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Chapter 9

The Great Martial Path Entrance Exam (2)

A profound sense of bewilderment washed over the applicants’ faces as they stood before the main gate.

If an taken-off face value, the task was way too easy to be considered a trial.

All they had to do was walk through the front door.

It seemed completely devoid of any meaningful challenge, making it look like a joke compared to all the terrifying rumors they’d heard. But that atmosphere removed the moment they spotted the Demon crouching right in the middle of the gateway.

“A Demon.”

Its skin was ash gray, and its arms were long. Not only that, its neck stretched to an unnatural length. Both of its eyes were squeezed shut, but the corners of its mouth curled upward into an eerie grin.

Furthermore, there was no sacred rope or any other things to bind this thing.

It just crouched there like a dog in a courtyard.

That meant they had to walk past a fully unrestrained Demon standing in a gateway that wasn’t all that wide to begin with. And on the off chance that the Demon to attacked, it would cost them their lives then and there.

It didn’t take long for the applicants to figure out the real point of this trial.

Of the Four Virtues, this trial was specifically designed to test Valor.

The courage to face the terror of a Demon that could kill them at any moment and keep walking forward.

“But isn’t this too easy?”

Demons are frightening things for sure, but as long as you knew it wasn’t going to attack, what was so hard about just walking past it?

Yise was genuinely confused by this.

The first applicant seemed to have had the same thought as he muttered that it was no big deal and started to walk. However, it apparent that it was all a bravado.

He marched forward, but he only made it three steps.

That was as far as the first applicant got.

His legs began to shake almost immediately, and he crumpled to the ground. He didn’t even have the energy to get back up.

“Eliminated.”

Chief Examiner Kang Yitae’s firm voice rang out, and the proctors dragged him away.

After that came more and more applicants; dozens of youngsters stepped forward, but most collapsed after no more than three to five steps. Whenever an applicant sat down or stopped mid-stride and hesitated, the Chief Examiner didn’t wait long before calling out their elimination.

“Hae Un-chan.”

A familiar name was called. A wave of hushed whispers flooded Yise’s ears.

“That must be the first son of the Hae Family.”

“I heard he’s the frontrunner for top of this year’s class—”

“The Hae Family? If he’s calling it that, he must come from a noble house.”

Yise knew nothing about the noble houses of the continent, so he simply watched the guy without thinking much of it.

The guy strode forward with a certain boldness, then faltered on his third step.

He clenched his fists moment later and pushed himself to keep going.

With every step, cold sweat poured from his body, and blood dripped from his tightly clenched fist.

At long last, the first applicant to pass through the gate emerged on the other side.

Kang Yitae’s brief confirmation followed, and murmurs of admiration rippled through the crowd of applicants.

After him, successful candidates began to appear sparsely amongst the sea of failures.

“Next. Yise.”

When his name was called, Yise quietly steadied his breath. He walked toward the main gate and organized the sensations running through his body.

“This is strange.”

Yise narrowed his eyes as he studied the Demon’s appearance.

He couldn’t tell what kind of Demon it was.

He had memorized every one of the hundreds of Demon species recorded in the Ghost Temple’s Archive, so an unfamiliar one stood out to him even more sharply.

‘A Demon not recorded in the Archive.’

The Ghost Temple’s Archive was lacking in many areas, but not when it came to Demon information. It was all thanks to Mong Ryeon spending the last three hundred years hunting and slaying every Demon under the heavens.

And yet, he didn’t recognize it.

Judging by the intensity of the Demonic Qi it gave off, it seemed slightly stronger than a Wailing-Infant Dragon Steed, placing it somewhere around the latter half of the Qi Condensation Realm.

He cleared his thoughts and took his third step.

That was the moment when the air changed.

In an instant, a suffocating killing intent that felt like could slit its throat and tear his insides came crashing into him from every direction.

You will die.

Take one more step and you will definitely die.

It felt like someone was shrieking directly into his ear.

‘Bullshit. How is this a Qi Condensation-level Demonic Qi?’

The gap between the Demonic Qi it was holding and the killing intent he was feeling was too extreme.

‘It was the crushing pressure of something far from a higher realm bearing down on him.’

His body reacted on instinct. Without even thinking about it, his hand moved toward his waist. He gripped the handle of his trusted hatchet.

