With the soldiers’ help, Meng Jun calmed the Celestial Prides and led them to the first test site.

The theme of the Celestial Pride Positioning Competition had never changed over the years. The content of the first and third stages was fixed, while only the second was set by the hosting military legion each year.

Yu Fei and the others were arranged into the examination hall according to their names. There were no test papers or desks—only rows of simple military cots, with a Holographic Mirror Helmet resting on a small table beside each one.

"Everyone, you have three minutes to go to your designated station and put on the Holographic Mirror Helmet. Your station number is indicated by the third and fourth to last digits of your ID number.

If your identification information fails to register, report it immediately..."

A female officer with short, chestnut-colored hair stood at the front, sternly reading the rules. The powerful aura unique to the Gang Qi Realm radiated from her without reservation, warning everyone to keep their distance.

The examination hall could accommodate 50 people, and Yu Fei quickly took his place.

"This is..."

Yu Fei stared at the scene inside the Holographic Mirror Helmet, momentarily speechless. ’And here I thought the test format was going to be something incredible,’ he thought. ’Turns out it’s just answering questions in a virtual environment?’

In the virtual scene, a massive answer panel appeared before him. According to the rules, everyone had the same time limit for each question, and they were scored in real time.

The questions were sourced from the *Human Body Scripture* and the *Great Yu Martial Scripture*, including supplementary materials.

A sidebar displayed his current score and rank, along with the scores of the top one hundred participants—a feature clearly designed to keep the pressure on every candidate.

’This is bad!’

The test hadn’t even begun, and Yu Fei’s brow was already furrowed in consternation.

’Who would have thought the first stage of the Celestial Pride Positioning Competition would be a written test? That blockhead Yan Sea never mentioned it. Then again, my teacher is such a slacker he never even got into one of the seven major academies. How would he know something like this?’

’Good heavens, I’ve barely read a book since breaking into the second realm. I was confident I could still ace the mock exams back at my high school without studying, but this is a completely different situation.’

’The 876 most talented Martial Artists in the entire country are here taking this test. How could the difficulty possibly be the same? And what’s this about supplementary materials? What kind of supplements? Have I ever even studied them?’

Yu Fei had been feeling pretty confident. With his Illusory Sword Intent and Un-phased Sword Qi, he might not be able to beat the top dogs in the Inner Qi Realm, but he could definitely hold his own against others in the third stage.

’But a written test?’

Filled with apprehension, he watched as the first question appeared. The countdown timer next to it felt like a ticking clock to his doom, and in the real world, a fine layer of sweat broke out on his forehead.

It wasn’t just Yu Fei. More than eighty percent of the candidates in the room felt their hearts tighten with anxiety.

Martial arts talent, unlike wealth, cannot be inherited. Even if both parents were Grandmasters or Martial Saints, their children were not guaranteed to possess outstanding martial aptitude.

After many years of genetic research, the Yu Kingdom had been forced to admit one fact: martial talent was more akin to a favorable, random alignment of genetic information, making its appearance largely a matter of chance.

The chance of an ordinary human producing offspring with excellent martial aptitude was one in ten thousand. For the descendants of Grandmasters and Martial Saints, that probability might rise to five in ten thousand, but the odds remained incredibly slim.

Thus, the vast majority of the Yu Kingdom’s prodigious Martial Artists were born commoners. With limited access to advanced martial knowledge, over ninety percent of these Celestial Prides faced the same predicament as Yu Fei.

"BEEP... Your answer is incorrect."

Regrettably, Yu Fei got the very first question wrong. At the same time, the sidebar on the right updated. A quick glance revealed that the names of most of the Inner Qi-level prodigies were already in the top one hundred.

He wiped a bead of nonexistent sweat from his brow in the virtual world, calmed himself, and continued.

The process was agonizing. But after getting the first three questions in a row wrong, a strange sense of calm washed over him.

The person who designed this test was a sadist. The questions were indeed based on the two martial arts textbooks, but their angles were bizarre. The logic behind them was wildly unconventional, testing a Martial Artist’s intuition more than anything—which happened to be Yu Fei’s relative weakness.

But once he’d calmed down, he managed to answer four questions in a row correctly. When he checked the real-time leaderboard on the right again, he saw his rank had climbed to 315th. Seeing that number, Yu Fei immediately felt reassured.

’There are 876 candidates in total, so it seems like most people are finding this test difficult. Besides, my Void Martial Body is considered a red-level cultivation talent, so I can’t be that bad. From that quick glance I got on the training grounds earlier, at least half of them only have orange-level talent. My realm might be a bit lower, but I’m not lacking in other areas.’

The virtual test had a huge number of questions and was mentally exhausting to complete. Yu Fei relied on his superior Spiritual Power and reflexes to maintain a decent state. During the final hour, his real-time rank continued to climb steadily.

When the four-hour test finally ended, Yu Fei’s final rank was 192nd. The result far exceeded his expectations.

A moment later, the final results panel popped up before him.

"Congratulations. Your score for the first round is 672 points, placing you at rank 192. With a comprehensive multiplier of 6.7, your final point total is 4502."

Point Conversion Rules [Expand]

Point Leaderboard [Expand]

Yu Fei first opened the "Point Conversion Rules" to take a look. He discovered that the so-called "comprehensive multiplier" was simply his raw score divided by 100, and the final point total was the product of his raw score and that multiplier.