Cultivation Online

"I can’t believe Corporal Yuan is already taking the Red Zone Exam right after his first gathering mission," one of the officers with Mei Feng remarked after taking a seat in the spectator’s room.

"And to think we thought he was taking it too slow not long ago," someone else remarked.

Another then spoke up, asking, "Aren’t you all curious? Since when did he learn Void Control? As far as I am aware, he skipped boot camp and has been on missions since joining, so he doesn’t have any time to learn it—at least, he shouldn’t."

"Now that you mentioned it..."

They all turned to look at Mei Feng, who calmly replied, "He used his 20,000-meter reward a few days ago, requesting Sergeant Wu to train him, so I can only assume that he learned Void Control in that time."

"Huh? A few days ago? There’s no way anyone can learn Void Control that quickly, let alone reach the level required for this exam."

"We’ll never know what that guy is thinking."

Some time later, the participants for the Red Zone Exam started showing up at the test site, and in the blink of an eye, hundreds of people gathered.

"This is my seventh time taking this test. I have a good feeling about today!"

"According to my analysis, the difficulty of the Red Zone Exam varies, with some sessions being much easier than others. If my calculations are correct, today’s exam should be the easiest one this year!"

The soldiers chatted among themselves as they waited for the exam to begin, unaware that, because of a certain high-ranking officer, they had walked into the most difficult exam ever recorded because the examiners did not want it to look too easy.

"Good luck," Sergeant Bing said to Yuan before going to the spectator’s room—one that was different from the private room used by Mei Feng and the other officers.

"Welcome, everyone. Before we begin the evaluation, we will give you a quick run-through of how it works."

"There will be three tests in total. For the first, you’ll need to catch balls using Void Control. You don’t have to catch all of them—only eighty out of a hundred. For the second test, you must avoid attacks for ten minutes using nothing but Void Control. The final test will assess your precision. Ten people will go at a time."

Soon, the examiners began calling the participants onto the testing ground.

"One more thing, in case this is your first time taking the exam. Aside from moving your arms and body to catch the balls, all physical movement is strictly prohibited. You may only reposition yourself using Void Control, even if you need to move only a few inches."

Once the exam began, a machine positioned at the opposite end of the field started firing glowing green balls at nearly the speed of sound, launching one every three seconds.

Before each ball was fired, a red laser appeared, indicating the general direction it would travel.

Although the test started relatively easily, the firing rate increased after the first twenty balls, with one ball launched every two seconds instead of three. After forty balls, the remaining sixty were fired at one-second intervals.

"W-What’s going on?! Why is the test so difficult?! It was supposed to be easy today!" exclaimed the soldier who had done the analysis.

"How can you tell?" someone asked.

"Normally, it doesn’t switch to two-second intervals until after fifty balls, and the one-second interval doesn’t start until eighty! This time, it switched to two-second intervals after only twenty balls, then to one-second intervals after forty! This is the hardest exam ever recorded!"

"That’s crazy... No wonder why half of them dropped out already..."

By the end of the first test, only three of the ten participants managed to catch at least eighty balls, moving on to the second test.

At the end of the first test, the participants were given five minutes to rest while seven more soldiers entered the testing ground to begin theirs.

"For those of you taking the second test, your objective is to avoid all damage for ten minutes. Even a single graze will result in immediate disqualification. After all, against a Void Specter, even the slightest touch means death, so there is absolutely no room for error."

When the second test began for the first three participants, the machines that had previously fired balls began shooting bullets instead, each one aimed directly at them. As before, red lasers indicated where the bullets would travel, appearing first as thick lines that gradually narrowed as the machines prepared to fire.

Each laser represented a single bullet. During the first minute, only one laser appeared every three seconds. At the start of the second minute, two appeared at once, and by the third minute, that number had increased to three.

As the number of bullets increased, the participants had less room to dodge and fewer chances to rest. Since the shots were fired one after another rather than simultaneously, even when three lasers appeared every three seconds, they still had to use Void Control once every second.

At the start of the fourth minute, the number of bullets had suddenly doubled, going from three bullets to six.

Although the speed at which they were fired didn’t increase, they shot two bullets at once.

Upon reaching the fifth minute, the number of bullets doubled again.

The same happened after the sixth minute, and the number of bullets increased to twenty-four.

After the seventh minute, the number of bullets didn’t merely double—it tripled, now firing seventy-two bullets every three seconds. Moreover, the rate at which it shot them also increased, now shooting twelve bullets at a half-second interval.

This meant the participants could no longer teleport wherever they pleased. Instead, they had to anticipate the bullets’ trajectories and identify a safe location to teleport to before the next volley arrived.

By the eighth minute, the participants had to deal with two hundred and sixteen bullets.

During the final minute, however, the exact number no longer mattered, as the machines fired without pause, unleashing a continuous barrage like machine guns.

Ultimately, none of the three participants managed to last all ten minutes and were disqualified in the final minute.

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