Combat Examination

Everyone agreed to give the insignificant jade to Tang Ling, it was essentially almost worthless. One would need the right connection and waste a lot of time negotiating with a good price of 30 silvers for this item lest it was basically trash. Since most people didn't have the right connection and the ones with the connection would not pay attention to such low money, no one would dispute Tang Ling's claim to get one piece of rock.

After Tang Ling took the broken jade, he put it in his bag not putting it in his Inventory. The small snake slipped into the bag from his arm and encircled the broken jade as though it was a treasure.

After encircling it for a while, the snake finally rested on the jade. It was quite cute.

The quest achieved, Gu Ye went into the small crater he made and split off the head of the infamous bandit known as Pordhi.

His head was worth 100 golds, enough for a common family to live without worry for one or two generations.

"Now, it's time to go back." Gu Ye declared after lifting the head.

The crowd cheered but in his head, he wasn't excited at all.

Although Pordhi could be considered a big shot in this area, he was only so because he was so slippery. The Yamen was full of competent people and bigshots but all of them are too busy to deal with a small fry like him. The 'Cruel Wolf' was only at Veinmaster Stage and didn't even unlock his body's full potential.

'The battle was quite disappointing. But it is sufficient for me to understand my students' combat ability' Gu Ye silently thought. A test of skills was a custom in Wandering Sect and for many generations, his sect chose to have a protected expedition to do so.

Before letting off in the world, it is best if they had combat skills. For example, this Feng Ci was utterly terrible in this fight. Even if he couldn't handle two wolves, he should have easily killed one without breaking any sweat. He lacked a combat foundation and was undecisive, a trait that would change the current of a fight.

This Nangong Xinyue was a good combatant, she was able to defeat any enemies in front of her. Her combat skills and cultivation are well-rounded with nothing to point out to her.

The two nobles were also pretty good, they had practiced at a young age and were only limited by their mentality. However, he had to criticize that they would sometimes overextend their movements to make it more flashy. This wasn't a show or a friendly spar amongst nobility but a real fight, such muscle memory cause minute openings that a master would be able to pick upon.

The other common-borns are also pretty good. They lacked combat skills but supplemented it with experience. This was typical for many wandering martial artists and the reason why the Wandering Sect was established. These wandering travelers had no skills to speak off and had the most rudimentary martial arts, the laughing stock of Jianghu. As such, the Wandering Sect and its subsidiary were set up to aid these people to travel the world with one of them is helping with their combat skills.

As for Tang Ling...

Gu Ye narrowed his eyes. He was quite a special specimen.

His heart was in the right place but his skills in sword and spear are laughable, it was used so poorly that he had difficulty describing his skills. After much time spent thinking for a sentence, he would describe Tang Ling's poor display as 'wildly swinging the sword, poorly thrusting a pole, two chickens fighting in a pit.'

However, he wasn't a hopeless martial idiot. At a tender age of 14, he was still able to achieve a good Entry level in hand-to-hand combat and is at the edge of Intermediate Mastery!

An Entry Mastery in a style at such a young age is normal for an aristocrat who is trained at six years old with a professional but is quite impressive for an ordinary civilian.

His combat style was also weird. Even after living 50 years in this world, Gu Ye thought he was quite knowledgeable but he had never heard or read of this fighting style. This disciple would hop around with his arms around his chest like he was about to punch someone in the face but would then proceed in making several dreadful combos in a very short range and in a very short time span. The weirdest fact is that he was proficient in unarmed combat but not weapons! It should be the other way around!

If he hadn't verified that Tang Ling did not possess Buddhist Qi, he would have thought that he was a disciple of some body-cultivation fanatic monk.

'I should find a way to rectify their shortcomings...' Gu Ye thought while he leads the group to the sect. 'Travel is travel but the world is dangerous, more so, in the wake of the Renaissance. Nevertheless, it was a custom for the sect to just let the disciples explore the world without being restrained after the so-called 'basic course'. It was less of a sect but more like an Association putting a facade of a sect, the others knew of this but still pretended to know nothing about its inner workings.

Freedom is highly valued in the sect and it was the disciple's choice to choose to travel the world unprepared, possibly dying in the process. This value also made him unable to force teachings unto his new disciples, making him quite distressed since half of the people who refused to stay in the sect for a few more days would return gravely injured or dead from the wild.

That was simply the conclusion he got after decades of teaching.

"Haa..." Gu Ye sighed and then turned his head to Tang Ling, "You should know that your swordplay is very immature. If you wish, I can give a lesson on how to use the sword."

To his pleasant surprise, Tang Ling accepted.