The Private Contest During the Basic Ability Test

At the dinner table, Bei Bei and Tang Ya laughed rather rudely as they recalled how Huo Yuhao had been cut down. His performance had already far exceeded their expectations. Not being eliminated right away was a win in itself. As for why they were laughing, they had probably remembered their own shining moments dominating the arena.

It didn't take much thought to guess what kind of Soul Master had served as the backdrop to those shining moments. Huo Yuhao watched them with a wounded, resentful look.

"Cheer up, little junior brother. It's all in the past, so there's no need to dwell on it. You did great. When I was in your position, I took out that Support—cough, cough..."

"Let's drop it. The teacher will decide the score. For now, get ready for the Individual Battle."

"Based on how you've done so far, you'll need to win at least one match. Let's hope you draw a good opponent."

Only after they had seen Huo Yuhao back to his dorm did Bei Bei sigh and say to Tang Ya, "I didn't expect Spiritual Detection Sharing to be such a powerful skill and still fail to help. It might even cost him points. I never thought not everyone could adapt to this Soul Skill as quickly as I did."

Not everyone had a top-tier Martial Soul and powerful spiritual strength. Bei Bei had also gained experience coordinating with a team at the academy, including with sudden boosts to his abilities. Now that things had come to this, all they could do was leave it to Huo Yuhao.

"Bei Bei, do you think little Yuhao will push himself too hard in the Individual Battle and get hurt?" Tang Ya looked worried too.

"We have to trust the little junior brother. He can do it. Besides, how could someone who grew up living in the Star Dou Great Forest fail so easily?"

"He can definitely do it," Bei Bei said firmly.

"How can this be?" Huo Yuhao's examiner stared at his file. "This doesn't make sense. My teacher didn't teach me this."

"A Wind Baboon producing a Soul Ring like this? I'll eat shit if that's true." The examiner still refused to believe this Soul Ring had come from a ten-year Wind Baboon that had mutated. But there was no further evidence, so he had no choice but to let it go.

The harder part was assigning a score. There were three main criteria: survival, defeating opponents, and support effects. Control counted as part of support effects.

Huo Yuhao's survival score was among the very best for Support System Soul Masters—he might even have ranked second. First place went to the student from the Nine Treasures Glazed Tile Sect, who had people specifically assigned to protect him. Huo Yuhao ultimately earned the top score for survival among Support System students, but the score itself wasn't high: a total of 22 points. It was still the highest in recent years.

He hadn't defeated anyone. As for the opponent he'd injured, Mental Attack made the result impossible to measure.

The support effects were even harder to judge. His contribution had been negative. According to the Soul Masters who'd received his support—or, rather, the way they'd complained about it—the match had been evenly balanced until Huo Yuhao stepped in, after which all they could do was take a beating. It was obvious that the owner of a Soul Skill that looked like a divine technique simply hadn't used it properly. But what could the teacher do? He couldn't give Huo Yuhao a high score just because the Soul Skill was powerful. At the same time, he wanted to study the skill, which meant Huo Yuhao had to pass the entrance exam. He was caught between two choices.

In the end, he started with the Support System minimum of 15 points and added a few for Huo Yuhao's "extraordinary survival time," giving him 18. Don't underestimate those three points. Every year, plenty of Support System applicants were rejected for falling short by just a few.

Special abilities could earn a Support System student a high score, but few ever got full marks. The minimum score for the Support System was 20 points, and applicants had to make up the difference in the Individual Battle. That was easier said than done.

Even though Support System applicants had a fifty-fifty chance of winning their first match against another Support System student, most still needed to win the second match. That was easier said than done.

All they could do was hope their opponents in the second or third match were weak or badly injured, giving them a chance to pick up an easy win. Without that, passing the exam would be difficult.

The one thing in their favor was that Support System students could surrender, while students from the other departments couldn't. The reasoning was that the other departments didn't need cowards. They had to bring their full strength to bear and defeat their opponents. When it was time to charge, they couldn't hesitate—they had to go straight in.

Support System students were supposed to run. They'd only get scolded if they were too slow. So many people had planned around keeping them alive. If they died, wouldn't all that effort go to waste? That was the difference.

This greatly increased their chances of encountering an opponent who was badly injured. But they had no reason to celebrate. History had proven time and again that even someone on their last legs could kill you before collapsing. Don't celebrate too soon; that was a mistake.

The examiner finished grading with some difficulty and moved on to the special ability assessment. Just thinking about it gave him an even bigger headache. The conflict between the Soul Guidance Department and the Martial Soul Department was growing more intense. It had already begun to affect recruitment. Some people were even leaning toward giving lower scores to applicants whose Martial Souls suited the Soul Guidance Department. The Soul Guidance Department had fought back fiercely and lodged protests, using the situation to finally get some of their own people appointed. They still couldn't truly stand against the deeply entrenched Martial Soul Department, but it was a good start.

