Qi-Blood Detection!
Boom!
The heavy alloy doors slowly closed behind them with a muffled crash, completely sealing out all the clamor and anticipation beyond.
Inside Examination Hall A-37, the air froze in an instant.
Nearly fifty young geniuses from cities across the Jiangnan Region were like lone wolves thrown into a beast-fighting arena, their eyes full of vigilance and wariness.
They sized one another up, their auras clashing. The invisible pressure seemed to lower the temperature throughout the hall by several degrees.
Chen Fan stood among the crowd. His small stature made him look out of place among these youngsters, whose average age was twelve or thirteen, yet he hardly drew any attention.
Tap, tap, tap.
The crisp sound of military boots striking the floor rang out.
A middle-aged examiner strode in, his posture straight as a spear, his face stern and his shoulders broad. A soldier's iron-blooded aura radiated from him.
His gaze, sharp as a falcon's, swept across the hall. Without a word of nonsense, he spoke, his voice as cold as a Siberian current.
"First, Qi-Blood detection."
"The rules are simple." The examiner's voice held not a trace of emotion, like a machine reading out a sentence. "Anyone with a Qi-Blood value below thirty-five calories will be eliminated immediately."
As soon as he finished, a chorus of involuntary gasps erupted in the hall.
Quite a few youngsters who had been brimming with confidence turned pale in an instant.
Thirty-five calories!
This standard was stricter than the highest standard they had imagined for any city!
"Number 01, step forward for testing," the examiner called out the number, expressionless.
An arrogant-looking youngster from a local Martial Dao elementary school in Tiannan City strode confidently up to the detector. He took a deep breath and punched out!
Yet the numbers jumping wildly on the light screen finally settled at [34.6 calories].
Just 0.4 calories short.
The smile froze on the youngster's face, and the color drained from it.
"No, let me test again. I just made a mistake..."
The next second, before he could open his mouth to plead, two expressionless guards in black who had been waiting at the side seized his arms, one on each side, and ushered him straight out of the examination hall as though dragging away an object.
Only his roars of unwillingness and despair remained, echoing between the cold walls before being swallowed completely by the heavy doors.
That merciless scene was like a basin of ice water dumped mercilessly over every examinee's head.
The atmosphere in the hall instantly became oppressive to the extreme.
The testing continued in dead silence.
Some burst into wild joy at having survived a disaster when the number passed thirty-five calories.
But more were led away by the two silent guards, their faces ashen.
The pass rate was frighteningly low.
"Number 18, Hong Yi!"
As the examiner called his name, a youngster as imposing as an iron tower stepped out from the crowd.
His upper body was bare, and beneath his bronze skin, his knotted muscles conveyed a sense of explosive power. Every step he took made the floor tremble slightly. His eyes were wild and confident, like a primordial beast about to hunt.
"Hah!"
Hong Yi made no unnecessary movements. He walked up to the detector and let out a deafening, guttural roar at its cold metal plate!
He fired a plain, unadorned straight punch!
Before his fist even reached it, the air ahead was compressed in an instant, producing a muffled sonic boom!
Buzz!
The numbers on the detector's light screen soared wildly at an unprecedented speed, as though they would burst through the heavens!
Thirty calories!
Fifty calories!
Sixty calories!
Finally, in dead silence, under the gaze of eyes widened in horror, the numbers slowly stopped, settling on a value that left everyone breathless!
[69.5 calories!]
The entire hall fell deathly silent!
All the examinees, including the high-and-mighty geniuses who had barely passed, stared at Hong Yi as though he were a monster. It was as if their throats had been stuffed with cotton, leaving them unable to make a sound.
For the first time, undisguised fervor and admiration appeared on the stern examiner's normally placid face. He looked at Hong Yi and nodded firmly.
"Very good!"
Meanwhile.
In the top monitoring room at Jiangnan No. 1 High School, Wei Tianlong looked at the dazzling number on the light screen and nodded in satisfaction. "The Hong Family's born warrior really does live up to his reputation."
But in the next second, his falcon-like gaze locked firmly onto the small figure in the corner of the screen who had been waiting quietly from beginning to end.
The real main event was only about to begin.
Inside the examination hall.