“Hey.”

Right at that moment, the voice of a proctor drifted over to him.

“Attacking the Demon means disqualification.”

With his hand still slightly gripping his hatchet, Yise took another step forward.

At the fourth step, the suffocating pressure gripping his chest only tightened.

And at the fifth step, aibling chill from the back of his skull all the way down to his lower back, and the muscles in his shoulders began to go numb and rigid.

At that moment, the something slumbering inside him stirred.

‘So it wasn’t my imagination after all.’

It reminded him of the day he exercised the Wailing-Infant Dragon Steed.

The Demonic Qi that had remained inside him stirred and that unsettling sensation had come alive once more.

‘Settle down.’

Yise muttered inwardly as he dragged the hatchet’s blade across his palm to open a cut.

Fresh blood welled up slowly. He closed his hand around it and walked forward.

‘This fake killing intent is child’s play compared to standing before a Demon that’s actually trying to kill me.’

Then he walked briskly in a pace no other applicant had shown before.

Yise stepped through the gate and came out the other side.

“Pass.”

Chief Examiner Kang Yitae’s voice rang out in confirmation.

At the same time, the killing intent that had been slicing through his entire body vanished, and through the gate, he spotted a young man on the inside waving his arm at him.

“Knew you’d make it.”

Hae Un-chan came up to him like it was himself who had passed.

“But what was that sprint at the end? Man, I could barely manage one step at a time.”

“It’s nothing. I’ve been in situations like this before.”

“???”

He tilted his head as if wondering what on earth Yise was talking about, but Yise just shrugged.

Saying he had hunted Low-Grade Demons at ten years old or that he had taken the head of an Middle-Grade Demon just days ago would only make people think he was bragging.

Because there were well over a thousand applicants to test, the trial dragged on until late afternoon. By the time the sun dipped below the horizon and the dust finally settled, there were fewer than two hundred applicants left standing.

Comparing it to the sea of people from that morning, that was a reduction of nearly ninety percent.

Kang Yitae stepped in front of the unevenly lined-up applicants and swept his gaze across them.

“One hundred and sixty-nine. Quite a few passed, given how many were. Welcome, those of who you cleared the first trial.”

As he spoke, a bird that had been circling in the air swooped down and landed on Kang Yitae’s shoulder, while the Demon that had been guarding the main gate shifted its form and came to stand at his side.

Yise immediately identified what both creatures were.

One was a colossal crane with pristine white feathers, haijo.

The other was a horned beast that looked somewhere between a lion and a cloud, a Haetae.

They were the two Divine Beasts that served as the symbols of the Great Martial Path and the very reason it stood where it did today.

The Demon that had terrified them all days just was the Haetae wearing a magical disguise.

While the applicants stood there with their jaws hanging open in awe, Kang Yitae continued his explanation.

“The trials will be held one per day, over the course of seven days. As I’m sure you all already know, we select our disciples based on the Four Virtues of Wisdom, Martial Might, Valor, and Righteousness.”

Since the criteria were well known, the all applicants nodded in acknowledgment.

“The first trial confirmed that you have the courage not to retreat in the face of a Demon. Now, you must prove the remaining three tenets through the next six trials.”

Kang Yitae swept his gaze across the applicants, then emphasized his next words with a solemn tone.

“I will now give you a few warnings.”

He began to pace slightly from side to side, rapping the rod in his hand against his palm.

“If there are any of you who’ve come to join the Great Martial Path in hopes of gaining immortality, leave now. Get lost and go crawl into a den of pill-popping addicts, or go memorize Daoist scriptures with those cowardly donkey-faced frauds.”

Yise blinked, not following what Kang Yitae meant.

Hae Un-chan nudged him in the side and whispered,

“He’s taking a jab at the major Cultivation sects of the Jeong Empire.”

“Cultivation sects? Are there others besides the Great Martial Path?”

“Yeah. In the Jeong Empire, there are two major Cultivation sects, the Elixir-Refining Sect and the Kunkun. The Elixir-Refining Sect hunts Spirit Beasts and collects Spiritual Herbs to make Spirit Pills that they consume. They basically gorge themselves on fruits to upgrade their cultivation realms. That’s why they be called pill-poppers.”

“What about Kunkun?”

