Chapter 658 - 428: Accepting Disciples
In the underground palace illuminated by two rows of oil lamps, Wang Zhifan and a few young warriors who had yet to enter the tower waited for just a minute before the first person to be eliminated appeared.
A young boy in a blue coat suddenly appeared in front of the black tower’s bronze door. His face, full of naïveté, was filled with astonishment as he lowered his head to check his legs, as if he couldn’t believe they were still intact.
"Young man, unfortunately you did not pass the test, you may now return to the surface and go home."
Standing with arms crossed beside the black tower, Wang Zhifan immediately told the bewildered young boy in blue, announcing his failure.
The boy, who was bowing his head and staring at his legs, was startled by the voice from the side and jumped up. After realizing it was the Martial Venerable speaking, he spoke to Wang Zhifan with a trace of embarrassment, begging:
"Martial Venerable! Please give me one more chance! This time I definitely won’t fall off the mountain..."
But Wang Zhifan sternly stopped him before he could finish:
"Stop it! Each of you only gets one chance! If you don’t want to give up, you can come back to the Martial Venerable Hall in two years! Now, go find your elders!"
His aura as a master was extraordinary; even releasing less than a tenth of it was enough to frighten the young boy in blue into shutting up quickly, fleeing toward the entrance of the underground palace with his little feet.
There was no way around it; the point of Wang Zhifan’s test was here: if he gave everyone a second chance just by pleading, how could he accomplish his goal of selecting outstanding disciples? Wouldn’t it mean accepting a large mix of good and bad people?
In fact, the boy’s performance in the test was indeed poor. Wang Zhifan, through a mysterious link with the black tower, clearly knew he was eliminated because he fell off while forcibly climbing the mountain path, perfectly demonstrating his lack of aptitude.
For instance, seeing the steep mountain path but only knowing how to climb uphill blindly without considering other ways to ascend showed a lack of cunning.
Shivering and losing balance while forcibly climbing, only to fall down before reaching even ten feet high, indicated inadequate courage and poor physical coordination, making his prospects of becoming a Martial Artist bleak.
In conclusion, Wang Zhifan’s test design, although not particularly professional, is enough to check if a person has the qualities he values.
He doesn’t decide on accepting disciples solely on whether someone passes; as long as they show traits that satisfy him in the test, they may be considered as disciples.
But for someone who immediately exposed multiple flaws like the boy just now, he doesn’t want to delay anyone’s other prospects.
As the first one eliminated left the underground palace, the few young warriors who stayed outside the tower before began to react, successively heading towards the bronze door.
"The fact that the previous person came out unscathed indicates there is no real danger inside..."
The young man in plain clothing, whose forehead was sweating out of tension moments ago, encouraged himself inwardly. He belonged to a more cautious personality type but didn’t want to delay things by hesitating to enter the test, so he bravely moved towards the black tower’s bronze door.
The young girl in splendid clothes, who had caught Wang Zhifan’s attention earlier, had a more bold personality. She evidently noticed the key information from the previously eliminated boy about falling off the mountain, so she had some guesses about the test’s content and accelerated slightly to rush ahead of the boy and enter the bronze door first.
The remaining young warriors followed suit; seeing others with similar concerns about the black tower entering one after another, they naturally couldn’t linger outside any longer and within seconds all joined the test in the black tower.
"Not bad... If these kids continued to hesitate and dared not enter the tower, I would have eliminated them on the spot for being indecisive without courage."
Seeing everyone enter the tower, Wang Zhifan thought with relief, then continued focusing his attention on the nearly one hundred independent spaces inside the tower, monitoring the young warriors’ progress at any time.
In fact, the black tower has a very powerful multi-line recording function and does not require him to watch in real time; he can choose to retrieve the records after the results come out. However, he still observes in real time now and then, partly out of curiosity and partly for caution, to prevent unexpected situations.
At this moment, he adjusted the view to focus on the first entrant, the thin young warrior who dashed into the black tower without hesitation upon his direction.
Based on the first impression, he thought this entrant would have a rather reckless personality, but it turned out that this guy was pretty clever and quite talented.
According to the test records, this thin young man immediately rejected the idea of forcibly climbing the steep mountain trail in front of him and found a hidden pathway to the mountaintop in just two minutes, currently making it through the path and reaching the summit.
His performance on the mountaintop was also commendable; he didn’t rush up recklessly to expose himself but instead carefully observed the surroundings. Before the BOSS demon recognized him, he had already spotted the opponent and didn’t panic because the BOSS appeared terrifying; instead, he was hiding in the shadows thinking about how to solve this adversary.
Wang Zhifan noticed the thin young warrior’s gaze wandering between the weapon on the ground behind the demon and the giant bird in the distance, suggesting he had already thought of a number of solutions.
Shifting focus from this promising test participant, Wang Zhifan continued observing the other young warriors who had entered relatively early.