Before the shock of Hong Yi's earth-shaking result had faded, the examiner's icy voice rang out again.
"Next, number 19, Chen Fan."
Swish!
Everyone's gaze instinctively converged on the end of the line.
Under everyone's astonished and puzzled gazes, a child who looked only seven or eight, so frail that a gust of wind could seemingly blow him over, slowly stepped out.
"What's going on? Why is there a little kid here?"
"Did he come to the wrong place? Is this a kindergarten spring outing?"
"Some big family probably shoved him in here to broaden his horizons. Poor kid, he'll probably be scared to tears in a moment."
Mocking, pitying, and curious gazes crisscrossed Chen Fan like searchlights.
No one believed that a child who might not even have graduated from Martial Dao elementary school could create a miracle in an examination hall full of monsters.
With Hong Yi's 69.5 calories as a shining example, any result below sixty calories would pale in comparison.
And this child... could he even manage twenty calories?
Facing everyone's gazes, Chen Fan's youthful face remained as calm as an undisturbed ancient well.
Step by step, he walked up to the enormous Qi-Blood Detector, which towered several times over him. His small, thin body stood in stark contrast to the cold steel machine.
Then, beneath the complex gazes of everyone in the hall, Chen Fan raised his little hand and gently placed it against the icy testing panel.
He felt the cold metal against his hand.
The Qi and Blood within Chen Fan's body, like a deep-sea dragon that had slumbered for hundreds of millions of years, was quietly stirred by that touch of cold.
He did not drive it or unleash it. He merely allowed that vast force to flow slowly out, following the detector's guidance.
Buzz!
The detector's light screen lit up, and the numbers began to jump.
[1.2 calories]
[2.5 calories]
[4.8 calories]
Unlike Hong Yi's earlier instant eruption and the wild surge of his numbers, Chen Fan's readings climbed unusually slowly, almost lazily, like someone who had not yet woken up stretching.
This abnormal scene stirred the air in the examination hall, which had only just frozen, into commotion once more.
"Ha, just as I said. How much strength could this little brat have?"
"His Qi and Blood are weak and insubstantial, and he can't sustain them. A classic case of an unstable foundation. Looks like we overestimated him."
"Even ten calories will be a stretch. What a waste of such an early number."
The examinees who had been crushed breathless by Hong Yi's terrifying result seemed to have found an outlet. Jeers and taunts rang out again, even more unrestrained than before.
However, the instant the numbers lazily passed the ten-calorie mark—
A sudden change occurred!
Like a primordial beast breaking free of all its shackles, the numbers on the light screen became a blurry afterimage in an instant!
[21.7 calories!]
[35.0 calories!]
[43.8 calories!]
The speed of their wild ascent was even more violent and unstoppable than Hong Yi's had been!
In an instant, all the laughter and discussion stopped abruptly, as though an invisible hand had seized every throat!
The entire examination hall was so quiet that a falling needle could be heard!
Everyone's eyes were wide and bloodshot from the sheer shock. They stared fixedly at the light screen, as though they would embed their eyeballs in it!
The thirty-five-calorie elimination threshold was swept past without causing the slightest ripple!
Forty calories!
Fifty calories!
When the numbers easily broke through this barrier, which represented the bottleneck at the limit of a prospective martial artist, gasps rang out across the hall!
Even Hong Yi, as imposing as an iron tower and wildly confident from beginning to end, had gone rigid in the face. For the first time, an emotion called shock appeared in his wild eyes.
The soaring numbers still had not stopped!
They were like an indestructible divine hammer, pounding again and again on the hearts of every examinee and on the dignity of the so-called geniuses they were so proud to be!
At last, in the nearly suffocating silence, beneath those vacant, horrified, and ghost-struck gazes, the wildly jumping numbers finally began to slow.
Then they settled firmly.
[Qi and Blood: 57.0 calories]
Silence.
Deathly silence.
That number was like a primordial divine mountain descending from the heavens, crashing down and crushing the pride and confidence of every genius in the hall to pieces!
Eight years old!
Fifty-seven calories!
This fucking wasn't a genius anymore! This was a monster! A monstrous talent who had stepped straight out of a myth!
