Chapter 490: The Speechless Examiner

’That’s actually a real possibility.’ The written portion of the inner court assessment required a score of fifty—half the total. He didn’t know the answer to a single question right now. Forget fifty points; he’d be lucky to get even five.

The thought of having to turn in a blank exam sheet made Ye Xuan’s mood plummet.

’No way. I refuse to believe I don’t know a single answer.’

He gritted his teeth and quickly scanned the next questions.

After scanning a few more lines, his eyes suddenly lit up.

’Damn, who wrote these questions? This is on the test?’

The question read: "Who are the current Ten Beauties of the Dream Realm Plain?"

Below it were ten blank spaces.

’I should know the answer to one of these.’

Ye Xuan directly wrote in the first blank: Dongfang Zisi.

She was the only one he knew.

He seethed internally. ’Who the hell wrote these questions?’

If they had asked him who the ten beauties of the Supreme Profound Domain on the Celestial Profound Continent were, he could have guaranteed he wouldn’t miss a single one. But they just had to ask about a small place like the Dream Realm Plain. How was someone from a much bigger place supposed to know?

Besides, what did knowing the Ten Beauties have to do with joining the inner court? Ye Xuan was furious.

He didn’t know that the purpose of the inner court assessment was to test a Martial Artist’s overall capabilities.

In this world, being weak was acceptable. As long as you kept your head down and stayed out of trouble, you generally wouldn’t run into any major problems.

The real danger was thinking you were hot stuff before you’d fully matured, ending up offending someone you couldn’t afford to offend, and winding up as a corpse in the wilderness.

History was filled with far too many such incidents.

According to statistics, out of every hundred geniuses, usually only ten—or even fewer—would ever reach their full potential.

A small portion of them would, for various reasons, fail to advance smoothly, getting stuck at a certain realm and fading into obscurity.

A much larger portion, however, fell along the way.

And among those who fell, many were geniuses who had died mysterious deaths after unintentionally offending someone.

Therefore, the inner court’s written test, while seemingly simple, actually covered information about the vast majority of factions in the Dream Realm Plain. Geniuses who answered more questions correctly often had a better understanding of the major powers, which naturally reduced their chances of offending people in the future.

But a test like this was pure torture for Ye Xuan.

"Huh? Why isn’t that guy writing?"

Ye Xuan’s unusual behavior had also caught the attention of Feng Guang, Dongfang Zisi, and others, who all glanced over.

The seats in the grand hall were close together, but there was a unique barrier between each position. It was impossible to see what others had written on their papers with Profound Sense or by sight alone.

Nevertheless, it was still perfectly clear to those nearby whether a candidate was answering the questions or not.

’This guy’s paper is completely blank?’

Seeing the empty state of Ye Xuan’s paper, Feng Guang couldn’t help but feel the urge to sneer.

"Why isn’t Xuan Ye answering the questions?"

Dongfang Zisi, however, frowned slightly, worried for Xuan Ye.

"All candidates, please refrain from looking around. Otherwise, it will be treated as cheating, and you will be disqualified from the assessment."

The head proctor, Lu Jun, noticed the disturbance. Though he knew it was difficult to see the adjacent papers, he still issued a stern warning.

Feng Guang sneered inwardly and quickly turned his head, no longer paying attention to Ye Xuan.

Lu Jun glanced at Ye Xuan’s paper from afar. His brows knitted slightly, and he shook his head but said nothing.

’Am I really going to have to turn in a blank paper?’

Just as Ye Xuan was at his wit’s end, he casually flipped the test paper over to the back, and his eyes suddenly lit up.

"Huh."

The questions on the back of the paper were no longer about history or general information. Instead, they were about various Spirit Medicines, Demon Beasts, Soul Refining, and the like.

But these questions were also quite interesting.

One question read: "You are a Tier Six Martial Venerable walking through a mountain forest. Suddenly, you smell a faint, sweet fragrance ahead that makes all the pores on your body open up. You look up and discover a Tier Six Dragon’s Saliva Fragrance on a hundred-meter-high cliff face. According to your senses, there isn’t a single Demon Beast within a radius of several miles. What do you do? And why?"

’Damn, a question like this? Isn’t the person who wrote this a bit too tricky?’

Ye Xuan couldn’t resist giving the question-writer a mental middle finger.

A normal student would definitely choose to pick the Dragon’s Saliva Fragrance. A smarter one might write that they would carefully observe their surroundings to check for any danger.

But Ye Xuan wrote directly on his paper, "Of course, I would immediately take an Illusion-breaking Pill and then turn and run. Dragon’s Saliva Fragrance is the favorite Spirit Medicine of the Tier Six Profound Beast, the Illusion Luo Beast. They are practically symbiotic. The scent of Dragon’s Saliva Fragrance can only travel fifty meters at most. If you can smell its sweet fragrance, it means you’re already caught in the Illusion Luo Beast’s illusion. The only solution is to immediately take an Illusion-breaking Pill, then turn and run."

After finishing that question, Ye Xuan looked at the next one: "You are a Tier Six Martial Venerable. While hunting a Tier Five Profound Beast, the Earth Scorpion, in the wild, your martial soul is injured by the Earth Scorpion’s Soul Thought and venom. Your martial soul is continuously corroding. The nearest Soul Refiner is in a city a thousand miles away. What do you do? And why?"

