Chapter 195: Qingyun Sect Examination (Part 5)
Boom!
Elder Gu Lie's aura detonated like a raging volcano—wild, unrestricted, explosive. A heavy gust swept across the waiting ground, stirring robes and rustling hair. What followed was a crushing pressure that bore down on every participant like a falling mountain.
Everyone felt it. Irrespective of class, background, or cultivation. Expressions darkened across thousands of faces at once—seriousness replacing excitement, hands moving instinctively to steady trembling knees.
All except one.
Su Tianhao stood with his hands clasped behind his back, azure robes fluttering slightly, expression unchanged. He looked less like someone enduring a Martial Master's aura and more like someone waiting for something more interesting to happen.
Jin Yulong stood near the center, arms crossed, smug smile intact—though a seriousness had crept into his piercing green eyes that hadn't been there before. He had also reacted on instinct like everyone else, but had simply recovered faster and was determined not to show it.
Behind Su Tianhao, Wang Bing's eyes shone with barely contained excitement. Her fists were clenched—not from the pressure, but from the energy building inside her, demanding release.
Across the ground, Su Lei stood like a soldier before an emperor. One hand rested lightly on his sword. His expression carried the kind of focused calm that left no room for anything else.
Su Jian and the others endured in their own ways—gritted teeth, clenched fists, muscles locked tight, refusing to buckle.
Throughout the waiting ground, the picture was less composed. Youngsters strained visibly under the weight—knuckles whitening, veins rising along forearms and necks like coiled serpents, some already beginning to sway.
Boom!
The pressure nearly doubled. Faces drained of colour. Sweat poured freely. Dozens dropped—legs simply giving out, bodies folding toward the stone floor.
"Losers," Jin Yulong muttered, not even glancing down at them.
Wang Bing's frown cut sideways at him before she turned to the crowd. "Everyone—circulate your spiritual energy! You can push back against the pressure with your own cultivation!"
The response was immediate. Cultivation bases released across the ground in rapid succession, dull pulses of energy filling the air in overlapping waves. The collective pressure against them eased—just enough to breathe again. Just enough for confidence to return.
That confidence was about to cost them.
Elder Gu Lie smiled.
It was the smile of a man who had spent decades putting youngsters in their place and hadn't once grown tired of it.
Boom!
His aura erupted again—sharper, heavier, tyrannical.
The screams came immediately. Hundreds fell. Their expressions as they went down were not just pain—they were something harder to watch. The ones who had travelled farthest to be here. The ones for whom nineteen meant this was the last year they would ever be allowed to try. Going down in the first round, before the examination had even truly begun.
Outer Court Disciples moved in without hesitation, lifting the fallen and carrying them clear. Those who had dropped couldn't stand on their own—the pressure made even that impossible for them now—and remaining on the ground wasn't a safe option. At the level Gu Lie was operating, an unprotected body left prone could sustain serious injury. Broken bones if unlucky. Worse if left too long.
The Outer Court Disciples moving through the fallen were Martial Core Realm experts. The pressure was calibrated to affect those at Martial Adept and below, so it didn't affect them. They passed through it as if it wasn't there at all.
Su Tianhao's eyes moved across them with professional detachment.
Then they stopped.
A face he recognised.
Long black hair tied with a jade pin, grown longer and finer than he remembered. A face that had once smiled at him with uncomplicated warmth—now carrying a maturity and quiet allure that seven years could build in someone. She wore the same blue and silver Outer Court uniform as the others, but her cultivation was nothing like theirs. Where the others capped at the early-stage, she sat at the late-stage, precisely 7th level Martial Core Realm.
Su Mei.
Su Yuan's daughter. His elder sister in everything but blood. The last time they had been in the same room, he had been nine while she was sixteen. She had been the one who knew how to make a bad day bearable.
Seven years of letters and secondhand messages. Now here—twenty-three years old, standing in the same space, close enough that he could have called out to her.
She had already seen him.
"Little Tian..."
