin iron stele, and large stone stele, these were the candidates who chose bamboo.

They were the ones who, told that a challenge must be passed if attempted, picked something beneath their own level—and, as they say in Qing’s hometown, chased the so-called safe bet.

Or they were simply people who didn’t want to be noticed.

“Okay then... well...”

Leaving a single crackling, fire-lit stalk of bamboo behind her, a woman in a leopard-pelt coat lifted her back with no strength and trudged away.

It had been a demonstration by the Leopard-Pelt Vermilion Bird Woman, Chang Yohong.

Of course, maybe it would’ve been hard to melt stone or iron just by swinging fire fists and fire legs.

But still—just one pole of bamboo felt a bit insincere. Lighting it up and turning on her heel was a bit much.

A one-line review? Mm. Handy for starting fires.

Fire-strikers, used or unused, are consumables with a shelf life that plummets, and they’re needlessly high-grade, so outside the big cities they’re hard to get.

And next, the type that made up the largest share: the attention-hungry.

Naturally, a hunger for attention could be called a basic temperament of a martial world person—otherwise, where’s the reward in grinding through harsh martial training?

So this wasn’t grounds to knit one’s brows or dock points with a “look at that show-off.”

And if they succeeded, what better chance to make their name known before this many onlookers?

“Please set up four stone steles.”

At that, a ripple of ooooh ran through the crowd, a murmur of eager expectation.

Not one, but a full four.

Yes—this was the Azure Dragon dancer, Chae Seong-ha.

With a dance line larger than his actual skill, he sent wind whooshing with lively swishes, and TADANG-TANG, a fierce collision racket rang out.

At the end of it, when a blade of wind drew a horizontal line, all four steles came crashing down in ruins.

“Azure Dragon Hero!” “Azure Dragon Hero!”

The chanting rose high; he walked off pretending nothing special had happened, but with the corners of his mouth twitching just a little.

Even as his breath rose and fell fast in his chest from unstable qi-flow, his triumphant eyes—Well? How about that?—met Qing’s gaze and departed.

Mm. The brat’s kinda cute.

Qing is a Harmony-realm fighter whose inner-force, beyond Harmony, is armed with all manner of divine arts—a martial fraud.

Four unmoving stone steles? She could set them in a ring around herself and just sheath a layer of steel-qi on her blade and draw a single line, done.

Like a five-year-old straining with everything he’s got to go, “Five times three is—fifteen!” and then shrugging at an adult—Well?

If you’re multiplying at five, okay, shrug away. But honestly, is that some great “ability.”

Mm. He looks like he’d do well in grad school. No—can’t speak to “work,” but he looks like he’d get into grad school just fine.

And then there were candidates blinded by bonus points, or who didn’t know themselves and had only big ambitions.

For example, that Sichuan princeling, Mandarlo.

“Stone stele.”

As if it were only natural, he spat the two words—Bring out a stone stele—in a very arrogant tone.

What is a stone stele, his pal or something?

Does he think Martial Alliance members are his house servants?

Either an arrogant princeling, or someone posing as the theme “arrogant princeling” and then getting eaten by it.

Surprisingly many strive to mimic eccentrics under some theme to become famous.

No need to look far: Unorthodox punks bump shoulders pretending to be real men, draw blades, flip tables because food is late—that whole string of antics is this same extension, isn’t it?

Since when did a “real man” mean “has intermittent explosive disorder,” I wonder.

Maybe he’d already attracted female followers—he does have that sleek, good-looking face that invites idiocy—because the space rang with that uniquely feminine shriek-like cheer.

Mandarlo bent his knees to lower his center of gravity and gripped his sword hilt, fixing the stele with a rather stylish pose.

To Qing’s eye, it was a pose that was stylish—and only stylish.

“Mm.” “Mmm.”

Apparently others felt it too; from the left and right of the judges’ dais came low groans of mm.

And the result. CLANG!

With a dull report, half the blade went whirling through the air, then THUNK—drove deep into the earth.

At that, everyone got it at once.

“My, my.” “Looks like he trusted the blade.” “Seems it was a sword among swords. What a waste.”

For a broken blade to fly up and then still bury into the ground—that’s not possible unless it’s extremely sharp.

