Zhang Yu could tell at a glance that the swords hovering over the arena were nothing like the children's toy flying swords the original Zhang Yu had once bought. These clearly weren't something you could just pick up and play.
Facing the crowd's open grumbling, the host's expression didn't so much as twitch as he finished reading the ad copy, then moved on to announcing the rules for the first round.
The flying swords now floating over the field were the products of Nine Heavens Flying Sword, a brand that made civilian-grade mana flying swords.
They claimed you needed no sword-flight technique at all, no Dao Heart level requirement. Just by varying your mana output, you could control the sword — the whole test was about using mana to steer your blade.
The sword's scabbard worked like both a remote controller and a mana transmitter. Depending on the frequency, type, and magnitude of the mana you fed into it, the sword would obey accordingly.
And this round's task was simple enough: contestants had to use their flying swords to strike the signal boards hovering in midair. The faster and more accurate they were, the higher the score.
Like the second and third rounds that followed, this one was worth 100 points in total. And the final ranking of the entire magic competition would be decided by the combined total across all three rounds.
When the operating manuals for the flying swords were handed out, the students got half an hour to study them.
Behind the White Dragon High School team, a middle-aged man in a tracksuit smiled faintly. "So it's still a test of mana control, then? At least that's not completely absurd. I'd feared we'd have to learn sword-flight technique on the spot."
This was White Dragon High School's competition coach — a man named Han Xingye.
Unlike Songyang High School, where the mana teacher doubled as the competition adviser, White Dragon High had dedicated instructors for every kind of contest.
Hearing Han Xingye, Song Hailong idly stroked his spiky head of hair that stood straight up. "This is our grade's first competition, Coach."
"Help me scout out the field for any opponents worth watching. Especially see what sort of crop Purple Cloud and Red Tower have this year."
White Dragon, Purple Cloud, and Red Tower High Schools were the three strongest in Songyang City. Barring a surprise, the rivals this grade would fight for the next three years were very likely standing in this very arena right now.
At Song Hailong's request, Han Xingye duly obliged.
That was partly because of Song Hailong's excellent grades, and partly — naturally — because Song Hailong was absolutely filthy rich.
This pride of heaven, hailing from one of Songyang City's great families, was one of the descendants with the highest KPI ranking in his clan, and could well be called this generation's ace son of the Song family.
Han Xingye nodded. His fingers glided rapidly across his registry book, and the next moment, with a pulse of mana output, the Heaven Eye Talisman was already in effect.
This Heaven Eye Talisman was a spell that respectfully invited the Great God of All-Knowing Inquiry of the Department of the Ten Thousand People to evaluate anyone he laid eyes on.
Such an evaluation pooled everything about a person — from bank deposits and personal assets to academic scores, work performance, family relations, and so on — into a single comprehensive, fuzzy appraisal.
Dislike the fuzziness, want something finer and more detailed? Then you'd just have to raise your faith level higher and spend more money.
In short, the Heaven Eye Talisman's rule was simple: the more detail, the more expensive; the fuzzier, the cheaper.
Han Xingye cast his gaze over the whole arena now, careful not to look at any detailed appraisals. He feared that one glance would bankrupt him — a thing that, he knew, had actually happened before in Kunxu's history.
The moment the Heaven Eye Talisman activated, wisps of golden light gathered in the air and converged into Han Xingye's eyes.
When he looked across the field, he could see evaluations popping up above each person's head.
*Worthless. Worthless. Worthless. Worthless. Worthless.*
*Worthless. Worthless. Bankrupt gambler. Worthless. Worthless.*
*Worthless. Ice-skin jade-bone (expand details). Worthless. Worthless. Worthless.*
"Hm?"
Han Xingye's gaze flickered. A girl from Purple Cloud High School had hopped up onto the spectator stands.
"Isn't that Purple Cloud's Yue Mulan? Why'd she climb up there? Looking at the competition's signal boards?"
He looked closer, and the evaluation above her head at once unfolded.
*Ice-skin jade-bone | pill fanatic | high caste | Purple Cloud loyalist | unreachable flower*
As a veteran user of the Heaven Eye Talisman, though the tags looked a bit cluttered at first glance, Han Xingye mulled the fuzzy appraisal over and roughly guessed what it all meant.
