The Testing Site

Lu Yuan, Zhou Xiyun, and Chen Shihe stared in shock as Ma Jin walked over and plopped down beside them, still holding his collector's edition math textbook.

"Great Immortal Ma, what are you doing here?" Chen Shihe couldn't help asking.

"Obviously, I'm here to take the True Essence test."

"You signed up for Cultivation University?" Zhou Xiyun was stunned. "Ma Jin, you have to pass the written exam to get into Cultivation University. You can't just waste money like that!"

A passing score on the written exam was 450. Given Ma Jin's attitude toward studying, even 45 would have been an overestimate. Signing up for Cultivation University cost 20,000 yuan, which was a lot of money.

Ma Jin glanced at them and said contemptuously:

"Extraordinary people do extraordinary things."

"As long as my True Essence is incredibly high, won't those cultivation universities all fight to have me? Who'll care about my written exam score?"

"When I put my hand on the test crystal ball, bang! My True Essence will make it burst!"

"Then who'll ask me how many points I got on the written exam?"

Lu Yuan covered his face. "Ma Jin, there's no crystal ball in the True Essence test..."

Chen Shihe said, "There's just a scanning machine..."

Zhou Xiyun said, "You've never gone to a hospital for a test, have you..."

Ma Jin panicked a little, but a moment later he rallied and stubbornly said:

"So what if it's a scanner? As soon as I lie down in it, the alarms will go crazy. Lu Yuan, you should know why."

Lu Yuan played along helplessly. "That's because Great Immortal Ma's True Essence is so high that it burns out the machine."

"Smart."

The others gave up trying to dissuade Ma Jin. The 20,000 yuan couldn't be refunded anyway, so he might as well treat it as an outing.

What an expensive outing!

Jia Xuanxuan was the last to board. When she saw Lu Yuan, she hurriedly took a bottle of multicolored drink out of her schoolbag.

"This is Spirit-Raising Water. It's good for your True Essence."

"My dad had a really hard time getting it."

"There was one bottle left. Drinking any more won't do me any good, so hurry and drink it."

"It's my fault. I should have thought of it that night. Luckily, it's not too late."

Lu Yuan frowned at the crystal bottle in his hand. It was a nice bottle, about the size of a thumb. But its contents were a riot of colors, with great clumps of sediment in it.

"Drink it, quick!"

Jia Xuanxuan urged him on.

Having no choice, Lu Yuan pinched his nose and drank the Spirit-Raising Water in one gulp. Jia Xuanxuan had no reason to poison him, anyway.

He smacked his lips. It didn't seem to have much of a taste.

He checked the system...

True Essence: 131/130

Holy crap, it really did raise my temporary cap by one point!

Good stuff!

But honestly, he should have saved it for Zhou Xiyun. It was no use to Lu Yuan. True Essence above the cap would quickly dissipate.

"Did you feel the effect?" Jia Xuanxuan asked.

"It really worked!"

"That's good."

Jia Xuanxuan looked relieved. She looked around, found some familiar girlfriends, and left the boys to sit with the girls. Before long, the sound of giggling drifted over.

Lu Yuan put away the Spirit-Raising Water bottle, then calmly and unhurriedly explained to his bros:

"Jia Xuanxuan and I are just ordinary classmates. Out of pure friendship, Jia Xuanxuan gave me a bottle of tonic. That's the whole truth. Could you please stop looking like your moms just died?"

His bros didn't believe him at all.

Chen Shihe was the first to attack, roaring, "That night? There was a 'that night'?! Lu Yuan, not only did you betray our failed-exam squad, you betrayed our singles squad too! You deserve ten thousand deaths! Burn him!"

Lu Yuan sneered. "A licking dog has no right to burn me!"

"Who are you calling a licking dog?"

"Whoever walks home with a girl after school every day is a licking dog."

His little secret exposed, Chen Shihe was instantly struck silent.