He had no interest in joining the conflict. He only wanted to teach his students well. This time, unlike certain people, he wouldn't show any bias. He would judge only whether the applicant met the criteria.

Although this teacher wasn't taking part, the conflict had already begun. People were starting to organize behind the scenes. In the future, there would either be a major purge or a counter-purge, unless someone stepped in and dealt with a group of people to suppress the conflict, leaving its resolution to later generations. They could trust in the wisdom of those who came after.

Yan Shaozhe, the person in charge of recruitment, knew about the conflict. He was always kept informed of the Martial Soul Department's various activities. That was the rule.

Naturally, he hoped nothing would go wrong. But the Soul Guidance Department's continued expansion had one obvious effect: its funding kept increasing. Funding couldn't appear or disappear out of nowhere; it could only be transferred from one place to another. The Soul Guidance Department's budget came from the Martial Soul Department's former funding, leaving some people in the Martial Soul Department deeply dissatisfied. The money had been taken from their pockets. When their interests were involved, they were bound to obstruct the Soul Guidance Department.

In reality, the Martial Soul Department's funding per student hadn't changed; there were simply fewer students. Many had realized how Soul Tools could benefit their development and switched over to the Soul Guidance Department. But the teaching staff couldn't change overnight. A Martial Soul Department teacher couldn't just transfer to the Soul Guidance Department and start teaching there. They simply didn't know how.

As a result, many Martial Soul Department teachers had been left with nothing to do and no jobs. Without a source of income, how were they supposed to cultivate? They could train through sheer hard work like Huo Yuhao, but everyone could see how slowly he progressed. And what about after he got resources? The difference was plain for all to see. Even if no one could buy an opportunity as extraordinary as Huo Yuhao's, surely they could get their hands on lesser resources.

Even Mysterious Water Pills, which were only useful at lower levels, cost a fortune. Pills meant for higher-level Soul Masters were even more expensive. The academy organized group hunts for Soul Rings, but it couldn't possibly find one suited to every student each time. Then they had to find good information and pinpoint the location themselves to improve their chances. All of that cost money. And then there were precious Spirit Bones. Absorbing one could save years of hard cultivation, but the rarity of Spirit Bones and the difficulty of meeting their absorption requirements were both frightening.

Spirit Bones could be cut from the dead, but only if they hadn't been damaged. A Spirit Bone that wasn't particularly special might break after just a few uses. And you had to find one with a compatible attribute. If a fire-type Soul Master absorbed an ice-type Spirit Bone, their leg might freeze—but even setting that aside, wouldn't their Soul Power explode inside their body as it circulated?

You couldn't absorb one carelessly. It could easily go wrong. In theory, a low-level Soul Master could absorb a higher-level Spirit Bone with a similar attribute, though it wouldn't improve them as much as it would a high-level Soul Master. But, again, it could easily go wrong. There was no way to guarantee that the Spirit Bone wouldn't turn violent during absorption. Sometimes the Spirit Beast's residual spiritual power remained inside. A Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beast's spiritual power was already considerable, and its resentment before death could easily coalesce within the Spirit Bone. That was why low-level Soul Masters couldn't absorb them.

As you could see, cultivation was an expensive path. Luck could bring opportunities, but they were too rare to provide a strong foundation. A powerhouse needed a complete enough foundation to bring out their full strength. Being a specialist in only one area was painful, especially on a rapidly changing battlefield. The one thing you lacked could very well cost you your life.

The conflict between the Soul Guidance Department and the Martial Soul Department was irreconcilable. They would stop fighting only if they found another source of funding capable of supporting both departments. But that was a problem for the future. For now, the fight was about to begin. Yan Shaozhe could only remain neutral; after all, his own interests were involved too.

Money was too distant a concern for Huo Yuhao. It was Wang Yi's problem to think about. Two words described him perfectly right now: broke and brazen. If you had money, you could afford to be bold.

Wang Yi didn't understand much about this sort of thing either. Still, he was the most educated among these beings. If he didn't come up with something, they had no future. So, while poring over the history of the Douluo Continent, he dug Das Kapital out of the depths of his memory and studied economics, hoping Old Marx could tell him what to do. It was a very long process, and it left Wang Yi deeply troubled.

Huo Yuhao gave a little grunt and ran out of the dorm to meet up with the others, leaving Wang Yi to drift through a sea of knowledge. Reading required understanding, and understanding was hard. Every year, countless people studied desperately and memorized all the material, only to fail to get high marks. Just thinking about it was despairing. Some people could even recite their politics textbooks backward and amaze their teachers, but what good did that do? If they couldn't put it into words in the exam, if they couldn't match the right knowledge to the question, it was useless.

