Chapter 314: A Qualified Actor
Li Fan quietly suppressed his aura back to the Foundation Establishment realm. Within the Cosmos Branch Academy, his breakthrough had gone largely unnoticed. Aside from Ji Hongdao casting a brief, surprised glance his way during a lecture, almost no one knew Li Fan had already stepped into the Golden Core realm.
But then, even if the other disciples had known, they likely wouldn't have given it much thought. After all, the Golden Core cultivators were utterly commonplace among this group. Compared to cultivation levels, what they truly valued was one’s mastery of arrays.
The intensive training for the Tianxuan Soul-Locking Array was nearing its conclusion.
Ever since witnessing the encapsulation of the Tianxuan Mirror surfaces firsthand, many disciples seemed to have grasped some profound insights, and their skills advanced by leaps and bounds, remarkably allowing them to catch up in the final test—the hub device affinity assessment.
Li Fan, on the other hand, had been somewhat distracted, his mind divided between the major events unfolding in the Congyun Sea and his own core formation.
Compounding this was his genuinely mediocre talent for the array path, resulting in a complete lack of any such epiphany.
The combination of these two factors meant his performance had essentially stagnated.
As the saying goes, to not advance is to fall behind. Consequently, Li Fan's ranking slipped significantly.
Fortunately, his previous scores in the array structure and Soul Contract recognition segments had been near the top. Taken together, he didn’t fall to the very bottom, remaining in the upper-middle tier of the rankings.
On this day, Ji Hongdao announced that the final assessment would commence in a month and a half: the practical deployment of the Tianxuan Soul-Locking Array.
They would be provided with sufficient array materials but no assistance of any kind. Each person would construct the array alone.
The final evaluation would be based on the actual quality of the constructed array, with rankings assigned accordingly.