Chapter 56 – The Ranking Jade Wall
The passage was open, and a humongous dark shadow with an extremely powerful aura came out of it.
Mooooo!
The dark shadow growled, its voice shook the ground. It was a demonic cow covered in a black shell, its horns were as sharp as knives; its shoulders were two and half meters above the ground, its eyes were as large as bells; it was breathing loudly, and even its breath was visible. Its hooves were divided into claws that were shaped like knives; they had a cold icy shine to them.
“The Black Shelled Cow is the most powerful among these three beasts, it possesses an innate god-like strength, and an extremely high defense; it will be very hard to beat it!”
“I think he would probably try to hold on for an incense burning time.”
The crowd obviously did not think that Ye Chen could beat the Black Shelled Cow, as even some inner disciples found it hard to break through the demonic cow’s defense in a short time; not to mention Ye Chen, who had just reached the Condensing Reality Realm.
Unlike the Iron Claw Demonic Wolf and the Blood Pattern Bear, the Black Shelled Cow did not attack at once. Its right foot was digging into the ground, and its huge eyes were focused on Ye Chen while its body slightly lowered.
Tap! Tap! Tap! Tap!...
After a few seconds, the Black Shelled Cow suddenly let out some grey demonic Qi which wrapped around its whole body, leaving only its two bloody murderous eyes visible. Then, it moved its feet, and with a horrifying pressure, it ran towards Ye Chen, which looked like it planned to hit Ye Chen to death.
Right then, Ye Chen moved, his right arm’s muscles tensed, his fist tightened and he was facing forward.
When the Black Shelled Cow was only half a meter away from him, Ye Chen growled, he threw out a punch to break through the demonic Qi; it landed heavily on its forehead.
Boom!
The hard rocky ground cracked open as the Black Shelled Cow’s huge body smashed into the ground. There was blood all over its body, and its legs were twitching helplessly.
One punch knocked out the Black Shelled Cow.
Gasp!
All the inner disciples who were watching could not help but gasp in astonishment.
Wang Xuemei mumbled: “What a scary person!”
After a long while, the exam master finally praised: “Well done, with your potential and talent, making a name for yourself out there in the future will not be hard. You could perhaps even compete with those geniuses that belong to the other Martial Institutions, and bring glory to our Sky Cloud Martial School.”
Ye Chen was unperturbed, as if nothing out of the ordinary took place. In fact, he had only used seventy percent of his strength,a walk in the park for Ye Chen. He heard the exam master, and replied, “Thank you, master, you are too generous with your praise.”
“Whether I am merely praising you or stating the truth, that all depends on you and how hard you are willing to work for it in the future. Otherwise, even if you have a higher potential, you will still not be able to achieve much. In the past twenty years, I have seen many ordinary disciples that were able to climb above everyone else and make a name for themselves, and I have also seen many geniuses that have fallen into complete obscurity. I hope you are not the latter.” The exam master could not even remember how many times he had gotten his hopes up, only to be disappointed eventually. But he was still quite excited for Ye Chen, and he sincerely hoped for him to grow up well to become someone of great repute in the future.
“The inner disciple entrance tests has now officially ended. You three, follow me to receive your waist tags and robes for the inner disciples. The rest of you can just go back to what you were doing!”
…
In a room in the examination lobby.
“According to your size, choose three sets of inner disciple robes, and, in the future, if they are damaged or ruined, you can come here to exchange them.” The exam master opened one of the many rows of closets, as he addressed the three of them.
Ye Chen looked in the direction of the cabinets. The twelve closets were huge; there were dozens of white robes of different sizes neatly arranged in the shelves. There were labels indicating the sizes in front of each shelf.
The three knew their sizes well, so they quickly chose their gear.
The exam master brought the three of them to the armory to let them pick out a weapon of their choice.
