The Spirit Realm.
A spiritual world jointly forged by the Ten Great Sects.
When the exam officially began, Zhang Yu felt his consciousness dragged out of his flesh and pulled into another world. A breeze tousled his hair; there was the hard sensation of sitting on a chair.
He opened his eyes to an ordinary classroom. Dozens of students his age, drawn from all kinds of different schools, sat around him.
This was the Spirit Realm — a spiritual world distinct from the real one. It was both a real world and a fake one. Real, because everything a person experienced here could be utterly indistinguishable from reality. Fake, because none of its matter truly existed — it was like a dream, an illusion, and everything seen, smelled, touched, and felt here could be manipulated at will.
Zhang Yu knew his body was still lying on the bed at Songyang High; only his consciousness had entered. Like those around him, he'd been randomly drawn from the city's examinees. He studied the room — for the life of him, he couldn't tell it from reality.
"Just don't trap me halfway and refuse to let me out — a whole city of high-schoolers stuck inside a VR game."
A virtual network world. That, after gathering some information, was his understanding of the Spirit Realm — except here it was achieved through immortal Dao technology. Of course, he knew far too little, and his view was surely one-sided. But for now it was enough.
In front of them all stood a thin man wearing an owl mask, watching from behind the lectern. Li Xingyu swept his gaze across the examinees. In his own field of view, each one's number, name, and school floated above their heads.
"Ugh, hope we wrap this up early and clock out."
As a Soul Cultivator from Mount Mang High, left with only a soul, Li Xingyu was long used to his day-to-day here. Because of his path's peculiar nature, he never needed to take the Dao Heart exam — instead the teachers roped him in to supervise. Thinking of the 45 hours of work left today, he sighed inwardly.
Suddenly his gaze froze, landing on Zhang Yu.
"It's him?"
He still remembered the day of Li Xuelian's gallery opening, when this security guard had stolen the show, rousing the strange changes on the Celestial Combat Painting.
"From Songyang High? Interesting. Let me record his exam this time — maybe I can sell it to the principal as research material."
Noting this, Li Xingyu stepped forward, and with each step a duplicate of himself split off. By the tenth step, a Li Xingyu stood before every examinee. This Spirit Realm clone technique was second nature to a Soul Cultivator.
Zhang Yu studied the owl-masked invigilator, turning over a guess. Willpower was the manifestation of the Dao Heart, so the standard way to judge someone's level was to test their will. Because there were many ways to do this, each exam set different questions, to stop examinees drilling in advance and skewing results. The higher an exam's tier, the more resources went into it, and the more complex the trial — only varied experiences could accurately gauge one's condition.
"This is a monthly exam," Zhang Yu thought. "Based on past experience, it probably won't be too complicated."
Li Xingyu reached out, and as he opened his palm, a phone-like object appeared in it.
"Take it."
All the Li Xingyus spoke in unison: "Today's content is very simple... pain. For the next sixty minutes, the controllers in your hands can adjust your pain level anytime. The higher the level and the longer you maintain it, the higher you rank."
The Dao Heart exam was scored by ranking, so a score depended not only on yourself but on the other examinees. Songyang's monthly exam was ranked against all the city's high-schoolers; the real college entrance exam was ranked against every candidate in all of Kunxu's first level.
"If the pain exceeds what you can bear and knocks you out, your consciousness leaves the Spirit Realm at once, and your score is zero."
Li Xingyu pointed, and a ten-second countdown appeared in midair. "Counting begins in 10 seconds."
Zhang Yu looked at the phone-like controller — its screen showed Pain Level 0, 1, 2, 3... The only two buttons were up and down, letting him adjust at will. Just looking at it made his whole body ache.
Which son of a bitch came up with this? Don't the question-setters have any mothers left to worry about? Don't tell me there's fire-grade, dismemberment-grade, slow-slicing-grade... Are we really doing Songyang's own little "Saw" show?
The thing Zhang Yu hated most was suffering. And worse than suffering was someone forcing his head down into it. Yet ever since he arrived in Kunxu, he'd been gulping hardship down by the mouthful. He felt utterly disgusted, his resistance at its limit.
But his gaze sharpened. "Then again, as a high-school cultivation student, studying, training, and exams are my bounden duty. The more hardship I eat now, the more money I can make later. I love learning! I love exams!"
He felt slightly rallied, and even the controller seemed more tolerable.
What was willpower? What was conviction? What was the Dao Heart? The course teacher had lectured at length: some worshipped gods, some demons, some people, establishing convictions that, paired with Heart Methods, raised the Dao Heart and strengthened the will.
In Zhang Yu's understanding, willpower was simply the ability to eat hardship — the stronger the will, the more suffering you could swallow. And conviction meant telling yourself this hardship had a payoff, a way of thinking that lets you eat more.
So he used some small self-soothing thoughts to scrape out a better score. He had many such thoughts — everyone did. But a conviction that could truly last, that formed a system, he didn't yet possess; the school's Dao Heart course couldn't give him one either. That was something each student had to establish alone, combining textbooks, their experience, and their own cultivation arts.
The strength of a cultivator's will was graded into a Dao Heart level. A conviction, paired with a Heart Method, raised that level and further strengthened the will. Conviction as the core, will as the manifestation, Heart Method as the tool — only this combination made up a complete Dao Heart.
The countdown hit zero. Examinees worked their controllers at once — a scream, a twisted face, a sharp intake of breath...
At pain level 1, Zhang Yu felt his palm pierced by a steel needle. He cycled the Level 1 Basic Heart Refining Method, trying to steady his spirit.
Emptiness, nothingness, loss of self... The Basic Heart Refining Method was a Heart Method that calmed the emotions and eased one into meditation. Through long practice, the Dao Heart rose and the will strengthened. This Level 1 method, the original Zhang Yu had learned before coming to this world — but his time had gone into Mana, physical strength, and leveling up his other arts, so it had never been improved.
Now it steadied his mind, and his tolerance for pain seemed to grow. He raised the level to 2.
*Hisss!* His other hand was pierced as if by a needle too. Still bearable.
So he raised it notch by notch. At 37, he felt thirty-seven steel needles driven through his hands and feet. His face twisted. No matter how he cycled the method, he found no calm.
"Calm the heart and steady the qi! Calm the heart and steady the qi!"
Calm the heart, collect the mind, endure in silence, drip carves the stone — the Basic Heart Refining Method reached its fullest effect only when paired with such a system of thought. That was the norm of raising the Dao Heart: conviction matched to Heart Method. But all that serenity simply didn't fit Zhang Yu's personality. Right now he just wanted to kill the question-setter. Immediately. Right now.
Just as he reached his limit, the contents of the Heavenly Martial Heart Refining Art welled up in his mind.
Fist, palm, leg, spear, blade, sword... Figure after figure burst into his thoughts — the killing intent to break a thousand armies, the will to die nine times without regret, the momentum to charge ever forward. This was what fit his heart.
Though his Dao Heart level was too low to truly master it, simply recalling its intent made a surge of spirit rise in his chest. He was like a plain soldier behind an invincible general — seeing the general's mighty bearing, his courage swelled, his spirit lifted.
The pain of steel needles no longer felt so unbearable. A grin of savage delight crept across his lips: "Once I climb up there, I'm going to beat that question-setting son of a bitch until he's on his knees begging for mercy."