"I would crush the Earth Scorpion’s Soul Crystal, mix it with its blood, find some Earth Demon Grass nearby, and consume them together. The blood of an Earth Scorpion has properties that can stabilize a martial soul. Furthermore, where there are Earth Scorpions, there is always Earth Demon Grass. The combination of Earth Demon Grass, the Earth Scorpion’s Soul Crystal, and its blood can slow the corrosion of the martial soul by over ninety-nine percent. With that, even if the Soul Refiner was ten thousand miles away, I could still make it there for treatment."

The entire back of the page was filled with questions like these, finally allowing Ye Xuan to breathe a sigh of relief.

SCRIBBLE, SCRIBBLE!

The tip of his pen danced across the page as Ye Xuan rapidly wrote down one answer after another.

「Half an hour later.」

DING-A-LING-LING.

At the crisp sound of the bell, everyone stopped writing.

The test papers were collected, one by one, and sent to the rear of the main hall.

As the papers were being collected, Feng Guang deliberately turned to glance at Ye Xuan’s sheet.

He saw that the front of Ye Xuan’s paper was a vast blank, with barely a few words written on it.

"Everyone, that concludes the written test. The results will be announced in half an hour. Please wait patiently in the square outside."

"Brother Liu, how did you do on the written test?"

"So-so, but passing should be no problem."

"Of course. The general knowledge questions at the beginning were just too easy. I could’ve answered them with my eyes closed. The questions on the back were a bit harder, and I wasn’t as confident, but getting fifty points should still be a breeze."

The students discussed amongst themselves.

"Kid, you can’t even pass the written test. What are you doing participating in the inner court assessment?"

Feng Guang couldn’t help but sneer at Ye Xuan as they walked out of the hall.

"Psycho," Ye Xuan glanced at him and turned to leave.

"You..."

Feng Guang’s eyes blazed with fury, revealing a terrifying killing intent. He clenched his fists, but he knew he couldn’t make a move here.

"Young Master Ye, how was it? The written test was simple, right?"

Seeing Ye Xuan come out, Zhang Lie and Luo Cheng hurried forward and asked with a smile.

"Simple?" Ye Xuan glanced at Zhang Lie and said flatly, "Zhang Lie, your intel is really something else."

Ye Xuan’s gaze made Zhang Lie’s heart tremble for no reason.

"Was this year’s test very difficult?" Zhang Lie asked hurriedly, then muttered, "That can’t be right."

"It’s not that this year’s test was difficult, it was difficult *for me*."

Ye Xuan didn’t elaborate. Thankfully, he had done relatively well on the second side of the paper. Otherwise, this would have been a huge embarrassment.

Even so, he still felt a little uneasy.

The test was divided into fifty points for general knowledge and fifty points for alchemy and Soul Refining. He had answered almost nothing in the general knowledge section.

To pass, he would need to get a perfect score on the alchemy and Soul Refining section.

Although he was confident his answers were completely correct, these were subjective questions, and they still needed the proctors’ approval.

At that very moment, inside the grand hall, a large group of proctors was rapidly grading the test papers.

With five or six proctors grading one hundred and three papers, the process was quite fast.

"Mm, this candidate is good. Full marks on the general knowledge section."

"This one’s not bad either, forty-nine points."

"This one is just average, only forty-one points. He’ll have to get nine points from Elder Yao and Elder Dong. That’ll be tough."

"The questions set by Elder Yao and Elder Dong are notoriously difficult. Anyone who can get ten points on that section is considered to have amazing talent in alchemy and Soul Refining."

The proctors chatted and laughed as they graded the papers.

"Huh? This guy only got one point on the general knowledge section."

Suddenly, an astonished voice rang out. A master stared blankly at the paper in front of him and muttered.

"One point? Are you kidding?"

"Haha, the general knowledge section is so easy. Who could possibly score only one point?"

"I could get ten points just by filling in random answers with my eyes closed."

The other masters around him spoke up as if they had heard a joke.

"I’m not kidding. This guy really only got one point. Let me see the name... Xuan Ye? Isn’t that the top student from the new enrollment?"

The master’s words immediately drew the attention of the other proctors. One by one, they stopped grading and turned to look.

"No way, is it really one point?"

The next moment, all the proctors’ expressions froze. They were all dumbfounded.

What they saw was a blank test paper. Only one blank space had been filled in; the rest was completely empty.

"Unbelievable. Truly unbelievable."

"Isn’t this Xuan Ye the top student from this enrollment assessment? Master Qingfeng, you were just speaking so highly of him. Look, his general knowledge section is completely blank..."

"Getting one point on the general knowledge section is much harder than getting a perfect score."

Many of the masters didn’t know whether to laugh or be angry.

Many masters had been pleased that Ye Xuan and Hou Fei were participating in the inner court assessment right after enrolling. But after seeing Ye Xuan’s paper, their impression of him plummeted.

This was simply ridiculous.

Only one point on the general knowledge section? What did this person think the inner court’s written assessment was?

In the entire history of Gale Light Academy’s inner court assessments, this was a first.