Chapter 60

A voice boomed across the island announcing the end of the second recruitment test. It ordered the participants to remain at their current positions and cease fighting against each other or collecting more beast corpses.

Members from the nine powers entered in flocks to find the participants and count their point scores.

A member from the Moon empire had found Jiang Mang's group and had counted the points of their teams. Jiang Mang had 8000 points, while the other three had almost 5500 points. The team had distributed their points this way since most of the work was handled by Jiang MAng while he was also their leader. The member of the Moon empire was astonished by their points count. He also became much friendlier from that point on. He even praised their strength, while he was astonished by Jiang Mang's ability to tame a six-tailed fox.

He was a peak king realm cultivator, who was a court official of the Moon empire. They were allowed to address him as official Mu. Official Mu was guiding them to the assembly point of the third test. He was also informing them about the third test and its workings.

He told them about the nine tests separately.

The first test would be from the Sun empire where their ability to absorb energy from the sun would be measured.

The second test was from the Moon empire, which required the user to comprehend a painting related to their heritage.

The third was from the Beast empire, which required the participants to try and establish a connection with a beast aura from a mural filled with beast drawings. The fourth was from the Heaven empire, which tested the physical body of the participant.

The fifth was from the Devil sect, which tested the participants' killing intent and its compatibility with devil techniques.

The sixth was from the Holy maiden sect, which tested the participants' yin energy and its purity. They would only accept pure female virgins.

The seventh was from the Sword Palace, which tested the participants' comprehension and talent for swords.

The eight was from the Five elements palace, which tested the participants' elemental affinity.

The ninth was from the Zither palace, which tested a participant's heart through an illusion formation. They commonly accepted only musician cultivators, but this is no requirement as any type of profound spirit is suitable for the heritage of the Zither palace.

Official Mu ended his explanation there and started explaining some common knowledge about the nine powers. He explained the alliance between the Sun and Moon empire, their enmity with the Heaven empire, and the neutral stance of the Beast empire. He also mentioned that the headquarters of the alchemy association lay in the beast empire, while the headquarters of the craftsman association lay in the Heaven empire.

Formation masters were most often part of the Formation guild, which had branches on all nine continents, and whose headquarters could be found on the largest of the nine continents, named spirit continent about the primordial spirit continent. The zither palace was also built there, but they secluded themselves from mortal activities so the spirit continent was ruled by four noble houses comparable to peak second-tier powers. The spirit continent was for thirty percent human control, while seventy percent was under the beast control as there existed the biggest forest and mountain range known as the myriad beast domain.

He also explained the hatred between the two sects and the competitiveness between the three palaces. The Five-elements palace has the most members and is the most powerful palace. The Sword palace is known to have the strongest attacking power of all the nine powers, while the Zither palace is known to have the most eccentric and troublesome abilities.

The Devil sect is known for having the highest cultivation speed, while the Holy maiden sect is known for its charm techniques and usage of hidden weapons.

At last, official Mu explained that there is 81-second tier power who have at least one sage realm cultivator in their ranks, while there are nine peak second-tier powers, who have an ancestor at the emperor realm. The nine powers have, in comparison, at least one peak emperor as an ancestor while having multiple emperor realm grand-elders. He also informed them that they would become inner members of the power, which they joined, while core members were at least king realm cultivators with the potential to become sage realm cultivators. There were also holy children, who had received the complete heritage of their power and had the potential to become an emperor.

When official Mu finished his explanation, they had arrived at the assembly point. Here they found a ranking board for the top thousand. They found out that Jiang Mang ranked in the top ten, while they ranked all in the top fifty. Jiang Mang's rank was ninth with 8000 points, while the Zhao sibling ranked first and second with 15000 points, followed by Huang Mo, who placed third with 13000. His three friends ranked respectively 46th, 47th, and 48th on the ranking.

He also saw that the lowest ranking person had 1900 points and that 1300 participants had survived the second test.

One hour later, all the people in the top 1000 had arrived at the assembly point. That was the moment when the elders of the welcomed them all and explained the third test to them. They had the participants divide themselves into groups of ten according to their rankings, which would take the test from low to high.

The third test would last for ten days and there would be ten groups that would be tested every day. The participants could see the different results each person scored through a screen that would show different point values for each person during everyone's test.

The first group that entered were the ten last ranking people. They consisted of six males and four females.

They finished the first test after two minutes, and one man scored the highest with four points, while the rest scored between zero and two. The next test resulted in one female scoring five points, which surprised the elder from the Moon empire, as most of their members would score three or four points on this test, while five points represented a rare good sapling. This was the same for all the other powers except the Zither palace whose members, have to at least score six points.

The group continued testing, but no one scored another five points, and only one other person scored four points.

In the end, one man joined the Sun empire, That woman joined the Moon empire, No one joined the Beast empire and Heaven empire, one man joined the Sword Palace, three people joined the five elements palace, no one joined the zither place, two females joined the Holy maiden sect while the last man joined the Devil sect.