Zhou Xiyun, by contrast, was concerned about Lu Yuan. He said earnestly:

"Lu Yuan, listen to your bro. Jia Xuanxuan has no reason to fall for a loser dog like you. She must be playing with you! Once you fall for her, she'll immediately, instantly dump you hard! That's how it always happens in TV dramas."

Lu Yuan rolled his eyes at him. I was going to let you lick the bottom of the Spirit-Raising Water bottle, but now you can forget it.

Ma Jin bit his hand in disbelief.

"Lu Yuan, you weren't really reborn, were you? This is exactly how a reborn person gets treated. You must have been, right?"

"Lu Yuan, tell me how to get reborn! I want to be reborn!"

Lu Yuan answered with utmost seriousness:

"In my experience, you get reborn when you die. Why don't you find a dump truck and give it a try now?"

The True Essence test was held at the Jiangzhou City Education Bureau.

Although people commonly called it the "True Essence test," its official name was actually the "Cultivator University Qualification Test," as written on the admission ticket.

At around nine in the morning, the Ningcheng First Middle School bus arrived at the testing site.

Approximately two thousand candidates in Jiangzhou City would take the test that day. Based on previous years, a quarter of them would ultimately be admitted to cultivation universities.

In other words, three quarters of the candidates were cannon fodder.

By then, the parking lot in front of the Education Bureau was already full of buses, and Ningcheng First Middle School's bus couldn't get in at all. Everyone got off a street away and walked a long way to the waiting area for candidates from Ning City.

The college entrance written exam had strict security measures, with all kinds of identity checks before candidates entered the examination room. By comparison, security for the True Essence test seemed extremely lax.

The fat principal exchanged a few words with the staff up front, and they sent someone to lead the Ningcheng First Middle School students to a corner of the open-air square.

There was a reason security was so lax. More than a dozen high-level cultivators were flying back and forth overhead on patrol, and the staff around them were all low-level cultivators too.

The Jiangzhou Region Cultivators' Federation Branch couldn't protect every written exam site, but couldn't it protect a single Education Bureau?

With such powerful forces acting as a deterrent, the likes of evil cults wouldn't even get any ideas. Besides, the evil cults in Jiangzhou City had been uprooted some time ago.

It had been a major event. Evil cults across the Divine Land had gone into hiding, and the Internal Affairs Bureau was having an easy time of it now.

Under the fat principal's direction, the forty-odd candidates from First Middle School stood in the designated waiting area, forming a loose line. Beside them were Ning City Second Middle School and Ning City Fifth Middle School. Ning City had only these three high schools; all the others had been closed and merged.

The True Essence test was conducted in batches by school. In the hall on the Education Bureau's first floor, ten True Essence testing machines were used to test the students.

Ning City was a small place and was scheduled near the end, so they still had quite a long wait.

First Middle School's fat principal and the other principals began exchanging pleasantries and shooting the breeze. Some of the students knew one another too. Bored with waiting, everyone gathered in groups to chat, mostly about the written exam that had ended a few days ago.

"How many points did you estimate you got?"

"A little over 560. What about you?"

"A little over 600."

"Wow, a top student!"

That was the chatter all around them. Since they were all applying to cultivation universities, they were fairly capable to begin with. There were few poor students, and most estimated their scores in the five- to six-hundred range.

Lu Yuan compared scores with a few of his classmates and found that they had all done pretty well.

Jia Xuanxuan estimated her score at around 660. She had always been a top student, and everyone cried out in amazement.

Chen Shihe estimated around 510. His usual grades were decent, but he had underperformed a little in math this time.

Zhou Xiyun might have scored 540. He wasn't very sure, because he thought his essay might have strayed a little off topic too, and he didn't know how many points the grader would give him.

Ma Jin?

Nobody asked Ma Jin. He was a great immortal; scores were merely passing clouds. While everyone else discussed their scores, the guy walked around filming with his phone, muttering to himself as he recorded.

"Bros, take a look. I wasn't lying to you. I really came to take the True Essence test. It's only 20,000 yuan. I don't care!"

The guy had actually started livestreaming. But why were you streaming the college entrance exam instead of a novel? How boring!

"Lu Yuan, what score did you estimate?"