Sure enough, in the flashing reflection along the edge there flickered a hint of blue sheen. It had to be a kind of treasured sword called a blue-steel sword.

It’s also the name of one of the most famous blades used by the most famous general of the Jo clan in ages past.

Over a thousand years have passed since then; Central Plains forging has advanced, so if they really aim for it, one out of ten of the very best smiths can produce one—still a terrifying yield—forged as a treasured blade.

“Damn it!”

Mandarlo flung the half-left treasured sword hard and stormed off, huffing.

Looks like he’d challenged with great swagger, relying on his gear. Shame-shame. A pity about the sword—shame about the sword.

And last, there were those who gauged their capability with perfect accuracy.

Sword Jade Girl sliced a thin iron stele cleanly and drew the expected exclamation—As expected of the Sword Pavilion!

That suspicious narrow-eyed fellow, Jang Sam—the one who had blocked Chae Seong-ha’s ugliness—also stacked three boards and cut through them, smartly showcasing his technique.

These were the candidates who best grasped the exam’s intent. Given that everyone’s base skill had already been roughly measured in the first exam—unless a candidate had hidden power there—it all comes out in the wash.

More than that, it was attitude: if we slap the Martial Alliance badge on this one and take him along, will he cause incidents or not; will there be talk later or not. That’s what they were emphasizing.

In that sense, the Sichuan princeling was about washed up right here. “You cannot join us”? “You failed to survive”?

Chances are we won’t be seeing him at the Righteous-Proper Martial Academy.

——

The candidate lodgings were, of course, communal rooms.

There are how many candidates—are they going to assign private rooms to every last one?

And those with means had already unpacked at inns anyway, so for candidates using these communal rooms, it wasn’t anything newly inconvenient.

So at first you drop your pack in whatever room your feet carry you to; then, among the candidates, for whatever reason—origin or personality—friendships sprout, and the close ones end up using a room together.

And so, at the Righteous-Proper Martial Academy entrance-exam candidate quarters—Room Fifteen.

Even though the sun had not yet set, the inside of the room was pitch dark.

Well, if you’ve dropped blinds over the windows and door and even drawn the curtain screens, of course it’s pitch dark.

In that deep dark, several human presences murmured together.

“One Harmony. Eight Super-transcendents. How about among the candidates?”

“Much of a muchness, but there are a few we should watch. First off, that one they call the Azure Dragon Hero, and the woman from the Sword Pavilion isn’t ordinary either, and that fire-breathing woman too, right?”

“That one’ll be easy to win over with some gentle flattery; as for the women—tsk—just take care not to draw needless dislike. Who else?”

“There’s also a rumor that wanderers who appeared at the Slumbering-Dragon Martial Meet have arrived; among drifters, they seem to have a name.”

“But, can’t we please light a bit of fire? Why in the dark—”

“Shhhh.”

The reason was this: compared to a single door panel, dropping blinds and drawing curtain screens makes for much better soundproofing.

And there was a mental reason, too.

Conspiracy, by nature, feels secure when it’s brewed in a dim, enclosed place.

You don’t want to talk about things you’re afraid others might overhear in bright, open spaces.

“The Demon King desires revenge. Those vile hypocrites value their own skins hideously; better not do anything even a little suspicious.”

“Isn’t this more suspicious?”

“You can block light, but the smell of burning oil? If someone thinks there are people inside, it wouldn’t be strange for some eavesdropper to listen in for no reason at all.”

“Indeed—our Unit Chief thinks of everything!”

“Shhhh. Too loud.”

At that, the man called Unit Chief—Dan Joya—scrunched his features and shut his subordinate’s mouth.

Here was the situation the Appetite Brigade faced:

No talent. A dearth of talent.

The Blood Cult are those who were persecuted by the Central Plains, or their descendants; and under such circumstances, how could proper education be possible?

Those few who did get proper education, whose minds turned well and who also possessed strong ideological resolve, had already taken root in the Central Plains as the Blood-La Sect.

But after the Hangzhou calamity annihilated the Blood-La Sect, they ran up against a severe manpower shortage.

“Don’t think lax thoughts. We do this for the Sect, yes, but we do it also to protect ourselves. Have you forgotten what those hypocrites did to the Demon Consort? Even beasts aren’t boiled alive—and they weren’t worthy even of being treated like beasts.”