Ye Chen chose a one-meter-long great sword named Hidden Cloud, which was of the same level as the Colorful Snow Knife from the Northern Snow Martial Academy, and the Viridian Glaze Sword from the Emerald Martial Palace; they were all great weapons to have. And Wang Xuemei chose two purple colored short knives, named Purple Delight; the other disciple was not very good with weapons, so he casually chose a dagger that could cut iron like mud.
Right then, the exam master took out three dark blue colored name tags that looked neither like iron nor like wood that were quite heavy.
“Remember, your name tag symbolizes your identity as an inner disciple, you should take good care of it; it also represents your status and can be a proof of your capability during your travels around the world. When you are in danger, flash this name tag, and it may be able to save your life. You should also remember that, if you are killed after losing your name tags, the Sky Cloud Martial School will be unable to do anything about your death.” The exam master warned them.
“Yes, sir!”
The three nodded.
Picking up a name tag, the exam master accumulated Zhen Qi at the tip of his finger and started writing on the back of the name tag with his finger. The friction between his Zhen Qi and the name tag produced heat and soon there was some light blue colored smoke.
After he finished writing on the first tag, he picked up the second one...
Soon, all three name tags had a name on each of them, rendering them useless to anyone besides the owners.
As he took the name tag, Ye Chen subconsciously squeezed the name tag with sixty percent of his power to test how tough the name tag was. The result was out of his expectation; the name tag was undamaged as if nothing had happened. Ye Chen did not stop there, he accumulated all of his Zhen Qi in his hand and squeezed as hard as he could, along with his crazy strength.
A little bit of white smoke poured out of Ye Chen’s hand, but the name tag was still in perfect condition without a scratch.
As he let go of his Zhen Qi, Ye Chen could not help but admire the exam master’s power that had allowed him to effortlessly carve their names on the name tags. If those extremely powerful fingers ever landed a hit on his body, it will definitely leave a huge bloody hole.
“Now, follow me to the Ranking Jade Wall! Every inner disciple had been there at least once.”
Ranking Jade Wall?
The three of them had heard about it before, but none of them had never actually been there.
In the middle of the mountain, there was a place called the Cloud Riding Palace, it was where the inner disciples received their missions; and outside the palace, there was a huge square which was floored with white jade. There was a jade wall on the side of the square, which was five meters tall and three meters wide; it looked white with a hint of blue, on which a number of name tags were hung.
Right then, there were a lot of inner disciples standing under the jade wall with lifted heads as they studied the location of different name tags and the names present on them.
“Zhang Haoran has surpassed another ten people, he is now ranked two hundred and eighty-fifth.”
“That Wu Zongming is not bad either, he is ranked three hundred and thirty-third now.”
“The most impressive one is still Sister Xu Jing, she had gone from twenty-third rank among the core disciples straight to the eighth rank.”
Ye Chen and the other two walked through the chatters, and walked up to the jade wall.
“Greetings, Master Tang. Are these three new inner disciples?” Although the exam master was only an outer master, he was still extremely powerful, and could even compete with some of the low ranked inner masters. He was also very friendly, which was why he was very liked and well respected by people.
The exam master nodded, he said with a smile: “You guys will have to work harder now, some of them have great potential, and could definitely be ranked in the top four hundred.”
“Hehe, we are working hard already, you don’t have to worry about us, Master Tang.”
Ye Chen did not pay attention to their conversation, as he was studying the huge jade wall.
The wall was covered with name tags that were separated into twenty-nine rows; each row could have twenty name tags at most, and each name tag had a different name on it. Among these, Wu Zongming’s and Zhang Haoran’s names were not hard to find, they were on the third of the seventeenth row and the fifteenth of the fourteenth row, respectively.
The first and second rows were full of core disciples’ name tags that were all a blood red color, clearly stating their superiority; the third row was for the top ten inner disciples whose name tags were a shade of light red, representing their ability to challenge the core disciples and replace their positions on the wall; the fourth row and onwards were full of the name tags of inner disciples represented in dark blue, the same color as the name tags of Ye Chen and the two other newly accepted disciples .