Bone Age and the Gang Entry Test

It was noon.

Wucha Town lay between mountains and streams, and a light rain had fallen not long ago, leaving the air thick with moisture.

Even at this time of day,

the place remained shrouded in clouds and mist.

Even the sunlight overhead struggled to penetrate it.

This gave the whole environment a somewhat hazy feel.

Still, seeing clearly was not difficult.

Within a certain distance, the white mist did not interfere much with one's vision.

Ling Wuyuan's ultimate destination—White Crow Mountain—lay somewhere roughly five kilometers from Wucha Town. The gang occupying that place was the White Crow Gang.

The mountain had received the name White Crow Mountain precisely because of that gang.

In the past,

it had merely been a nameless peak.

But after the White Crow Gang seized it and made it their headquarters, the place gained its name.

It was said that after many years of development,

the gang's full members—those who had received rudimentary martial training and could start fighting with weapons in hand—had long numbered over a thousand. The gang's various businesses spread throughout Wucha Town and the surrounding towns and villages. Calling them the local tyrant of the area would not have been an exaggeration.

Even the larger forces within Black Stone City would not provoke the White Crow Gang, these local snakes, without good reason.

And the nearest recruitment date for the gang was today.

The process was not complicated.

First came basic registration and an inspection to see whether one's facial features were normal, whether the mouth, eyes, ears, nose, hands, feet, and so on were missing anything.

Then came a basic intelligence test and a basic physical fitness test.

There was no need to say much about the former. In a world where basic education had not been popularized, one could not expect a so-called basic intelligence test to be difficult.

In truth, it was practically no challenge at all.

As long as one's brain worked properly, one could basically pass.

The physical fitness test was equally straightforward. It came down to one word: run!

They simply had to run around a circular track that was at least two kilometers in actual length!

They ran until the examiners felt they had qualified.

However, since those wishing to join the gang ranged widely in age, they were divided into five groups according to age, each with different standards.

One group for ages five to seven.

One group for ages eight to ten.

One group for ages eleven to fourteen.

One group for ages fifteen to eighteen.

And all adults, regardless of age, were counted as one group.

To be honest, when registering, Ling Wuyuan had agonized over his age for quite some time, because he had no idea how old he was supposed to be.

Especially after learning that the White Crow Gang would test applicants' actual bone age to verify their information, he felt like his balls were aching.

Although this body had been repeatedly reconstructed during his transmigration, its foundation ultimately still came from his original body.

So how old was this body's bone age?

The sum of his ages across two lives, thirty years old?

Or should it be counted from zero when the reconstruction began, making him five years old now?

After Ling Wuyuan learned that this world possessed methods to test bone age,

his balls had genuinely ached...

Left with no other choice, he could only say that he did not know how old he was.

The registration staff were already accustomed to that.

In this world, due to all manner of unforeseen mishaps and because many people truly had no education whatsoever, plenty of people genuinely did not know their own age.

Besides, even if applicants did know their age, the White Crow Gang would still inspect and verify them to prevent certain people from falsifying their information and sneaking into lower-age groups.

With a casual point from a registration clerk, a physician beside him immediately took out some special instrument and began examining Ling Wuyuan.

Fortunately, the physician's result was not much different from Ling Wuyuan's apparent age. He really was ten years old.

The physician even praised his physical fitness, saying that his aptitude for martial arts was likely quite good.

Ling Wuyuan silently let out a long breath of relief.

He knew that if he had been found to have a bone age of thirty years, things would have become truly troublesome...

From the moment the physician announced that his real age was ten,

a long-standing worry in his heart finally dissipated somewhat.

It was the fear that this world might have some method of detecting that there was something wrong with his body and soul...

As they ran around the grounds,

the group Ling Wuyuan belonged to—the eight-to-ten-year-old children—both boys and girls, had continuously run nearly six kilometers in under twenty minutes.

Fast pace, long distance.

It eliminated the majority of applicants on the spot.

The twenty-odd children who remained were mostly panting hard as well.

Including Ling Wuyuan, only five or six children appeared relatively relaxed, seemingly not even breathing heavily. Who knew whether they had practiced martial arts before.

Ling Wuyuan had once considered whether he should hide some of his physical fitness and make himself appear more ordinary.

But after thinking it over,

for the sake of his future treatment,

he decided to present himself as relatively outstanding.

After all, being somewhat outstanding but not overly outstanding was the best state for muddling along.

Those too useless would be bullied at will.

Those too ordinary would be treated as cannon fodder.

Those too outstanding would receive special attention.

Outstanding but not excessively so allowed him to enjoy a certain degree of treatment while still leaving himself room to maneuver.

He had come to the White Crow Gang merely to lay a foundation and learn the various basics he would inevitably need in the future. He did not truly intend to remain here forever. In his plans, this place was only a stepping stone...

So, when he saw the examiner give his long-distance running result what appeared to be a fairly good grade, Ling Wuyuan was deeply satisfied.

After successfully completing the long-distance running test,

following a brief rest,

the next test Ling Wuyuan had to undergo was weightlifting.

There were stone pedestals and stone locks arranged neatly in rows.

The lightest weighed only a dozen or several dozen jin.

The heaviest were larger than adults in appearance, and their weight likely had to be measured in tons.

After glancing at the adult group, who had run at least ten kilometers and were still continuing their long-distance run, the examiner pointed to a stone pedestal marked with characters on its surface, weighing at least fifty or sixty kilograms, and said:

"No matter what method you use, as long as you can lift this sixty-kilogram stone pedestal over your head, you will be considered to have passed this stage. From today onward, you can be counted as a member of our White Crow Gang."

Then he pointed at the increasingly larger stone pedestals behind it and continued:

"Lifting the eighty-kilogram stone pedestal counts as good, lifting the one-hundred-kilogram stone pedestal counts as excellent, and lifting the one-hundred-and-twenty-kilogram stone pedestal counts as elite..."

"For the sake of your future treatment, I suggest you test your limits."