Her voice came out low, heavy with something she was trying to hold steady. The boy she remembered was gone. This person standing unaffected in the middle of a Martial Master's aura—taller than her, radiating a depth she couldn't read—felt both familiar and entirely new. She couldn't see his cultivation base at all.
Su Tianhao met her eyes. He held many questions in his—but what he offered was a warm smile before looking away.
She understood. She didn't push.
Her eyes moved upward to where Su Yuan hovered on a flying sword, his expression warm and quiet. He offered a small wave.
She waved back. Then returned to watching—not as a disciple in her duties, but as herself. As one of the top ten disciples of the Outer Court, no one had ordered her here. She had come simply because she wanted to.
---
On the waiting ground, the eliminations continued in steady waves.
A young man in plain robes—plain face, ordinary appearance, nothing about him remarkable except the intensity with which he was holding on—watched the count climb with barely contained relief.
Three thousand eliminated. Then four. Then five.
When the number passed five thousand, he broke.
"We made it!" he shouted, his voice cracking with relief as he turned toward Elder Gu Lie—waiting for the aura to lift, waiting for the signal that it was over. "Over half eliminated—we passed!"
All he got was a scoff.
That single moment of lowered guard was all it took. He dropped. Around him, a dozen others who had made the same mistake—who had believed that passing the threshold meant they were safe—went down with him. The Outer Court Disciples moved in without ceremony.
"You've been eliminated," said a flat voice behind him.
He turned. His eyes went wide like someone surfacing from a bad dream.
"Impossible!" His voice climbed, raw and unguarded. "I passed! Elder Gu Lie, you said over half would be eliminated—are you going back on your word?!"
Elder Gu Lie's lips curved. "Did I say over half? My mistake. I meant ninety percent."
"You—" The young man's finger shook as he pointed. "Is this a joke to you?!"
"Maybe," Elder Gu Lie said pleasantly, stroking his goatee.
"I hate you! You are not fit to be an Elder!"
The smile didn't move. But Gu Lie's voice dropped coldly.
"You ignorant brat. I'm preparing you for the cultivation world—where nothing waits for you to feel ready, and comfort is the first thing that will get you killed. A true cultivator doesn't celebrate barely making it. You should have waited until I withdrew my aura—not assumed it was over."
The young man trembled. Shame and fury fighting each other across his face. He opened his mouth—then coughed blood and collapsed.
Gu Lie shrugged and returned his attention to the remaining participants, interest rekindling in his eyes.
Behind him, his three Examiner colleagues exchanged pained looks.
A female Elder from the Silverblade Peak—Elder Xie Ning—shook her head slowly.
"He does this every year," she muttered, her serene voice edge with disapproval. "Bullies the youngsters for the thrill of it and calls it education."
She turned toward the Martial Grandmasters hovering above, expecting some response.
They weren't looking her way at all.
She followed their gaze.
"How is this possible?!" her composure cracked.
Su Tianhao stood exactly as he had at the beginning. Hands behind his back. Expression unchanged. Not a single drop of sweat on his face. He hadn't even released his cultivation base.
"Elder Xie Ning?" Her colleague from the Silverblade Peak leaned in. "What is it?"
"That one." She pointed. "He's not affected. At all. And I can't read his cultivation base."
"That's... Impossible."
But it was there in front of them. The others turned to look. Including Elder Gu Lie.
Sure enough—untouched. Unmoved. If anything, the young man looked mildly bored.
They activated their spiritual sense in unison, pressing it toward him.
It bounced back.
Elder Gu Lie's expression darkened with something that had nothing to do with professional assessment and everything to do with wounded pride.
Boom!
His aura detonated again—this time at the absolute ceiling of what was permitted, every restriction pushed to its limit.
The pressure didn't double. It tripled.
The breath left the lungs of every unprepared participant simultaneously. Thousands dropped in moments—the ground clearing out in waves. By the time the Outer Court Disciples had swept through again, fewer than two thousand remained standing.
Even Su Tianhao felt the difference this time. His robes whipped wildly around him.
He didn't move.
