novelraw Chapter 32 : Chapter 32
Chapter 32 : Chapter 32
Chapter 32: Martial Tower, Human Order Merit
The moment Lin Bai heard the Spirit of the Space say those words, he knew he had triggered a “hidden stage,” and he hurriedly asked, “What is the Martial Tower?”
Unfortunately, this time the Spirit of the Space did not answer him. It merely waited silently for Lin Bai’s response. Seeing that, Lin Bai understood that the freebie round was over.
Still, when he thought of the 1,900 Merit Points he had gained out of nowhere, that small trace of regret in his heart vanished in an instant.
“Open it.”
Lin Bai smiled with easy confidence.
“I’m already here. How can I leave without giving it a try?”
“The challenger has agreed to open the Martial Tower. Preparing to enter the first floor of the Martial Tower.”
The surrounding scenery began to shift. In the blink of an eye, Lin Bai found himself standing in a vast grassland. Above his head hung the familiar sight of three suns suspended in the sky—one yellow and two white—while in the distance, a flock of sheep wandered at leisure.
Several hundred meters ahead of him, a figure of light began to appear and gradually solidified.
It was a youth in a blue robe. His facial features were still impossible to make out.
Strike first and seize the advantage!
Lin Bai did not hesitate in the slightest. He drew his bow and loosed three arrows in rapid succession with a WHOOSH, sending them toward the other party’s vital points in a triangular formation.
The blue-robed youth across from him showed no panic. He merely raised a hand and clenched it.
At once, the grass and trees beneath his feet began to grow wildly, weaving themselves into layers of nets that stripped away the force behind Lin Bai’s arrows before finally batting them aside with vines and sending them off into the distance.
The moment Lin Bai saw that method, his mind began furiously calculating the other party’s information.
Judging from the oppressive sensation transmitted through 【Intuition】, his realm should be at the peak of the Transcendent Realm. And he is walking the Dao Path of a spellcaster, with methods related to controlling plants?
The only question is how strong his Spiritual Talent is. But it definitely should not be weak.
Lin Bai knew that ranged attacks with arrows would have limited effect against an opponent who was already on guard, so he stopped testing the waters. He immediately cast aside the bow, drew his blade, and charged at his enemy with the speed of a hunting leopard.
He was a Martial Artist, while the other side was a spellcaster. Close combat was naturally the choice most favorable to him.
In a game, if a warrior could not close in on a mage, he might as well wait to be worn down to death.
Unfortunately, the youth across from him was not a fool. He was not going to stand there stupidly and wait for Lin Bai to kill him. While retreating to widen the distance between them, he cast spell after spell, summoning countless vines that wove into deadly nets to surround and kill Lin Bai.
Those vines were not only exceptionally tough, but their surfaces were covered in sharp wooden thorns, like a living forest of brambles, closing in on Lin Bai from every direction.
Even so, Lin Bai’s overall strength was still above his opponent’s. Those spikes could only scratch bloody lines across his skin; they could not break through his defense.
Even if the opponent stood at the peak of the Transcendent Realm and his Dao Path was not weak, he still could not contend with the overwhelming advantage of Lin Bai’s 129,600 points of Spiritual Talent.
When the blue-robed youth saw that ordinary vines could do nothing to Lin Bai, his hand seals changed. He threw out two scarlet seeds.
The two seeds sprouted and grew at once. Lin Bai very much wanted to rush over and destroy them, but the vines became even more frenzied, wrapping tightly around his ankles and blocking his advance.
In the end, the two seeds successfully germinated and turned into two Flame Treants.
Lin Bai nearly lost his composure when he saw that.
Damn it, so they were ganging up on him now?
Just wait. Once Mo Ling grows up, and once I contract a few more Bonded Beasts and evolve them, I’ll send all you people who love ganging up on others flying.
The Dao Path of the Beast-Taming Martial Artist was one that naturally excelled at winning through numbers. Unfortunately, Lin Bai had cultivated for far too short a time. He had only contracted one Bonded Beast so far, and that one had not even matured yet.
Now, a cultivator of the Beast-Taming Martial Artist path like him was actually the one being overwhelmed by numbers.
How could that not infuriate him?
To put it simply, it truly got under his skin.
The Flame Treants, however, cared nothing for Lin Bai’s feelings. Their enormous fists, each wreathed in blazing fire, came crashing down on him in a savage barrage, making him bare his teeth in pain.
It hurt a little, but that kind of force still was not enough to break Lin Bai’s defenses. The real problem was the flames attached to the blows. They were difficult to endure, burning far too hot. He had no idea what sort of strange flame it was.
From then on, Lin Bai focused mainly on evasion, because he had already thought the situation through.
