Chapter 17 - Act 3. Daemudo Entrance Examination (10)

“The test is over. The four of you may leave the barrier.”

Perhaps a higher realm brought an entirely different degree of composure as well. Even as everyone else fell silent, Kang Itae steadfastly went about his duties. Of course, to his eyes, the spectacle amounted to little more than a baby barely past the newborn stage managing to roll over, then throwing both hands up and roaring.

The four walked out of the barrier. Hae Unchan looked disappointed that he had failed to finish the Demon himself despite having several opportunities. Pi Garam remained as impassive as ever, showing no particular agitation. Yise strode out triumphantly, carrying the enemy commander's head.

And Seol Ryeong...

“What is wrong with him...?”

She could only stare in horror at Yise, utterly unable to fathom his behavior.

* * *

The sixth day's tests offered a chance to catch their breath. In the morning, they took a written examination on the <Daemudo Basic Handbook> they had been studying. There were a hundred questions in all. Yise finished without difficulty.

Early that afternoon, he had an examiner inspect his spiritual root. The process seemed intended to determine whether his root had awakened, what kind it was, and his current cultivation realm. The examiner identified his attainment at first sight.

“You've already reached the second star.”

Could he see that? Surely he wasn't judging solely by the amount of spiritual energy.

Yise, on the other hand, found the examiner's realm difficult to gauge. His spiritual energy was gathered in one place, sloshing as though held in a vessel rather than flowing along meridians. That alone let Yise venture a guess that he was a Foundation Establishment Cultivator.

“Leave the spiritual-root type blank... Do you have an unusual constitution?”

“Yes.”

The examiner's gaze turned inward through Yise's body again, but he merely furrowed his brow, apparently unable to make sense of what he saw. His curiosity and scholarly appetite as a Cultivator stirred, but he soon reined them in. Excessive greed invited disaster. If he had been instructed not to take an interest, he was better off doing as told.

“You may go.”

Yise bowed his head and moved on to the next step.

His third stop was the Medicine Hall. There, applicants were thoroughly checked for injuries or poisoning from the previous tests, and any problems were treated. The sudden improvement in their treatment made him feel that they were well over the hardest part of the examination.

Once the day's schedule was over, his team gathered for a celebration beside a bonfire in the garden at the back of the drill ground. Yise, Hae Unchan, and Pi Garam all wondered why they needed to bother, but Seol Ryeong was adamant.

“An occasion isn't properly concluded until you've enjoyed song and dance and performed the clothing-burning rite! You could say we're sending off the spirits after the ritual while livening things up!”

“What is she talking about?”

Hae Unchan merely shook his head at Yise's question. Yise decided to assume that shamans simply liked to party whenever they finished something.

While Seol Ryeong busied herself preparing something around the bonfire, Hae Unchan fetched food and a bottle of cloudy rice wine from somewhere. His bundle was packed with appetizing jerky. Yise smacked his lips. Roasted golden brown over the fire, it looked as though it would melt in his mouth with a rich, savory flavor.

“Where did you get that?”

“This? My emergency rations.”

“Never mind the jerky. Are Cultivators allowed to drink? Cloudy rice wine, at that?”

“Maybe not?”

Hae Unchan and Yise pondered the question. The <Daemudo Basic Handbook> said to avoid impure food. The problem was that it never explained exactly what counted as impure. Cloudy rice wine certainly looked impure, at least. After putting their heads together, the two eventually pushed the wine aside.

“All right, everyone, strip!”

Having finished whatever preparations she had been making, Seol Ryeong beamed at the three of them. Unable to understand what she meant for a moment, they glanced around.

“What are you doing? I said strip!”

“... Could you explain instead of leaving out all the context?”

Only at Hae Unchan's question did she smile sheepishly at her mistake and elaborate.

“When you fight wicked beings like Demons, you get exposed to Demonic Energy and splattered with blood. If you don't perform the proper closing rites, you'll pick up a curse. So we're going to burn the clothes we fought in and hold a simple rite.”

As though that explained everything, Seol Ryeong planted one hand on her hip and beckoned with the other. Strip, right now.

“I understand what you mean. But here?”

“Yes, here! Honestly, you're not little children. What are you so embarrassed about?”

Exasperated that they kept dawdling no matter how often she told them, she stripped the outer robe and sleeveless overcoat off Hae Unchan beside her. For someone so tiny, she was strong.

“Now take off your trousers too.”

“Are you actually out of your mind...?”

All three looked at her as though she were some shameless molester. With an exasperated sigh, Seol Ryeong handed over the robes she had brought.

“Then put these on and slip your trousers off underneath. I don't understand why you're being so shy around a girl when you're all grown up.”

“Because we're grown up...”

Despite Hae Unchan's muttering, she merely shook her head in frustration.

A little later, a log snapped, sending sparks, smoke, and ash rising. Seol Ryeong performed a short rite, swaying through unusual movements almost like a dance, then grabbed a handful of Hae Unchan's jerky, apparently hungry. Roasted over glowing embers, the jerky tasted nothing short of sublime.

More wood went onto the fire. Watching the flames spring back to life, Yise asked,

“They exorcised all the Demon corpses at the examination ground yesterday. Do we really need to do it again?”

“That sends the Demons' souls into the Abyss. This gets rid of the wicked energy clinging to us.”

“Do we have to go through this hassle every time we hunt a Demon?”

“It would be better if you did, but you should definitely do it after your first hunt, at least. It helps build resistance.”

Yise nodded, pleased to have learned another useful fact. There was just one problem.

“This wasn't my first hunt. Will it work just as well?”

“What?”

Seol Ryeong questioned his words. Hae Unchan and Pi Garam also quietly raised their heads to glance at him.

“You hunted a Demon before coming to Daemudo? When?”