"A physique that's special, great at consuming pills, excellent grades, utterly loyal to Purple Cloud High School, and with tangled origins — a high-quality girl with money."
"Pills? Physique?"
Han Xingye fell into thought and sent the keywords over to Song Hailong as well, then turned his attention back to the others on the field.
Even as he kept ogling the students on the field, the competition officially got underway.
The arena was split into eighteen sub-venues. Each batch, eighteen randomly drawn contestants took the stage, each controlling their flying sword from their own spot to shoot at the signal boards overhead.
In Han Xingye's eyes, the ordinary school students tagged "worthless" went up one after another. Like fresh recruits, they fumbled and floundered with their flying swords. Landing one or two of the midair signal boards was already decent — the judges gave them 10 or 20 points.
"Look like none of them have played with a flying sword before?"
Han Xingye knew this round was nominally about mana control, but there was a world of difference between having played with a flying sword and not.
Especially the mastery over space, distance, accuracy, and speed — a first-timer, no matter how strong their mana control, would struggle to score well.
But for students of the three great schools, playing with a flying sword was hardly a rare thing.
Take the ten contestants White Dragon had sent this year — each of their families had at least four or five flying swords lying around.
He even knew from hearsay that Song Hailong's home held a whole sword vault of several hundred flying swords, and he'd long since handled them any number of times.
Meanwhile, amid all the "worthless" tags, students topped with "rare" and "elite" evaluations began to take the stage under Han Xingye's Heaven Eye Talisman vision.
He knew these were usually the top students of ordinary high schools, or the elite students of key schools.
"A 30 or 40 is about all they can manage."
"With poor mana control in the first place, and never having flown a sword before — if Nine Heavens Flying Sword's quality weren't genuinely good, they probably couldn't hit a single signal board."
At that thought, Han Xingye felt a flicker of temptation and wondered whether he should buy himself one of Nine Heaven's mana flying swords.
Just then his gaze shifted. At last, amid all the "worthless," "rare," and "elite" tags, he spotted an evaluation that was different.
*Score-obsessed.*
Han Xingye looked at the student's uniform. He seemed to be from Songyang High School.
On the field, Qian Shen took a deep breath and slowly gripped the scabbard of the flying sword before him.
The next moment, as he fed a pulse of mana into it, the sword inside the sheath shot out with a whoosh.
Blade-tip to blade-tip, with no hilt at all, it shot up like a beam of cold light and struck at the signal boards midair.
Though he hadn't played much, Qian Shen had tried his grandfather's mana flying sword a few times.
Now, following the trick his home tutor had told him, he slowly channeled mana into the scabbard and, by altering the rhythm of his mana input, sent the sword zipping to strike one signal board after another with a series of whooshes.
72 points.
Seeing his result for this round, Qian Shen let out a small sigh of relief. "Not bad. That should be enough to explain myself."
Off to the side, Han Xingye glanced at the score of 72 and shook his head inwardly. *Sigh. Songyang High School is a time-honored key school, yet each year's students are worse than the last.*
"When it comes down to it, they're stuck in their own ways. They won't learn the advanced methods other schools use — like Purple Cloud's score-caste system, or our school's low-score slavery system. With no innovation in their teaching methods, how can they keep pace with the times..."
Just as Han Xingye was thinking this, another contestant bearing a distinctive evaluation appeared.
In his eyes, Purple Cloud's Lian Tianji, topped with the words "Son of Tianqin," walked onto the field. With a flick of his arm he sent the flying sword shooting, and with a series of shish-shish-shish sounds took down 90 points.
"That's Lian Tianji. The person in Purple Cloud's grade this year best matched to the Tianqin Heart Method."
As more and more contestants took the stage one after another, Han Xingye's eyes darted everywhere, and the special students he spotted kept piling up.
Over at Songyang High School, a "son of a school board member" had just taken the field and grabbed 78 points.
And Purple Cloud's "ice-skin jade-bone" Yue Mulan, on her debut, blazed through for 95 points — the new highest score on the field, drawing gasps from the whole arena.
As Han Xingye looked this way and that, a woman suddenly caught his attention.
*Sword student (expand details).*
"Oh? A Songyang High School student?"
Han Xingye watched Bai Zhenzhen walk onto the field. He knew that anyone whose tag could be "expanded" usually had complicated origins, hinting at a remarkable lineage, strength, or talent — but he hadn't expected it to show up in a Songyang student.