The opponent was very clearly a control-oriented mage, while he himself was a tanky warrior with high defense and thick vitality.
All Lin Bai could do was wait for the other side’s mana to run dry before stepping in and cutting him down with a single strike.
Sure enough, after waiting and waiting, the power of the Flame Treants finally weakened. Their flames no longer burned with full force, and even the irritating vines around him seemed to be running out of strength.
Now!
Lin Bai suddenly exerted force and snapped apart the remaining vines around his body. Then, with an agile zigzag dash, he avoided the Treants’ interception and shot toward the blue-robed youth like an arrow loosed from the string.
Five meters, three meters, one meter!
This time, there were no surprises. The youth was closed upon by Lin Bai within a single meter.
And when a mage was approached by a warrior at that distance, there was naturally nothing left to say.
Lin Bai slowly withdrew the blade he had thrust out and looked at the youth, who had already become two halves, before sighing.
“As expected, enemies with too much control are truly disgusting to deal with, whether in games or in real life.”
By all logic, Lin Bai’s strength should have exceeded the youth’s by quite a bit. But he had happened to run into exactly this kind of troublesome opponent, leaving him with no choice but to wait until the other side’s power ran dry before killing him.
“Challenger Lin Bai has passed the first floor of the Martial Tower and obtained 1,000 Merit Points. You now have a total of 2,900 Merit Points. Do you wish to continue to the next floor?”
“Of course. Start it immediately.”
Although the gatekeeper just now had caused him a little trouble, the result had been delightful: 1,000 Merit Points.
Still, that earlier freebie round had actually rewarded even more than the Martial Tower. As expected of a limited-time event that was only opened during the first assessment.
After that, Lin Bai entered the second floor of the Martial Tower full of confidence.
About ten minutes later, Lin Bai was teleported back with a pale face.
“Spirit of the Space! Get out here!”
“Why were there two people on the second floor? And why was it an assassin Dao Path plus a Dark Forest home field?! Who could possibly clear a setup like that?”
Lin Bai demanded an answer. The gatekeepers he had faced on the second floor had been a pair of twins.
If their Dao Paths had been like the spellcaster from before, that would have been one thing. A spellcaster’s offensive power was simply not enough to break Lin Bai’s defenses.
But that pair of twins had clearly been of an assassin-type Dao Path, and the battlefield on the second floor had been a Dark Forest, their home ground.
Inside that place, Lin Bai had been tormented to the point that he had almost wished for death. They were fast, hit hard, and fought on home ground. He could not even lay a hand on them and had simply been worn down to death.
Lin Bai now seriously suspected that the Spirit of the Space was messing with him. If even he could not pass it, could anyone else pass at all?
After all, even his combat strength stood at the very peak of the Transcendent Realm.
Unfortunately, the Spirit of the Space did not answer him in the least. It merely issued its final command.
“Challenger, your challenge has been completed. You are about to exit the Testing Palace. Please prepare yourself.”
Lin Bai felt a moment of dizziness. When he regained his senses, he was already back inside the tunnel through which he had first entered.
Since there was clearly no way to appeal, he could only head back the way he came and return home.
The moment he stepped out of the gates of the Testing Palace, he saw Wang Yu waving at him from not far away. Beside her, a few waiting students were grumbling.
“Damn it, why did that kid take so long? He practically used up the time of two people.”
“Maybe the practical combat segment was difficult, and since his combat strength wasn’t that great, he fought too slowly.”
Lin Bai paid no attention to those people gossiping about him, because he knew they would forget him soon enough anyway.
“Let’s go.”
“All right. I’ve been waiting for you for ages.”
Lin Bai and Wang Yu set out on the journey home.
On the way back, this girl, who looked extremely aloof on the outside, chattered away as she shared everything that had happened in her challenge space.
“Lin Bai, you have no idea. In our first stage, we had to test a little spell called Spirit Seizure. I simply couldn’t seize anything from the other side, so all I could do was protect my own Spiritual Energy as much as possible.”
“But I still got a Radiant Sun rating in the end. Impressive, right?”
“Very impressive.”
And it truly was impressive, because it meant Wang Yu’s foundation in Dao Arts was extremely solid.
After that, Wang Yu and Lin Bai moved on to discussing the final practical combat segment.
Wang Yu said that she had cleared three stages, while Lin Bai said that he had cleared four.
When Wang Yu heard that Lin Bai had passed four stages, she was not especially surprised. According to the Wang Family’s intelligence, she had long since known that Lin Bai’s Spiritual Talent was supreme-grade.
So clearing four stages was perfectly understandable. She even found a reason for why he had taken so long to come out.
“No wonder you took so long. So you passed four stages. How many Merit Points did you get?”