“When I was ten.”

“... Huh? You're joking, right? So that ‘killed a Demon at ten’ thing earlier was true?”

Yise merely shrugged.

“Even if it isn't your first hunt, the sooner you do this, the better... But why on earth were you hunting Demons so young? What kind of Demon—”

“Leave it there.”

As Seol Ryeong leaned toward Yise to question him, Pi Garam reached out to stop her. His serious tone made her fall silent for a moment.

“You sheltered noble children might not understand, but when someone gets mixed up with Demons as a child, prying rarely leads anywhere good.”

Only then did Seol Ryeong realize that probing further might dredge up painful memories, and she backed off. Even if Yise had brought it up himself, companions needed to know where to draw the line.

Yise neither confirmed nor denied it. In her seventeen years of experience, that sort of response usually meant yes.

“Anyway, Yise. Why did you push yourself so far on your own against the Eyegleam yesterday?”

Pi Garam smoothly changed the subject to something he had been wondering about. Yise readily admitted to having taken an excessive risk.

“I'm sorry I didn't discuss it with you first.”

“I wasn't asking for an apology. We passed the test easily, so there's no harm done. I'm simply curious why. You struck me as the cautious, deliberate type.”

“Even if it meant pushing myself...”

Seol Ryeong, who had been quietly sampling a sip of rice wine, flinched.

“I needed to catch the examiners' attention.”

“Why?”

“Because of my unusual constitution. I need the private instruction from a Hall Master awarded to the first- and second-place finishers.”

The three recalled the commotion on the second day. He clearly had some secret he could not share, something serious enough to summon Daemudo's Hall Masters. Finally seeming satisfied, Pi Garam offered a word of caution.

“I understand. Just in case, you'd best keep that constitution a secret from anyone else.”

“That's why I haven't told you about it either.”

Several people already knew, making it something of an open secret, but Yise kept that to himself.

“I see.”

Yise smiled faintly, and Pi Garam folded his arms.

By then, Hae Unchan and Seol Ryeong were passing rice wine back and forth in a halved bottle gourd, their faces flushing as they grew drunk. The somewhat bleak outlook for Daemudo's future was a minor concern.

* * *

The final day of the Daemudo Entrance Examination dawned.

The previous night, Seol Ryeong had explained, [“They say if you've made it to the last day, you've practically passed. You can think of the last test as a contest to decide the rankings!”]

That made sense, considering only sixty-odd applicants remained. Given how many new disciples died in their first year, it would be hard to eliminate many more.

Eight of the remaining applicants were ordinary people without spiritual roots. Apparently, they would join as outer affiliates, chiefly gathering intelligence, and live comfortably for the rest of their lives. Unlike inner disciples, their mortality rate was low, so recruiting around ten a year was enough to maintain their numbers.

While the applicants waited in ranks at the examination ground, nine men and women appeared on the dais, greeting Kang Itae and one another. Yise recognized three of them.

These were the great Core Formation Cultivators, Daemudo's core fighting force and the very strength that sustained it: the Masters of the Eleven Inner Halls.

Ten in all. It seemed every Hall Master was present except Azure Dragon Hall Master Hae Il, who was reportedly away on business.

“Have this many Hall Masters ever come to watch an examination...?”

The speaker was an applicant named Wang Soin, who had approached Yise to swagger about this being his fourth attempt. Apparently, they had gathered after hearing rumors of this year's extraordinary talent.

“The seventh test will now begin.”

Once the bustle had subsided somewhat, Kang Itae stepped up onto the dais as usual and announced the start.

“The test is simple. The two applicants called will face each other in single combat. The match ends when one side forfeits or loses consciousness. All means and methods are permitted. We will proceed in reverse order of your cumulative scores, starting from the lowest ranks.”

Head-to-head combat between Cultivators.

Yise understood why this final test produced the most casualties despite not determining who passed or failed. It was a kind of stage. Rather than dividing attention among several people as before, it focused everything on just two contestants battling for supremacy.

Watching them were the revered great Core Formation Cultivators. It was the perfect setting for applicants to get carried away trying to catch the Hall Masters' eyes. Their pride would not let them surrender easily, either. Worse, each opponent was a rival ranked immediately above or below them. Fights between evenly matched opponents were always the fiercest.

The test began with matches between ordinary people. They had already achieved everything they wanted simply by reaching this point, so their bouts felt like light entertainment to warm up the crowd.

Once all eight had finished, the Cultivators' matches began in earnest: all-out battles that drew on every physical technique they had trained and every ritual implement they had prepared. The Hall Masters chatted among themselves, occasionally glancing toward the examination ground to see if anyone showed promise.

The atmosphere was heated indeed. Not even commonplace spells were used, but as the applicants' rankings rose, the formal duels grew fiercer than ever and increasingly worth watching.

“Next. Seol Ryeong, Jo Jeongjin.”

Seol Ryeong currently ranked eleventh overall. At first, she seemed locked in a fierce struggle with the twelfth-ranked applicant, but soon she expended even the many ritual implements she had kept hidden, subduing her opponent with overwhelming firepower.

Pi Garam ranked seventh. His eighth-ranked opponent was one of the second-star Qi Refining shoo-ins. Despite his opponent's skill with spiritual energy, Pi Garam refused to let him close the distance, harrying him with archery and formations before subduing him with a surprise close-range attack.

Both had proved themselves capable of placing among the very best. They had simply been overshadowed by Yise's almost overambitious performance.

The examination neared its end. When two more of the final four were called, Yise and Hae Unchan met each other's eyes. Neither had been named. That meant they held first and second place and would settle the outcome in the final match.

“I expected this, but—so it really came to this. I won't go easy on you.”

Hae Unchan's voice was calm, but his face brimmed with excitement and eagerness to compete.