The Baby Dragon Administrator and the Completed Divine Examination

Lin Yuan's situation was strange.

He had left the Divine Realm and was now in a mysterious space. At first glance, he might have thought he was dead, but his soul was still there, as was the Panel and the god-level Spirit Bone belonging to the Golden Dragon King.

All of this had gone according to plan.

From the start, he had sacrificed only the Golden Dragon King and the Dragon God, never his own soul. It was a spectacularly underhanded move.

With the system, he effectively occupied the highest level. The Golden Dragon King was linked beneath him, and the Dragon God and others were linked through the Golden Dragon King.

No matter what happened, he would be fine. That was the source of his confidence.

Otherwise, he would have taken his time instead of flipping the table outright.

After all that work, everything was only just beginning.

He was now inside the core of the Dragon God's Ten Trials. Feeling the Divine Power flowing in from the Divine Realm, he thought he had never fought a battle with resources this abundant.

The rules restricted that Divine Power and energy to the Divine Examination, but that still left plenty of room to maneuver.

First, he was going to reincarnate on the Douluo Continent, which meant the Divine Examination needed an administrator.

That was easy.

Lin Yuan drew a drop of the Golden Dragon King's essence blood from the Spirit Bone, then poured an immense amount of Divine Power into it.

Before long, he had created a yellow baby dragon.

The baby dragon had wings on its back, a pair of golden Dragon Horns, and golden Dragon Claws on all four feet. It was irresistibly cute.

He had made this creature himself.

Lin Yuan linked himself to the baby dragon at once. Their shared bloodline made the connection easy.

Next, he used Divine Power to copy his memories and place them in the baby dragon.

The Baby Dragon Administrator, vacant-eyed a moment earlier, suddenly looked intelligent.

"I'm Baby Dragon."

"That's right. You're Baby Dragon, and you're the administrator.

From now on, you're in charge of everything concerning the Dragon God's Ten Trials."

"Understood, Dragon God," the Baby Dragon Administrator replied, quickly settling into the role.

Dragon God?

I suppose I am something like the Dragon God now.

After all, I'm the one who designed the Divine Examination. What else would that make me?

With an administrator in place, it was time to finish the Divine Examination.

Even a god could not design a Divine Examination entirely on a whim. If gods could hand their divine positions to anyone they pleased, the whole Divine Realm would fall into chaos.

Cosmic laws governed the process, though they constrained Lin Yuan far less. He had freedom over half of it.

Aside from the principles he absolutely could not violate, he could set things up however he liked.

The purpose of his Divine Examination was to raise the strongest through ruthless competition. It could not be too easy.

There were already too many contenders for too few places, but without a concrete elimination system, the pressure would still be lacking.

Then...

Like a creator god, Lin Yuan began shaping everything within the Divine Examination's space.

First came the elimination system. The examinations corresponded to Innate Soul Power at levels six, seven, eight, and nine, plus Innate Full Soul Power. Even now, there were not many soul masters with Innate Full Soul Power. The number of candidates halved at each successive level.

That gave Lin Yuan an idea:

Thousands of candidates in the White-Level Five Trials would compete and be eliminated. Once their number fell to match the number taking the Yellow-Level Six Trials, the surviving White-Level Five Trials candidates would automatically advance and compete alongside the Yellow-Level Six Trials candidates;

They would fight one another until their number fell to match those taking the Purple-Level Seven Trials, then compete at the same level as them.

And so on, until the nine strongest contenders emerged. Why not ten? Because he was obviously going to be the ultimate winner. Could he really lose with control of the whole system? If so, he might as well start over.

Having decided, Lin Yuan immediately set that rule.

But that was only the foundation. Many more details needed work.

How should they compete?

Killing a Divine Examination holder would let someone inherit everything that person had. That much was true.

But Lin Yuan did not want too much to go to waste.

Ideally, each candidate would pass more trials, earn more rewards, and grow stronger before being devoured. The stronger they became, the stronger the eventual winner would be.