“Those guys practice swordmanship but hole up in the mountains, trying to become immortals through nothing but meditation and enlightenment. That’s why they get called the donkey-faced frauds.”

“Sounds like they really don’t get along.”

“You have no idea. If you ever find yourself crossing into the Jeong Empire, watch your back. They call us Demon Butchers. Ha! The nerve of them calling us reckless brutes when they became Cultivators just to extend their lives and become immortals themselves.”

“I believe that is quite enough whispering from the peanut gallery.”

Even though they had been whispering barely above nothing, Kang Yitae had caught it with uncanny hearing, prompting Hae Un-chan and Yise to apologize immediately to snap to attention.

“We do not cling to our lives. Making our exorcism our calling is itself a virtue and the mandated duty of a Cultivator. Do not hunt Spirit Beasts carelessly. Do not damage Spiritual Herbs recklessly. Those who walk a path contrary to ours are nothing but our enemies.”

Does that mean the Great Martial Path elixirs entirely?

Am I going to have to throw up that pill Master fed me…?

Yise had recalled something about Spirit pills being necessary at certain cultivation levels and found himself wondering about that.

“Yes, sir!”

Their reply echoed up like the thunder of a drum.

Immediately after, the proctors began distributing training uniforms and books.

“Those are books that will guide you through the basics every Great Martial Path disciple must know. There will be a written exam on the final day, so study in your spare time.”

A few kids visibly groaned at the thought of a written test, but most of them quickly connected the dots that this was the trial for the Wisdom aspect.

Printed boldly across the cover of the heavy textbook was the title

“Lastly, anyone caught engaging in private brawls or injuring another applicant will be immediately disqualified. If something happens that you makes you want to kill someone, submit a sparring request through one of the proctors. We’ll disqualify the loser for you. That’s all. Any questions?”

When no one raised their hand, Yise raised his.

He hadn’t been told the most important thing yet.

“When is mealtime? And are the meals self-serve?”

For a moment, every single eye in the area zeroed in on Yise.

“… Is that what really matters to you?”

“Yes.”

It was the expression of someone wondering why he was even asking such an obvious question.

A prominent vein throbbed right between Kang Yitae’s eyebrows.

This year’s class seemed to have an unusually large number of oddballs.

“A bell will ring at every mealtime. As for how the food is served, I do not know.”

How can he not know?

Do Cultivators not even eat?

Yise had a thousand questions, but he decided to ask only the most important one.

“Will there be enough for proper growth?!”

“—Do we look like some dirt-street gang that has to ration its rice? Next.”

After Yise successfully broke the ice, other applicants began to chime in with their questions one by one.

After answering a reasonable number of them, Kang Yitae heard the bell signaling mealtime and raised a hand to put a stop to the questions.

“That’s all for today. Seeing as we have someone here who is about stuffing his face, go and eat your meals first. After you’re done, wait in the common room and someone will assign you your temporary quarters.”

Time skip to after the meal and the waiting in the common room.

Yise flipped through the handbook quickly, then turned to Hae Un-chan who had been stuck to him like a leech since earlier.

“Hae Un-chan.”

“Yeah?”

“Can you tell me more about what you were saying earlier, about the cultivation sects of the continent?”

“Sure. What do you want to know?”

“Just a general overview. You mentioned there were two more in the Jeong Empire earlier, but are there no other cultivation sects in the Three Kingdoms of the Peninsula?”

Hae Un-chan was momentarily taken aback by how basic the question was. But then he remembered hearing rumors about weird mountain hermits coming to take the Great Martial Path exam, so he just shrugged it off and kept talking.

“There are a few, but most of them are either branch sects affiliated with the Great Martial Path, or places so small it’d be embarrassing to even call them cultivation sects.”

“But are there three countries on the peninsula. Why so few?”

“Because the Three Kingdoms of the Peninsula are entirely the great Martial Path’s territory. Think about it. Traditional Cultivators are people who value their own lives more than anyone else. Their ultimate life goal is to live a long and youthful life by any means necessary. Most of them spend their days desperately hunting for magic pills and ancient inheritances. So why would they cover a territory swarming with the lunatics they affectionately call Demon Butchers?”

“…”

“Well, there are still some that make their way over. But they always fall into one of two camps. Morons with a death wish. And freaks who are absolutely confident in their own strength.”