His gaze sharpened, and he saw a long string of words unfold above Bai Zhenzhen's head.
*Sword student | fist student | palm student | sabre student | spear student | pill student | score overlord | loan slave | card slave | "daoshu are useless" | Songyang hater | she's really poor...*
Staring at an evaluation too long to read out in one breath, Han Xingye was deeply stunned.
He'd never imagined he'd be shocked while looking at a Songyang High School student — and merely because her tags were far too tangled, wildly beyond the norm.
But the next moment his shock receded a little, simply because her score was 34.
*Though I don't know why her evaluation is so long, judging by this score, this woman isn't worth mentioning.*
Soon his attention was drawn away by Song Hailong.
Before this ace of White Dragon High School took the stage, he reached up and lifted his towering spikes of hair clean off his head.
Zhang Yu, watching the scene, was astonished. "Holy crap! He went bald in high school?"
Bai Zhenzhen trudged back to the rest area with a face full of gloom. Hearing Zhang Yu's shock, she pointed out the obvious. "That's not a wig. That's an external spirit root."
"External spirit root?" Zhang Yu racked his memory. It seemed he'd heard of such a thing, but this was the first time he'd actually seen one in real life.
Bai Zhenzhen said enviously, "That's not one of those old-version spirit roots from school. This kind of external spirit root is plug-and-play — pull it out, swap it in whenever you like. Remember this, Yu, that's the birthday present I want most."
Zhang Yu patted Zhenzhen on the shoulder, consoling her. "External spirit root's beyond my budget. But baldness and wigs — those I can hook you up with either way."
Bai Zhenzhen rolled her eyes, then kept staring hard at the wig Song Hailong had set down on a chair, turning over the possibility of swiping it.
But she looked at the students and teachers milling around her and could only let out a long sigh.
As for Song Hailong, once he was on the field and felt the mana circulating through his body as obediently as an extension of his own arm, a smile curled at the corner of his mouth.
Screw on a spirit root to boost his mana, to make it surge?
*What a poor-man's thought.*
Song Hailong had only one reason for installing an external spirit root: to train his mana control amid the far more violent surge of Spiritual Machine intake and mana refining.
*Only the weak worry that the mana surge from Spiritual Machine will spin out of control. For a strong man like me, this is the best training opportunity there is.*
He gripped the scabbard in one hand, let his mana course out from his palm, and the sword within shot forth like lightning.
Down below, Han Xingye watched this student of his wield his flying sword on stage as smoothly as playing with lightning, snapping up 100 points in the blink of an eye to claim the new highest score on the field. A smug smile spread across his own face.
"One hundred points — only because the total is one hundred points."
"With Song Hailong's sheer depth of mana, his strength of mana control, and his familiarity with the flying sword, this round was limited only by the cap."
Over on the other side, as Bai Zhenzhen returned to the rest area, Teacher Yan's gaze kept sweeping over her from time to time.
"Bai Zhenzhen only started practicing for the magic competition recently, right? That's a very fast rate of progress. Talent? Or a fluke?"
In Teacher Yan's eyes, though, Bai Zhenzhen's talent for mana was ultimately no match for Zhang Yu's.
Momentarily, when Zhang Yu took the stage, she too looked forward to seeing how her student would do.
On the field, Zhang Yu gently took hold of the scabbard. As he fed mana in bit by bit, he could feel the flying sword within begin to tremble faintly.
Down on the sidelines just now, Zhang Yu had already been thinking over how to score as high as he possibly could.
His situation right now was like this: a man with fully functional hands, no disability, walks up and says — oh? Good finger control, huh? Then let me test you. Operate that excavator over there and open a bottle cap, and let's see how good your finger control really is.
*Dammit, another unfair, unjust competition where the rich hold an absolute edge.*
Zhang Yu grumbled to himself.
"This flying sword feels to me exactly like a drone, or a racing FPV quad. Even if my mana control is ever so refined, if I've never played with one of these, there's no way I'm going to control it smoothly."
Thinking of how he'd need to pilot this sword shuttling back and forth, striking those palm-sized signal boards one by one in the air, Zhang Yu felt it would be extremely difficult.
"So I can't play this as a traditional flying sword..."