The Martial Artist Exam was far stricter than the Martial Arts Apprentice Exam, and far more brutal.
Since martial arts apprentices were only prospective martial artists, the state did not advocate conducting their exams through fighting and killing.
But martial artists were different.
Besides the same blood qi test that martial arts apprentices took, the combat test, which allowed for a certain number of deaths, was a brutal assessment no one could ignore.
The combat test did not pit candidates against one another. Instead, each person had to kill a martial artist-level ferocious beast.
There were only three possible outcomes.
They either killed the Ferocious Beast, failed to defeat it and were rescued by an examiner, or were eaten by the Ferocious Beast on the spot.
The Martial Artist Exam did not award empty honors such as first place.
Anyone who passed could become a martial artist.
Lin Shuguang probably looked the youngest of them all, even though he had deliberately dressed to look more mature.
Most of those taking the Martial Artist Exam were seasoned veterans who had seen blood, and no one bothered to meddle in anyone else's business.
Most stayed silently in their own spots, a scene utterly different from the youthful inexperience of the Martial Arts Apprentice Exam.
If the latter were flowers in a greenhouse, the former were desperadoes who had witnessed bloody carnage.
When the time came, the exam began amid an icy atmosphere.
Lin Shuguang faced a ferocious beast at the first resonance of bone tempering.
The instant it was released from its cage, an incomparably savage flash of saber light cut it down.
Even the examiner froze at the sight.
Several figures rushed to the Ferocious Beast's corpse to inspect it, thinking something must have been wrong with the Ferocious Beast for