What good was it to know something from a textbook if you couldn't recognize it outside the textbook? Theory had to be combined with practice. The whole point of mastery was application. You had to make connections. History was a good example. Anyone could look at history, but understanding it wasn't easy. As the saying went, few people in the whole country truly understood the Twenty-Four Histories. That wasn't even counting the sheer volume of text. When you saw a particular action, you had to understand the political, economic, and military factors behind it. A history book could summarize that knowledge for you, but when reading history yourself, could you see the connection between a person's death and a shift in the military?

It was a difficult thing. Everyone was only half-competent, forced by circumstance to muddle through.

When they met up this time, Huo Yuhao spotted someone very unusual—the kind of person who immediately caught your eye in a crowd. In a word, flamboyant. He had a fair, slightly chubby face, and in his hand was a fan painted with a hazy landscape. It was clearly a masterwork. His outfit made him look like a refined scholar, but he was actually a tall, burly man. The contrast was striking.

After they introduced themselves, Huo Yuhao learned that the man was Xu Sanshi. He and Bei Bei were both third-year students, and he possessed the top-tier Martial Soul Black Tortoise of Profound Darkness, a Beast Martial Soul renowned for a defense said to be unbreakable among Soul Masters of the same rank. It was primarily water, with earth as a secondary attribute. According to Xu Sanshi himself, he and Bei Bei were enemies.

Tang Ya added that both of them had the most exceptional strength and talent, yet neither could get the better of the other. Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon was extreme in its offensive power; when the strongest spear clashed with the strongest shield, there was no way to determine who was number one. Bei Bei was indifferent to fame and fortune, but he still had a bit of an obsession with taking first place. The two of them still hadn't settled things.

Xu Sanshi was someone Bei Bei had called over to help train Huo Yuhao. Anyone who could take a beating was suitable as a sparring partner. The Individual Battle depended partly on luck, but in the end, Huo Yuhao would have to knock his opponents off the platform himself. No one else could help him, and his opponents wouldn't surrender—except for Support System Soul Masters.

Xu Sanshi said, "I can help you, but do you really think I, Xu Sanshi, would do it without getting something in return?"

"What are you going to give me?"

A little while later, Xu Sanshi was squatting on the ground, munching on grilled fish. "Mm, your cooking really is good. It suits my tastes. All right, I'll help you."

"And if you get admitted, don't forget about me. If I want some more, I'll come find you. This is so delicious... hey."

Before Xu Sanshi could finish, Bei Bei hauled him to his feet. "You're done eating, so get to work. Stop dawdling. What's the matter with you?"

"Exactly! You finished our Yuhao's grilled fish, so get to work. What, do you want to be like a lazy donkey that has to be dragged to the mill?" Tang Ya chimed in after finishing her fish.

Huo Yuhao watched them with an awkward but polite smile. He wasn't close to Xu Sanshi, so he didn't feel comfortable joining in. Just watching them talk was entertaining enough.

The group then left Shrek City and headed to a wide-open space outside the city to train. Xu Sanshi took up a stance and told Huo Yuhao to attack him. He hadn't even released his Martial Soul.

"Hey, aren't you being a little overconfident? You're looking down on Yuhao," Tang Ya complained.

"How can I know what strength to use when we spar if I don't test him from the start?"

"Besides, even without releasing my Martial Soul, my physical abilities are still incredible. How much offensive power can a Support System Soul Master have?"

"Xu Sanshi, since you're so confident, let's make a bet. Little junior brother doesn't have money for food right now. If he can make you flinch, you'll cover his meals during the exam."

"Sure, whatever. I didn't earn the title Eternal Defense for nothing."

"Wait, hang on. I think I've been tricked again. Bei Bei, you're always scheming. No way."

Having been tricked too many times, Xu Sanshi fell into deep self-doubt. But he had already agreed, and with his personality, he wouldn't go back on his word.

Huo Yuhao stopped paying attention to their conversation and activated his Martial Soul, Spirit Eye, carefully observing Xu Sanshi. Xu Sanshi's words were careless, but he had taken up a defensive stance without leaving so much as a gap.

After a brief moment of thought, Huo Yuhao concluded that he had only one chance. He had to catch Xu Sanshi off guard and land his strongest attack at the fastest speed possible if he wanted any chance of hurting him. Once Xu Sanshi released his Martial Soul, there would be no opportunity at all. Even Bei Bei wouldn't be able to break through the Black Tortoise of Profound Darkness's defense then.

Huo Yuhao took a deep breath. Green Aura slowly circulated within his body. Since this was only training, there was no need to push it to the limit as he would in a life-or-death battle.

He stepped back with his rear foot, then sprang forward with all his strength. Ghost Shadow Perplexing Track accelerated to its limit. He abandoned the footwork's usual fluidity for the sake of pure speed and charged at Xu Sanshi.

Seeing how fast Huo Yuhao was, Xu Sanshi sobered up and stopped underestimating him, waiting for his attack.