“Passing four stages gave me 1,900 points.”
“So many? I only got 900 for passing three stages.”
Wang Yu was extremely envious when she saw how generous Lin Bai’s reward had been, but she was not jealous, because she knew she simply could not defeat the fourth stage.
It was just like Lin Bai’s Martial Skill result, which had only been “Pass.” He simply could not hold out beyond his opponent’s twenty-second move.
Very soon, the little courtyard came into view. After bidding each other farewell, the two returned to their own places.
When Lin Bai returned to his courtyard, he raised an eyebrow.
Because he saw a package sitting on his table.
Logically speaking, no one else should have been able to enter his courtyard.
So…
Lin Bai pulled out the jade token and asked directly, “This wouldn’t happen to be my allotted resources, would it?”
“Yes. After a student passes the basic assessment, resources will be delivered to them. Once the student uses them up and reports it, more will be delivered. Waste is strictly forbidden.”
Lin Bai stepped forward and opened the package. There were three things inside, and he recognized the first two at once.
They were the Bear-Heart Medicinal Bath Powder used for the Bear-Hide Stage, and the Three-Turn Tiger-Bone Pill for the Tiger-Bone Stage.
The third was a box containing a mass of yellow mist, and it seemed to carry an aura of righteousness—open, upright, vast, and majestic.
Keeping to the principle that if he did not understand something, he should ask, Lin Bai continued, “What is this?”
“Among the student’s three assessments, you received a Radiant Sun rating twice. Reward: twenty jin of Human Order Merit.”
“…What? Say that again. What is this?”
“Twenty jin of Human Order Merit.”
Lin Bai had known there would definitely be extra rewards. After all, the three assessment stages were divided into many levels of evaluation.
But he truly had not expected the reward to be something as precious as Human Order Merit.
To put it simply, those Daoists outside who had escorted them here would only harvest thirty or forty jin of Human Order Merit from completing a single Martial Academy Grand Ceremony. Yet right now, Lin Bai had a full twenty jin sitting before him.
Human Order Merit could not only be used to break through realms and eliminate Heart Demons, but also to pray for blessings, avert disasters, and increase one’s destiny. Its marvelous uses were endless.
Lin Bai slapped his own face lightly to calm himself down, but there was still a trace of hope in his heart.
“Is this only for this time, or will future assessments have it as well?”
“Only the first time a student obtains a Radiant Sun evaluation for that stage will such a reward be given.”
“You mean that as long as I get a Radiant Sun evaluation in the Martial Skill Trial, I can still obtain another ten jin of Human Order Merit?”
“Yes.”
Although it was not available every time, the confirmation that he could still earn another ten jin of Human Order Merit filled Lin Bai with the exhilaration of something lost being found again.
What he had feared most was that, like the later practical combat test, it would be something that only existed the first time—a limited-time event.
Hearing of such abundant rewards, Lin Bai’s desire to temper his Martial Skill grew even stronger.
After understanding everything, Lin Bai could not help sighing once more at Firecloud Grotto-Heaven’s lavish generosity.
Once you entered the Martial Academy, it guaranteed you resources for three years and came with at least thirty jin of Human Order Merit on top of that.
What, over the course of three years and three test stages, you still could not obtain a Radiant Sun evaluation?
Then go home, child. You simply were not suited for cultivation. Do not waste Firecloud Grotto-Heaven’s resources.
Of course, that was only a joke.
The very lowest among those admitted here possessed high-grade Spiritual Talent, and the kind with more than two thousand points at that.
Even if a student was poor at actual combat, they could at least pass the Martial Skill Trial and the physique stage. That alone was twenty jin of Human Order Merit in hand.
They were distributing so much Human Order Merit in bulk as though it cost nothing. One had to know that a single Martial Academy in Yunmeng Commandery alone had more than a hundred students, let alone the whole world.
Oh, right. Firecloud Grotto-Heaven had been brought forth by Human Destiny itself.
In that case, never mind.
Lin Bai stopped letting his thoughts wander and picked up the twenty jin of Human Order Merit on the table, merging it into his body.
Although he had no immediate use for it now, blending it into his own destiny was excellent in itself.
If there were a great expert present at this moment who was proficient in a Qi-Observing Art, they would have seen that above the destiny over Lin Bai’s head, there was already a faint layer of yellow radiance, hazy yet noble.
And if anyone tried to forcefully observe it, who knew what kind of price they would have to pay.
After calming himself down completely, Lin Bai began to cultivate.
After all, an environment like the Martial Academy was far too rare. Three years later, Lin Bai would at the very least reach the Extraordinary Realm.
The better the environment, the more one had to cherish one’s time and do everything possible to improve oneself!