Moreover, when she condensed the fat duck, the spirit energy consumed was far more than that of Cold Consort.
Thinking back to Martial Aunt Yang’s owl, Gu Ningyun had a faint suspicion.
The fat duck consumed more spirit energy likely because its intelligence was much higher than Cold Consort’s.
She felt its higher spirituality was also due to this, but she suspected an even greater factor was her increased interaction and deeper emotional connection with the fat duck.
This gave the condensed wind spirit energy fat duck much more autonomy.
Without any manipulation, it could perform such realistic actions and reactions.
...
Having reached her goal early, Gu Ningyun exchanged experiences with her friends and then headed back home, moving back to Tingfeng.
With no classes on the mornings of the remaining two days, she spent all her time memorizing the Almanac of Heavenly Wonders.
Aside from eating, attending body refining classes, and soaking in spirit herb packs, she devoted all her remaining time to cultivation.
Until the day of the assessment.
At the start of the Si hour, at the small plaza of Ruiyu Pavilion, the spirit energy application assessment began.
The usually empty plaza now held five arrays, each covering forty square meters. Inside each array, many fist-sized round stones flew about.
“The spirit energy application assessment is divided into two parts. The first part tests spirit energy attack.”
“In the floating arrays behind me, each contains five thousand round stones. As long as you use weapons condensed from spirit energy to knock down three thousand within the time it takes for one incense stick to burn, you will pass.”
“To achieve a better grade, you must knock down more stones.”
After explaining the assessment, Martial Aunt Yang had them each stand before a floating array and lit the incense in the burner.
“The assessment begins.”
Gu Ningyun didn't act immediately. Instead, she used her divine sense to observe the stones in the array.
The material of the stones was the same as the balls used in training. With her current weapon structures, breaking them wouldn't be a problem.
She also noticed that although the stones flew quickly, they were still slightly slower than the Spirit-Heart Fish.
The greatest difficulty for her was that their flight paths were chaotic—up, down, left, right, crossing each other with no discernable pattern.
But that didn't matter.
The stones were the size of a fist. Suppose a stone’s current location was point A. When it moved from point A in any direction...
In the interval between the front of the stone leaving point A and the back of it leaving point A, its position was predictable.
Therefore, she only needed to use the speed of wind spirit energy to strike the stone within that time interval.
A faint smile touched Gu Ningyun's lips.
She condensed five palm-sized wind swords and sent them into the array.
Instantly, a continuous rain of crushed stone began to fall within her floating array.
In less than half the time it took for the incense to burn, all five thousand stones in the floating array had been cleared.
Martial Aunt Yang’s divine sense had been monitoring the assessment site the entire time.
Even though she already knew the talent of these five children, she still couldn't help but gasp when her divine sense saw Gu Ningyun's five wind swords moving nimbly through the array with perfect accuracy.
She couldn't help but look back on her own generation. During their spirit energy application assessment, had anyone been so efficient?
No. Not even she, the top student of her class, could have done that.
Truly, geniuses emerged every year, and each generation was more competitive than the last.
Looking at the five children, a sense of pride and satisfaction welled up in Martial Aunt Yang’s eyes.
There were a total of one hundred and thirty-two groups of new disciples this year. From her observations, Ruiyu Pavilion’s training results were currently the best.
Other groups either had disciples with dual spirit roots who couldn't keep up, or spoiled children who refused to cooperate.
Or their curriculum was poorly planned, leading to suffering for the teachers and misery for the students.
Take Shuoyu Pavilion next door to Ruiyu Pavilion, for example. They started teaching sword techniques to the children right away.
With the children's weak physical condition at the time, how many times could they even swing a sword in a day?
When they realized they couldn't keep up, they switched to practicing the sword in the morning and body refining in the afternoon. Were they trying to work the children to death?
Now, those two fellow disciples teaching there came to Book Peak every night to complain to her about how their sword progress was as slow as a crawling turtle and wondering what to do for the assessment. It made her want to move houses.
Then there was Huanyan Pavilion on Yanhui Peak. They actually let the children start learning spells from the beginning!
She was speechless. With the meager spirit energy reserves from just completing qi induction, they would run out after a few hand seals. What kind of spells could they possibly learn? It was a joke.
After ten days of struggling, they realized it wasn't working and started copying Ruiyu Pavilion by teaching spirit energy application first.
Fine, let them copy; they were all fellow disciples, and she didn't mind. But she had set the assessment for one month, and Huanyan Pavilion followed suit.
Please, the timing for stage assessments should be based on the children's progress. With how mischievous the kids at Huanyan Pavilion were, one month was nowhere near enough.
Now the assessment schedule had been reported to Governing Peak. In a few days, Huanyan Pavilion would have their spirit energy application assessment. If people failed and needed retakes, it would be a huge mess.
As for the other groups...
Forget it. There were too many things to complain about; she didn't even want to start.
Ruiyu Pavilion’s training situation, however, was perfect.
After the disciple recruitment ended and the members of Ruiyu Pavilion were finalized...
She and Lu Heyun had designed the most suitable curriculum based on the five children's aptitudes and personalities, combined with their own years of cultivation experience and the sect's requirements for training new disciples.
All five children had single spirit roots, so their cultivation speeds were similar. There was no need to worry about anyone slowing down the progress, and the lessons went swimmingly.
Only Ningyun’s progress as a wind spirit root user was slightly faster; she was about to break through to Qi Refining level two.
The other four had only recently reached Qi Refining level one...
Wait, if she wasn't mistaken, Ningyun’s surrounding spirit energy was exceptionally stable and solid. She was intentionally suppressing her cultivation, wasn't she?
Even so, she was still the fastest. Were wind spirit roots really this heaven-defying? They truly lived up to their reputation for speed.
...
After knocking down all the stones in the floating array, Gu Ningyun first glanced at Martial Aunt Yang.
Seeing that Martial Aunt Yang was recording her assessment results, Gu Ningyun turned to watch the other four.
Since the others were still being tested, Gu Ningyun remained quiet and stood in place to watch.
The first one to catch her eye was Wen Xuan.
She was carrying a mace as thick as a thigh and two meters long, swinging it with enough force to create whistling winds near the array.
Each swing took out three or four stones, and the flames on the surface of the mace occasionally burned a couple more.
She was also controlling two palm-sized fire swords at the same time, though they had been darting around the array for a long while without hitting a single stone. Best not to mention them.
Seeing her progress, clearing all the stones before time ran out wouldn't be an issue, so Gu Ningyun stopped watching her.
Well, the main reason was that out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jun Luo’s performance, and it was quite a show.
Rate on N.U.
