The Exam Begins
Gi Beonjin and his lackeys were at a loss for words.
"Yeop Pung, you bastard! You were so full of yourself earlier — why are you acting so scared today?!"
Jang Un stamped his feet, unable to contain his rage.
"Senior Brother Gi, look at that coward…"
Jo Bihong ground his teeth as well, glancing back at Gi Beonjin, who stood behind them.
Gi Beonjin was no less furious at Yeop Pung's attitude, but this was hardly the place to act on it. He swallowed his anger, flicked a dismissive hand, and turned a sneer on Yeop Pung, his voice gone cold.
"Hmph. Leave him. Let's see what kind of scores that mongrel manages to scrape together today. Yeop Pung — don't think this is over. You'd better pray to the heavens you don't draw me in the final combat assessment. That's when you'll regret everything you've done today."
Jang Un and Jo Bihong ground their teeth and stepped aside. Yeop Pung walked through the crowd, his face expressionless.
But as he passed Gi Beonjin, he stopped for a brief moment and spoke in a voice of perfect calm.
Leaving those words hanging in the air, Yeop Pung walked on toward the Cheonun Stele of Inquiring Qi that towered in the distance. Gi Beonjin bit down on his lip, spun around, and hurled his identity token onto the registration desk.
"Register me! I'll crush that mongrel starting from the very first test!"
The crowd surged forward. Yeop Pung's composure and Gi Beonjin's arrogance had turned the day's proceedings into something far more entertaining.
"That Yeop Pung looks awfully confident, doesn't he?"
"Confident? He's just scared. Gi Beonjin's provocation got to him."
"I don't know about that. Look at his eyes — he doesn't even seem to register Gi Beonjin. Maybe he's got some kind of hidden card."
"Hidden card or not, we'll know once the tests start. Here we go — Yeop Pung's first exam is about to begin!"
The eyes of some two thousand people gathered on the examination grounds locked onto Yeop Pung, who now stood beneath the enormous stele. The inner disciple beside him finished the registration and gave a nod.
"Outer Disciple Yeop Pung. The Profound Qi Attribute Test — first gate of the inner sect examination — will now begin."
A martial artist's Profound Qi attribute was an inborn gift. For ordinary warriors, the energy that gathered in the dantian ran white — what the sect called Plain Profound Qi. But a rare few were born with a Five Elements Profound Root already nested in their core, and those chosen few could cultivate the far more devastating Five Elements Profound Arts. It was precisely for this reason that Cheonun Sect poured its highest hopes — and its most generous resources — into such disciples.
The Cheonun Stele of Inquiring Qi possessed a mystical power: it could read the true nature of a warrior's Profound Qi. All Yeop Pung had to do was pour his energy into the stone, and the result would appear — a result that would feed directly into his final score for the inner sect examination.
Yeop Pung's faith in the golden Profound Qi within his body was unshakable. With the gazes of thousands pressing in from every side, he stepped forward to the stele and slowly raised his right hand to the face of the massive black stone.
He had no intention of hiding his strength. After eight years of falling behind, he wanted to prove his talent, claim every resource Cheonun Sect could offer, and throw himself into cultivation without restraint. He circulated the golden Profound Qi in his body at once and drove it into the stele.
His energy sank into the stone with a soft hush.
Nothing happened. The crowd held its breath for several seconds, waiting — and still the stele did not stir.
Huh? What was going on?
A crease formed between Yeop Pung's brows as the stone remained utterly still. He circulated his golden Profound Qi a second time. A faint gold radiance seeped from his body — and yet, strangely, the Cheonun Stele of Inquiring Qi did not so much as tremble, holding its silence for a full thirty seconds. At last a dim white glow flickered at the very crown of the stele, then faded away as quickly as it had come.
The inner disciple beside the stele announced the result, and the entire examination grounds erupted in murmurs.
"What?"
"That Yeop Pung was strutting around like he was something special, and he turned out to be Plain Profound Qi, 2nd Grade? What a waste of anticipation."
"That's strange, though. There was definitely a golden glow coming off him. How can that be Plain Profound Qi?"
"Golden light doesn't mean a thing. There was a guy once who put out a rainbow-colored glow, and he turned out to be nothing. The Cheonun Stele of Inquiring Qi hasn't been wrong once in thousands of years. Yeop Pung was just putting on airs."
People shook their heads, making no effort to hide their disappointment. Gi Beonjin and his lackeys, on the other hand, roared with laughter.
"Bwahahaha! Yeop Pung, you piece of trash! And here I thought you were something special — all that Profound Qi you hoarded for eight years, and all it did was break you through to the 1-Vein Profound Realm! At your core, you're still garbage! Bwahahaha!"
Jo Bihong strode up to Yeop Pung, spat on the ground at his feet, and sneered.
"Ptui! Watch closely, you bastard. I may not be able to take you right now — but my Profound Qi attribute is far superior to yours!"
Jo Bihong circulated his Profound Qi and drove it into the stele. In an instant, a small teal-green whirlwind spun into being at the crown of the stone. Faint though it was, it made one thing unmistakably clear: his Profound Qi was not like the others.
"Whoa!"
"Jo Bihong's got Wood-type Profound Qi?"
The crowd fell silent with surprise for a moment, then the whispering started up again. Martial artists born with elemental Profound Qi were uncommon. Of the thousand-odd disciples taking today's examination, fewer than a hundred possessed it. One in ten — and that ratio alone was enough to lift Jo Bihong's standing in a single stroke.
