Chapter 10: Stay In Line
Twenty candidates heard the summons and rose to their feet. When they stepped into the hall, they saw numbers floating above the praying mats. No one dared to dilly dally and hurriedly sat down on the praying mat with their assigned numbers. Then, they began practicing the technique they were given.
High up in the sky, there was, in fact, another hall. None of the candidates could see anything but clouds when they occasionally looked up, however. There were seven tables in the hall, and six of them were occupied. The people occupying these tables were all wearing different attires. They were a Daoist, two cultivators, two Confucianists, and one Buddhist monk.
The hall below them was completely transparent, so they could see the candidates inside the hall clearly.
These six people were the examiners of this unified exam. They all possessed extraordinary presences and bearings, and they all held the power of life and death over the candidates. But for some reason, they were turning a blind eye to the empty table beside them.
When the first batch of candidates started practicing the technique they were given, pillars of light emerged from the censers next to their praying mats. The thickness and brightness of the pillars of light all differed from one another.
The light pillar on the left side of a candidate represented their foundation and talent, and the one on their right represented their destiny and fortune. Not even half of the time limit had elapsed, and over half of the candidates’ light pillars had stopped growing completely. These light pillars were only a little over a chi tall. A few more breaths passed, and only one candidate’s pillar of foundation and talent was still growing. In the end, it rose to about three and a half chi and was as thick as a human fist. A golden thread would be seen swimming in the pillar as well.
Unfortunately, even though his pillar of destiny and fortune was two chi tall, it was murky gray and boasted no special qualities whatsoever.
In the hall, the older cultivator remarked, “His foundation is average, but it contains the sharpness of Metal. We can increase his score slightly.”
The rest of the examiners nodded in agreement. Since there were no objections, the six examiners recorded their evaluations on their respective score sheets.