Meanwhile, in the top monitoring room at Jiangnan No. 1 High School.
Wei Tianlong sprang to his feet, unprecedented fervor and wild joy bursting forth in his falcon-like eyes!
He stared fixedly at the number on the screen, which the system had automatically enlarged and highlighted in red, then checked the examinee information displayed below it again.
[Name: Chen Fan] [Age: 8] [Bone age assessment: matches]
"It's real! It's actually real!"
Wei Tianlong trembled slightly all over with excitement. He paced back and forth, growling ceaselessly under his breath, the authority and composure befitting the head of the admissions office long since flung beyond the ninth heaven.
"A monster! Compared with the Hong Family's born warrior, this little fellow... is the true priceless treasure!"
In the examination hall, the stern-faced middle-aged examiner had been frozen stiff for more than ten seconds.
He took a deep breath, then slowly breathed it out, his chest heaving violently before he could just barely suppress the stormy waves churning in his heart.
He hurried over to the detector and personally pulled up Chen Fan's registration information. When he saw the words "Age: 8" highlighted by the system, even with his soldier's iron-blooded will, the hand holding the optical computer could not help trembling slightly.
He put away the optical computer, and when he looked at Chen Fan again, his gaze had changed completely.
The coldness and severity were gone, replaced by a complex gleam of awe, fervor, and profound regard.
"Chen Fan, Qi-Blood value, 57.0 calories. Result... valid!"
His voice carried an uncontrollable tremor of emotion.
The first stage of testing soon ended.
After that brutal first round of screening, only sixteen of the nearly fifty people in the examination hall remained. The elimination rate was chillingly high.
The stern examiner looked around at the sixteen examinees, some of the severity returning to his expression.
"Now, we will proceed to the second assessment."
"The martial arts aptitude assessment."
"The rules: each of you will demonstrate the basic martial art you have mastered most thoroughly, and I will assess your level. Perfection earns an excellent rating, minor mastery earns a good rating, and anyone who has not reached minor mastery will be eliminated immediately!"
At those words, the atmosphere in the hall tightened again.
Basic martial arts were easy to learn but difficult to master.
At the age of twelve or thirteen, reaching minor mastery in a basic martial art was already no easy feat. As for perfection, those who achieved it were as rare as phoenix feathers and qilin horns.
"Hong Yi, you had the highest Qi-Blood value in the first stage. You're first!"
The examiner spoke in a low voice.
Hong Yi recovered from his shock. He took a long look at the small figure still standing calmly in the corner, the arrogance in his eyes considerably subdued, replaced by an even more surging fighting spirit that had been roused!
He strode into the center of the hall, lowered his waist, and settled into a horse stance. Without the slightest hesitation, he abruptly launched into Hong Fist, a basic fist art passed down in his family!
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
The wind from his fists howled, fierce and unmatched!
Hong Yi perfectly combined his terrifying power of Qi and Blood with his fist art. Every move and every form was full of explosive power, precise and ruthless. It was as though he had tempered them a thousand times, forging the entire fist art into his very marrow!
When he finished the set, he withdrew his stance and stood still, Qi and Blood steaming around him like a fierce tiger poised to strike.
"Not bad!"
The stern examiner offered his praise without restraint, his eyes full of admiration.
"Your fist framework is solid, and your power flows through completely. You have reached the realm of perfection! At your age, that is truly remarkable! Rating: excellent!"
At the favorable assessment, a satisfied expression appeared on Hong Yi's face, but he still could not resist another glance at Chen Fan.
He had been crushed in Qi-Blood value, but he was confident he could win back a round in martial arts mastery!
However, just then.
The examiner's gaze had already turned, impatiently, toward the center of everyone's attention.
His voice held a trace of almost fawning anticipation, one he himself had not even noticed.
"Next, Chen Fan!"
Swish!
Sixteen gazes, along with Hong Yi's scrutinizing, battle-hungry stare, turned in unison toward Chen Fan.
Amid the interwoven gazes of shock, anticipation, and disbelief, Chen Fan calmly stepped out of the line once again.
He did not take up a stance as Hong Yi had, nor did he mobilize the slightest bit of Qi and Blood within him.
He simply stood there in the center of the field, utterly casual.