He had once endured the full aura of Ye Shiming—a 4th level Martial Master—as a Peak-stage Martial Disciple, and held his ground on willpower alone. Although Elder Gu Lie was stronger, a 7th level Martial Master. He was working within limits. No killing intent. No full release. Against a Peak-stage Martial Adept who had forged himself in the Verdant Mist Forest's inner region for a month—it was not enough.
'Finally getting interesting,' Su Tianhao noted, surveying the crowd around him.
Most of them had been announcing their backgrounds, bloodlines and sect affiliations minutes ago, now they were shaking where they stood, afraid to even breath freely.
'Status doesn't define you in the cultivation world. Strength does. That's a lesson you can't read in a book.'
He glanced at Wang Bing. She caught his eye and smiled despite the sweat on her brow—holding steady, struggling with it but nowhere near breaking. He noted it with quiet approval.
Jin Yulong—still standing, the smug smile long gone, replaced by focused discipline. Doing well.
Su Lei—shoulders visibly tense, posture still dignified, expression still calm. Struggling, but not desperate. The kind of holding on that had nothing to do with luck and everything to do with character.
Su Tianhao's gaze moved on, then paused as they met an unexpected figure.
Liang Chenfei.
The young man's pale face had gone an entirely new shade—something close to ash. His breathing came in ragged pulls. His jaw was locked so tight the muscles in his neck stood out like rope. Veins rose across his temples and forearms. His entire body looked like it was operating on pure spite and the refusal to be the next one carried out.
Su Tianhao's lips curved.
He looked away.
---
From above, the three Martial Grandmasters watched in silence for a long moment.
"Who is that?" Huo Changfeng said at last, his easy manner replaced by something more focused. His light brown eyes hadn't moved from Su Tianhao in some time.
"No idea," Bai Tianhu said, frowning. "Even I, cannot read his cultivation base. Gu Lie has also been targeting him specifically for the last two rounds, but he didn't even bulge."
"Maybe he hasn't noticed," Huo Changfeng said. "Or he doesn't care."
"Why are you two stressing over it?" Duan Fei's voice arrived like honey poured over silk, unhurried and faintly amused. "We'll find out soon enough." Her gaze hadn't moved from Su Tianhao once. "Looks like we'll have some interesting candidates today."
Among the spectators, similar observations were quietly spreading. The attention of the crowd above had gradually consolidated around three figures—Su Tianhao, Wang Bing, and Jin Yulong—each holding effortlessly in their own distinct way.
"The Qingyun Sect will be getting some impressive talents this year," an elderly Martial Grandmaster noted.
The others nodded without needing to be told who he meant.
Elder Xuan watched from where he hovered, eyes moving between Su Tianhao and Wang Bing.
"Show them, Bing'er," he murmured, too quiet for anyone else to catch. "Show them you're more than a pampered princess."
---
Further away, Lu Ruyi watched.
Her expression had moved through several things in the past few minutes—anticipation, then surprise, then something that might have been pride, then shock, and then a quieter confusion that hadn't resolved.
"How did he grow this much in so little time?"
Beside her, Qiongqi shifted. The Jade Winged Eagle had once looked at Su Tianhao and seen nothing worth noting—a Martial Disciple, easily categorised, easily dismissed. What her eyes found now was different. An existence shrouded in something she couldn't penetrate, and beneath that veil—an instinctive fear that didn't come from thought but deep within her bloodline.
Qiongqi let out a low sound, wings stirring with unease. The gesture carried a clear question: what happened to him?
Lu Ruyi shook her head slowly.
"I don't know either."
But her eyes didn't move from him. His figure reflected clearly in her crystalline blue irises—still, unhurried, completely at ease in the centre of a storm he appeared to find mildly entertaining.
Her lips curved. The expression that followed wasn't warmth exactly—it was sharper than that. A competitive intensity that most young men who had saw it, dreaded for months to come.
"Little Rogue..." she said quietly. "What a surprise you've shown me today."
She didn't know yet, this was only the beginning!