Jia Xuanxuan walked over and asked Lu Yuan. She was smiling and standing very close to him.

Lu Yuan had just opened his mouth when Zhou Xiyun and Chen Shihe swiftly moved aside. Both wore mysterious smiles like doting fathers as they watched him and Jia Xuanxuan.

"I didn't do well."

Lu Yuan gave her a casual, evasive answer. He estimated around 400 points, and saying it out loud was too embarrassing.

"Oh, it's all right, really. The written exam doesn't count for that much anyway," Jia Xuanxuan comforted him. "Do your best on the test later."

Lu Yuan usually did well on written exams, so Jia Xuanxuan thought that by "didn't do well," he meant he hadn't scored above 600.

They chatted a little longer, and Lu Yuan made a self-deprecating joke that made Jia Xuanxuan cover her mouth and laugh. Only when a girl from their class called her did she reluctantly return to the girls. Over the past few days, she had found Lu Yuan quite witty. Why had he been so quiet before?

As soon as Jia Xuanxuan left, Lu Yuan's two bros crowded over.

Chen Shihe clutched his heart and said sorrowfully, "Lu Yuan, are you two already together?"

"Together how?"

"You know what I mean!"

"Oh, give it a rest!" Lu Yuan flatly denied it.

Zhou Xiyun pulled Chen Shihe aside. "Lu Yuan, what exactly happened between you and Jia Xuanxuan? Things weren't like this before."

Lu Yuan thought he should explain and set the record straight. It wasn't just these two bros of his; the First Middle School classmates around them were all looking at him strangely. Jia Xuanxuan was everyone's fair, rich, and beautiful girl, and where had he come from?

"My dad and Jia Xuanxuan's dad have had some business dealings recently, so our families have been visiting each other a lot. That's all there is to it."

Lu Yuan spread his hands, putting on an innocent expression.

Chen Shihe said in grief and indignation, "What do you mean, Jia Xuanxuan's dad? You should call him father-in-law!"

"I think you're itching for a beating today!" Lu Yuan rolled up his sleeves and made as if to hit him, and Zhou Xiyun laughed as he separated them.

That finally put an end to the matter. But the real reason wasn't what Lu Yuan had said. Jia Xuanxuan was a simple, kind middle school girl; she couldn't suddenly have taken a fancy to Lu Yuan because of her family's business. Girls her age were still at the age of dreaming. How could they care that much about money?

The real reason was that Xiao Bing had been piling on the pressure against Jia Xuanxuan lately.

Jia Xuanxuan had originally been First Middle School's goddess, but her younger sister had recently shot to fame, making Xiao Bing First Middle School's goddess instead. Although Jia Xuanxuan hadn't shown it, she was surely uncomfortable about it.

On top of that, Xiao Bing kept deliberately flirting with her. Lu Yuan had seen it with his own eyes twice, and there were surely even more open and hidden clashes he hadn't seen.

So Jia Xuan decided to strike back, and "stealing Xiao Bing's older brother" was her way of doing it. It was funny, of course, but it fit a young girl's logic.

Old Lu had been through it all and saw everything clearly. He viewed Jia Xuanxuan the way an elder viewed a younger person. In his eyes, those feelings were cute, but they didn't stand up to scrutiny. What he hoped for was a quiet harbor, and he wouldn't accept those feelings.

The easiest way to handle this kind of problem was to pretend to be an oblivious straight guy.

A young girl's thoughts changed from day to day anyway. Before long, she would forget all about it.

What Old Lu didn't know was that many young girls ended up playing themselves into just such situations. Often, they would forget their original reason.

Time slowly passed amid the joking around, and the candidates from one middle school came out of the building. Most looked disgruntled, while a few were overjoyed.

It seemed their test results were already out.

An Education Bureau official called out from above, "Shuangqiao Town Middle School has finished testing. Guanghua School will begin testing."

His voice was very loud; he had used a Great Sound Technique.

When Lu Yuan heard "Shuangqiao Town" Middle School, his heart stirred. He knew the place.