"Hmph! Did you see that, Yeop Pung?"
Jo Bihong shouted toward him, swelling with triumph, as if he had just taken his revenge.
"Just you wait! Once I enter the inner sect and master the Wood-type Profound Arts, I'll crush the likes of you within a year… Hey! You bastard! Where do you think you're going?!"
Yeop Pung had already turned his back and was heading for the second testing ground. Jo Bihong's words had not so much as grazed him.
Inwardly, though, he was puzzled. That's strange. The golden Profound Qi is clearly powerful — so why didn't the Cheonun Stele of Inquiring Qi react? Can it be that even the stele itself can't detect golden Profound Qi? Now that is odd…
He could make no sense of it.
But something occurred then that neither Yeop Pung nor anyone else present could have imagined. The instant his golden Profound Qi sank into the Cheonun Stele of Inquiring Qi, a figure sitting within a dilapidated palace at the summit of Nagun Peak — one of Cheonun's seven great peaks — suddenly snapped his head up.
"What? An anomaly at the Cheonun Stele of Inquiring Qi?"
The figure vanished from the spot. Like a flash of lightning, he shot out of the palace and into the open sky.
BOOM!
It happened in that same stretch of time. The moment Yeop Pung turned to walk away, red flames erupted from the Cheonun Stele of Inquiring Qi, roaring skyward as if to pierce the heavens. It was as though a colossal torch had been lit upon the stone. The faces of the thousands of disciples nearby flushed crimson in the glare.
The instant the result was declared, a tremendous cheer exploded across the training grounds.
"Whoa!"
"Fire-type, 1st Grade!"
"Isn't that the most powerful elemental Profound Qi among this year's new disciples?"
"That's Young Master Gi for you! The Gi family poured so much into raising him — of course he turned out extraordinary!"
Cries of admiration poured in from every direction. Gi Beonjin and his lackeys puffed themselves up, bursting into laughter.
What the crowd failed to notice was that the inner disciples overseeing the examination were not impressed — they were disappointed. This is the best we get this year? Gi Beonjin, and that's it? In the old days, more than ten disciples with 1st Grade elemental Profound Qi appeared every year, and we even had someone like Senior Brother Yi Hwawu, born with a Supreme-grade Profound Qi Spirit Body… Now they're making this much noise over a single 1st Grade. Cheonun Sect truly isn't what it used to be…
"Bwahahaha!"
Jang Un and Jo Bihong, utterly missing the larger picture, swelled with pride and heaped praise on Gi Beonjin. Then they bellowed after Yeop Pung's retreating back.
"Hey, Yeop Pung! Did you see that? That's what a real genius looks like! Our Senior Brother Gi was born with 1st Grade Fire-type Profound Qi! You 2nd Grade trash! Still thinking of picking a fight with him? Get on your knees and beg! Bwahahaha!"
A great many people in the crowd nodded along in agreement. In that moment, the gulf between Yeop Pung and Gi Beonjin was so vast that comparison itself seemed absurd. If Yeop Pung had any sense, dropping to his knees and begging Gi Beonjin's pardon would have been the wiser choice.
They watched him go with sighs and looks thick with disappointment — but Yeop Pung did not look back. He walked on with the same unshaken stride toward another testing ground that had been prepared at one side of the plaza.
There, the second gate was already underway: the Profound Qi Power Test.
"Senior Brother. Greetings. Outer Disciple Yeop Pung — I wish to take the second gate."
Yeop Pung handed his identity token to the inner disciple standing before him. While he waited for the registration to be entered, his gaze settled on the white rectangular monolith beside them, more than nine chi tall.
The Profound Qi Stone was the traditional instrument by which a warrior's striking power was measured. A martial artist poured every ounce of Profound Qi into a single blow; the depth of the resulting crater told the tale of his strength.
In the long history of Cheonun Sect's inner examinations, there had been a legendary genius who drove his fist into the stone up to the elbow and shook the entire order to its foundations. He had gone on to become a hero whose name rang across the land. In recent years, however, disciples who could bury their fist even half a chi — a mere fifteen centimeters — had grown scarce. Even Yi Hwawu, hailed as the greatest genius of Cheonun Sect, had managed only eight chon, roughly twenty-four centimeters. That record was a height the entire sect still gazed up at in awe.
Yeop Pung walked slowly toward the Profound Qi Stone. After the result of the attribute test, the looks that followed him were mocking rather than expectant. People had been willing to grant him this much: the guts to stand up to Gi Beonjin. But a man with no real ability was nothing more than a punchline.
He was just about to begin when Jo Bihong's arrogant voice rang out behind him.
"Hold it right there! Yeop Pung!"
These bastards really won't let it go!
Yeop Pung frowned and stopped. His eyes were already dark with displeasure.
Jo Bihong and Jang Un came striding up with Gi Beonjin at their head. The two of them looked Yeop Pung over with the mean, circling hunger of hyenas.
"Yeop Pung, Senior Brother Gi was waiting to give you some face — and you turn out this pathetic! Who do you think you are, standing in front of us? Move. We're going first!"
"Senior Brother, is this acceptable?"
Yeop Pung looked to the inner disciple beside him.
"What does the order matter? Quit wasting time and take the test."
The inner disciple glanced at Yeop Pung, his reply cold. The cringing attitude Yeop Pung had shown earlier had already disappointed him — and he no longer felt any inclination to take the young man's side.