Chapter 57 – Top Rank Mortal Realm Art Manuals
“All three of you, write your names on the name tags and then hang them at the end.” The exam master pointed at the empty slots in the last row and said.
Ye Chen followed the exam master’s instruction and took a blank wooden tag. Just like the others, he accumulated Zhen Qi at the tip of his finger and slowly carved his name onto it, and then hung it back in one of the empty slots of the last row.
The exam master massaged his temples, “I will not be briefing you about all the little things like the rules of the ranking and such, you guys could just go ask your fellow disciples, they will explain everything you need to know. As there is nothing else, I will take my leave then.”
After the exam master had left, the male disciple who had just became an inner disciple immediately asked the rest of the inner disciples present: “Senior Brothers and Sisters, my name is Li Sheng. I’d like to know what the use of this rank system is and how it works. Can someone explain this to me?”
One of the inner disciples explained: “To be honest, the ranking doesn’t really matter, as it doesn’t have any actual use; but if you really think that it’s completely useless, then you could not be anymore wrong. First, the ranking system encourages the disciples and increases their motivation to train, as no one would want to be at the bottom of the list; but not anyone can simply be placed at the top either, so if you want to obtain a better rank than anyone else, then you will have to put in a lot of work and effort to achieve it. Of course, there are some people that don’t really care whether they are placed at the bottom or top, but such people are really rare, it can even be said that such people are almost non-existent as it’s already really hard for us to even get here. And more importantly, by the end of the year, the inner disciples who are ranked at five hundred or more would lose their status as an inner disciple and they will be sent back to be an outer disciple. If one wants to recover their status as an inner disciple, then he will have to wait for another six months. Before you guys arrived, there were already eleven inner disciples that were sent back.”
What a cruel competition!
Ye Chen carefully thought about this matter. It sounded as if it was nothing important, as only people that ranked worse than five hundred would be disqualified; so, as long as you were not placed at the end, you would be able to continue being an inner disciple. But the problem was that, all the inner disciples who were already in the danger zone would not simply go down without trying; they would probably do everything they could to be ranked below five hundred, and once a person in the bottom ranks gained a place in the top five hundred, someone else would be dragged down, which in turn would make him work even harder in order to be placed better. In this way, this vicious cycle will go on and on.
Eventually, all the inner disciples would be filled with an extreme sense of competition, leaving very few people that were able to hold their place.
Another inner disciple continued: “The process of the ranking is pretty simple, that is to challenge someone for a battle to win their place. There’s one condition though: you could only challenge people ranked in your row. For example, people on the twenty-ninth row could only compete with disciples from the twenty-ninth row. Once you achieve the first place of the twenty-ninth row, then you could challenge the inner disciples from the twenty-eighth row. Besides that, there is also a huge ranking competition for all the inner disciples, that takes place during the middle of the year. The whole ranking chart will be refreshed, as all those people who had been avoiding the competition all the time would have nowhere to hide.”
“Is that so?” Li Sheng took a glance at Ye Chen, full of envy. He knew that, with Ye Chen’s strength he could effortlessly obtain a place in the top four hundred, and was very unlikely to be eliminated; but as for himself, it’s really hard to even survive.
Right then, a female inner disciple who was quite attractive reminded them: “I recommend you guys to take on some school missions before you go challenging your fellow disciples. Because, the experiences of facing life threatening dangers and killing people have a huge impact on your battling skill, and also the inner disciples you challenge are not going to go easy on you.”
“Yes, it is always a little bit unpleasant when you are being challenged. The ones with good temper will probably let you go once they make you bleed a little, but those hot headed ones might beat you up so much, that you will have to stay in bed for a while, which happens quite often.”
All of a sudden, there were noises at the front of the square. Everyone followed the direction of the noise and looked over, there were two teenagers in blood stained clothes carrying another teenager; it was doubtful if he was alive or not.
“What happened to Brother Liang?” Someone asked urgently.
The teenager on the left wiped his tears, “Those disciple from the Purple Sun Martial Palace were way out of line. We were the first ones to find the mission target, but they stole it from us, and we had no choice, but to fight for it. Brother Liang tried to protect us, but ended up taking three punches and four kicks and was badly injured.”