His goal was to seize more Divine Power and essence from the Divine Realm.

He would drain the gods first. Once they could supply no more Divine Power, he would drain the Divine Realm itself and build a new Divine Realm upon its corpse.

That meant setting limits. If the powerful could slaughter everyone unchecked, the whole thing would be over before he could participate. He had to take the Divine Examination too.

He set the rules for a challenger who killed an opponent of the same strength or age:

Someone without a Divine Examination would inherit the opponent's full examination level and progress;

Someone who already had one would inherit the opponent's full examination level and retain whichever examination had progressed further.

Collecting ten would allow them to fuse and upgrade to a higher-level Divine Examination.

Ten White-Level Five Trials would automatically upgrade to Yellow-Level Six Trials; ten Yellow-Level Six Trials would upgrade to Purple-Level Seven Trials, and so on.

Those who advanced through fusion could enter the higher-level candidate pool early and stop competing against lower-level candidates. It was effectively a pass straight to the next tier.

As for exceptionally powerful people, he needed to keep them from mindlessly farming points:

First, diminishing returns. With each consecutive kill of an opponent more than two levels below them, their reward would halve until it reached zero.

That probably would not deter everyone, so he also needed a backlash penalty. After enough kills against lower-level opponents, their Divine Examination would backfire and their progress would regress.

Anyone who maliciously slaughtered lower-level soul masters would also be marked in red. Other candidates could challenge them, and killing them would grant bonus rewards.

Under those rules, the rewards for mindless slaughter should drop to zero after more than seven kills, with penalties on top. Surely no one would be stupid enough to keep at it.

He wanted the soul masters of the Douluo Continent to hunt Shrek's candidates and seize their Divine Examination qualifications. This was the opportunity he was giving everyone.

But killing one person was enough to gain a qualification. Using that as a way to farm points would be going too far.

After all, the number of places was limited.

With that rule in place, the system was almost complete.

That left the question of competing on the same stage.

Candidates of every age and strength would be competing together.

His examinations were assigned by Innate Soul Power rather than age or current strength, so candidates with wildly different ages and cultivation levels were bound to meet in competition.

Many powerful people would probably get only lower-level examinations. They might even see Titled Douluo competing alongside Soul Elders in a White-Level trial. Wouldn't that be a disaster?

Titled Douluo were a dime a dozen in the era of Legend of the Dragon King, while Divine Examination Quotas were nowhere near plentiful enough to go around.

To ensure fairness, Lin Yuan decided to follow the Dark Demon Evil God Tiger's Life-and-Death Arena and roll competitors' ages back to a common point:

In individual matches, competitors would return to the age of the youngest person in the match. In team matches, all seven would return to the age of their youngest teammate before competing.

He would also forcibly summon everyone with a Divine Examination from across the continent to Shrek once every three months for a competition, much like the Continental Advanced Soul Master Elite Tournament.

There would be individual matches and seven-person team battles.

Teams would be matched entirely at random. Someone could be an enemy in one match and a teammate in the next.

Wins and losses would determine total points. The competition would take place every three months, with one hundred people eliminated each time. The top one hundred would receive generous rewards.

One hundred eliminations might not sound like many, but these were life-and-death eliminations. That changed things.

This was the price of taking part in the Divine Examination.

And while the number was small, the arena was not the main site of elimination. The candidates devouring one another in everyday life on the Douluo Continent would be far more insidious.

He needed rankings too: a points leaderboard and all sorts of other lists.

Ideas poured from Lin Yuan's mind, and he had plenty of Divine Power to implement them. Even if he ran short, he could always drain Tang San dry.

Before long, he had built a complete, sprawling Divine Examination system.

The thought of dragging everyone onto the same stage to fight made Lin Yuan want to laugh.

He could already picture the nightmarish sight of Yun Ming and the Nether Emperor ending up on the same team.