The one who actually boiled them alive—Qing—would feel wronged.

The reason you don’t boil beasts alive is that unless you bleed them and remove the innards when butchering, you can’t possibly eat them.

And honestly, the Blood Cult punks weren’t even worth being treated like beasts. What’s wrong with a light parboil.

Dan Joya ground his teeth.

The Demon Consort—Heart-Subduing Demon Consort Yuryang—was not, even as empty politeness, a good superior; bluntly, she was a complete bitch.

But that didn’t mean she deserved something so atrocious.

It was what the righteous-faction hypocrites—no, what the whole martial world—no, what the entire Central Plains—had done to them.

And now was precisely the chance for that revenge.

The opening of the Righteous-Proper Martial Academy had a purpose that was transparent as glass.

Blood Cult agitation was expected, and the Unorthodox Alliance had kept gathering power ever since the Heavenly Martial Emperor; they grew stronger today than yesterday.

Known only to the Martial Alliance high command, even the Imperial Palace smelled suspicious in the midst of this.

Thus the Martial Alliance needed to rally more than ever—and also to bulk up.

The Academy’s opening was for that.

But if that Academy failed?

If failure weren’t enough—if slaughter broke out and countless people died and were maimed in catastrophe?

If, among the righteous martial world’s rising generation—those who were heirs—those precious young experts could not even be protected—then what?

Above all, the Heavenly Flower Sword—that enemy you couldn’t shred to death enough—was right here.

In the Hangzhou calamity, the Appetite Brigade lost a vast number of painstakingly made Blood Fiends.

Blood Ghouls—the mere monsters that crave human flesh—can be mass-produced easily; but Blood Fiends who can think for themselves cannot be made in a short time, so the Brigade’s losses collapsed to a level beyond repair.

This humiliating infiltration operation was likewise part of that.

That horrific disgrace of wagging their tails to the hypocrites of the Central Plains, flattering them and picking up the scraps of meat they tossed.

Henan is the Martial Alliance’s front yard; with current strength, storming the Righteous-Proper Martial Academy head-on is impossible.

Thus inside enemies—warriors who would respond to the Sect’s rightful vengeance and burn the enemy from within—were selected!

Only—their quality was a little off for “warriors.”

But it didn’t matter.

Their quality was a touch regrettable, but they were disciples who would carry out orders like iron.

Which is why he—Strategy Hall Lord of the Appetite Brigade, the closest aide of the Heart-Subduing Demon King, the brain of the Brigade—had stepped forward himself.

Dan Joya smiled coldly.

In his pupils, the blue ghost-fire of hatred swelled and bloomed.

Because Dan Joya had always presented a friendly, well-mannered face, his disguise was thorough enough to make anyone doubt their own eyes.

Who in the world would suspect him?

——

“Sima? That candidate named Dan Joya—didn’t he show up for the second exam this time too? Weren’t you going to reinvestigate his background?”

“Khe-hoo-hoot, there is no need for worry, says this humble one? The intuitions of geniuses like us—genius means a supreme nature whose upper dantian communes with Heaven’s will, and such intuitions are not to be ignored, are they? Pass-or-fail is announced when the whole exam schedule ends, so those dubious candidates upon whom the Heavenly Flower Sword deigned to give a high opinion—will not be joining us.”

And Qing’s heart was a little unsettled as well.

Bad karma doesn’t guarantee a bad person—maybe he had merely failed, in the end.

Is it right to just drop him?

“Mm. That does feel a bit too much.”

“Oh dear, Heavenly Flower Sword. You spend too much heart on the rabble? Tsk, tsk—so frail, like this. In the stride of giants like us who must accomplish great deeds, paltry existences swept along unavoidably must exist; if you’re afraid of stepping on ants and cannot walk, how will you practice the Greater Cause?”

Qing knows that this Sima Chunbong—when commanding even one menial of the Alliance—provides lavishly overflowing reward.

The kid’s kind. Why does he talk like this?

“This much for now: it’s already decided that the Righteous-Proper Martial Academy will also open next year; judging by this year’s results, we aim for the year after as well—ah, this is still internal, mind? It’ll be announced with the pass list; those with the will shall surely try again next year.”

“Ah, like that. Then fine.”

Qing’s uneasy heart grew a little lighter.

See—smart people all have a plan.