“Fuck, those bastards from the Purple Sun Martial Palace, I will not let them get away with this. I will kick their asses the next time I meet them!”
“So brutal, not only had they stolen the mission, but also injured our people.”
Listening to all the chatter filled with anger, Ye Chen just started to feel the pressure of being an inner disciple. He would not only have to compete with his fellow inner disciples in the institution and try to be the best of them, but also had to fight with the disciples from the other martial institutions; and any careless mistake of his would cause him great danger. There’s a possibility of him being badly wounded, or even being killed out there.
Of course, That was not the only danger. The warriors that belonged to various gangs, that had been hunted down by the martial institutions before, they were always looking for opportunities to mess with the disciples.
Even though Wang Xuemei saw all of it, she knew that she was not strong enough to do anything about it yet, she tightened her lips, turned her head and left in silence.
I should go to the Pavilion of Martial Skills first. Once he became an inner disciple, Ye Chen would have six months’ time to train freely. Although he did not really want to wait for half a year, he definitely wanted to train in a couple of top rank Mortal Realm skills, as even his King Kong Fist and his Golden Swallow Art would become less useful as time goes.
In the Pavilion of Martial Skills.
“Master, we meet again.” This time, Ye Chen greeted the pavilion master first, and showed
his inner disciple name tag.
The pavilion master said in surprise: “The inner disciple name tag! Atta boy!”
“Hehe, I just got it. Now, there will not be a time limit anymore for me to go up to the second floor, right?” Ye Chen laughed.
“Of course not. Go on!”
After saying that, the pavilion master stood there for a while, as he mumbled to himself: “This kid sure is a genius, he was only at Mortal Realm Stage 4 the last time he came. It hasn’t been that long and he’s already at the Condensing Reality Realm !”
On the second floor!
Standing by the entrance, Ye Chen thought to himself: from now on, I can stay on the second floor for as long as I want, so awesome!
Although there were many top rank Mortal Realm manuals, just one hundred or so all together, choosing one that suited him the most would not be that easy.
Naturally, he preferred to choose a martial art first.
Previously, the Pure Yuan Art had brought him all kinds of benefits. So, this time too, he decided to choose a Zhen Qi martial art like the Pure Yuan Art. Although some other martial arts like the Twist Heart Spell had some special benefits like its twisted aura, it could only be used in close combat, so its general rating would not be as high.
“Purple Qi Three Flowers Spell, top rank Mortal Realm Art, contains seven stages in total. Once someone trained it to the third stage, a purple flower made of Zhen Qi would appear above his head; on reaching the fifth stage, there will be two of such flowers formed from Zhen Qi. Reaching the highest stage, that is the seventh stage, the person who trained this art would be considered to have completed his Zhen Qi training, and there would be three flowers then. He would also gain inhuman strength at this stage.”
“River Spell, top rank Mortal Realm art, contains seven stages in total. Once one mastered this art, they would have an endless amount of Zhen Qi along with extremely strong power; once they reach the final seventh stage, they would be able to accumulate the Zhen Qi from the surrounding water to increase the effect of his own attack power. If he is close to a huge water body like a river or an ocean, his power would be largely enhanced.”
“Wind and Thunder art, top rank Mortal Realm art, contains seven stages in total. Mastering the first four stages makes the person extremely fast and extremely sensitive to air flows allowing him to even ride in the wind. Once fully mastered, it could even allow him to use thunder during his attacks, allowing him to paralyze his opponents.”
After going through three martial art manuals in a row, Ye Chen thought to himself: these are indeed top rank Mortal Realm Martial Art, all three of them are very powerful, and way better than the high rank Mortal Realm art. The reason he could beat Huang Bingwen was only due to his power level not being high enough, otherwise there would be no way for Ye Chen to beat him. As for being able to beat Ye Tang and Ye Xuan, it was only due to his extremely powerful body strength which they all lacked, it was pure luck.
If there were only these three manuals he could choose from, he would choose the Wind and Thunder art, as it greatly benefited his fly art. When trained to the highest stage, he would even be able to use thunder during his attacks, which would be extremely useful for him.
But it was still too early for him to decide, as there might be even better arts that he hadn’t seen among the rest of the manuals.