Chapter 156: The Fair Unfairness, The Unfair Fairness

Entering the examiner's channel, the second stage's challenge was promptly revealed:
"The outlaws' defense line has been breached, but upon storming their lair, you discover that the most dangerous heavy felons have already escaped through a secret tunnel! Pursue them immediately!"
The plot was concise and straightforward, so the chase was on.
Although the paths remained intricate and labyrinthine, clear guiding arrows were painted on the walls. The candidates rapidly pursued the trail along the arrows, making several turns and rounding multiple corners... and then, nearly seventy percent of the students came to a halt. Only a small fraction were able to continue forward all the way to the circular hall at the finish line.
A sudden commotion erupted in the spectator stands!
The students themselves might not have fully understood what was happening, but the audience in the stands saw it crystal clear: from this point onward, the candidates were facing different tests.
The first stage had also been different, but that was a fair and just difference. The difference here, however, was truly different! Wildly, outrageously different!
Nearly fifty percent of the candidates had fallen into traps.
Trapdoors, rolling boulders, logs, hidden arrows, blinding flashes, explosions, smoke, poison gas... A continuous stream of mechanical traps—classical and modern, simple and complex, anticipated and unexpected—kept popping up, interspersed with agile pets and sneak attacks from hidden outlaws.
Although the intensity wasn't overwhelming, the sheer volume was staggering. The candidates were kept constantly on their toes, finding themselves in one perilous situation after another.
"Unfortunately, you have followed the wrong markers down the wrong route. Pushing through in one go might allow you to break through, but it also carries mortal danger."
"The mission is important, but life is equally precious. Is your precious life worth wasting on these meaningless mechanical traps? This is a choice you must make."
"Continue the challenge and succeed, and you may advance to the next stage. If you fail, your mixed martial arts score will be reduced to a mere 30 points."
"Give up the challenge, and you will be eliminated immediately, but you will retain a passing score of 60 points."
"The choice is in your hands!"
Further inside, on the walls of the trap zone, written in the exact same material as the directional arrows, was a bloody task prompt filled with an oppressive aura.
It was truly a difficult decision!
On one side was continuing the challenge—success would secure more points, but failure would incur point deductions. On the other side was giving up directly, locking in a safe 60 points.
To push through... these overlapping, layer-upon-layer traps were simply too difficult, and a single mistake meant game over.
Yet, to give up... Having come this far, successfully navigating the first stage, seeing through the conspiracies during the transitional phase, and enduring the traps for half a day—it felt just like finally holding hands, or advancing from first base to second base, stripping down to run for third base, only to suddenly be dumped right at that moment. That reluctance to let go felt entirely different!

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While the students in the trap zone were caught in a dilemma, another group of students—accounting for roughly seventeen to twenty percent of the total—wasn't faring any better.
They hadn't encountered any traps, but they had run into formidable opponents.
"Halt! This mountain was opened by me, and this tree was planted by me! If you wish to pass this road, leave the toll money behind!" Across fifty or sixty paths, fifty or sixty interceptors—tall or short, fat or thin, handsome or ugly—chanted this exact same line in unison, exuding an astonishing aura.
Equally astonishing were the bloody characters on the adjacent wall: "Your luck is atrocious. You have encountered the outlaws' rear-guard, and their strength far exceeds yours! Fighting them is an absolute loss, and escaping... is exceptionally difficult."
"Unless you can satisfy their demand by releasing their captured relatives and friends, they will not clear the path."
"However, releasing their relatives and friends means your score from the first stage will be halved, which will profoundly impact the upcoming examinations..."
"Will you fight? Will you run? Or will you bribe them?"
"The choice is not entirely yours to make!"
This was likewise a difficult decision.
Fight? It was explicitly stated that they couldn't win. Judging by the overwhelming presence of the blockers, the writing on the wall was hardly lying.
Run? Under the pursuit of such powerhouses, whether one could find another correct path to the next stage was highly uncertain.
Bribe? Although not absolute, the final stage of the mixed martial arts tournament frequently allowed seeded candidates to directly enter the main competition, while everyone else had to go through a few preliminary elimination rounds.
How were seeded and unseeded candidates determined?
More often than not, it came down to the accumulated points from the first two stages.
If half of those points were deducted, they would inevitably have to start from the losers' bracket, consuming extra stamina through multiple additional rounds, exposing their tactics to extended analysis, and revealing their trump cards too early... In short, they could practically kiss bonus points goodbye.

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Compared to the two groups suffering through the trap zone and the interceptors, the third group—accounting for about thirty percent of the candidates—was exceptionally fortunate!
They hadn't encountered any obstruction whatsoever and had arrived directly at a circular plaza. Visually estimating, if the first two groups of candidates successfully made it through nine deaths for every life and shed a layer of skin in the process, they would eventually trickle along the path to this assembly point...
In other words, this group had entered the second half of the second stage without facing a single challenge.

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"This, isn't this simply too unfair?"
The college entrance examination's field internships and mixed martial arts events were indeed somewhat casual, and all sorts of bizarre incidents could occur along the way, but such blatant, unadulterated unfairness was definitely a first!
It felt as unfair as some people being born with looks that exceeded ten points while others were universally loathed by gods and men alike, beyond the help of even plastic surgery;
As unfair as some being flat-chested while others possessed an overwhelming figure;
As unfair as some being born into the wealthiest of dynasties surrounded by luxury, while others were born destitute with nowhere to plant an awl, shivering in hunger...
In the spectator stands and the audience seats, a murmur began to rise, growing increasingly loud. Yet, ultimately, no major chaos broke out.
After all, Lei Zhenjun, ranked fourth and the third young master of the military commander's household, along with Li Zhishui, ranked sixth and the sixth young master of Li Jingao's household, had both been intercepted as well...
Lei Zhenjun had gotten off relatively lightly, encountering only a single bandit. Li Zhishui, however, was truly tragic: relying on his three-star strength, he had forcefully crashed through the trap zone, only to find another bandit waiting for him on the other side. At that point, escape was entirely out of the question!
If even the children of the grand elders' families were subjected to this, what grounds did ordinary families have for complaint?
Gradually, however, as the examination committee's official explanation was released, the murmurs of the audience subsided and grew fainter.
It wasn't unfair after all. While the scores of the first stage initially appeared uniform no matter how they were obtained, beneath the total score lay fine breakdowns: hostage points, pursuit points, plundering points, cooperative points, and independent points...
Those who had accumulated too many cooperative points encountered the trap trials.
The test was meant to convey: desperate situations are common, and one cannot rely on others for everything; sometimes, you can only depend on yourself!
Therefore, bravely push through the challenge—success allows entry into the next round, while failure still grants seventy points. Those who chose to surrender directly would only receive thirty points.
The prompt on the wall had been a trap itself, as the text explicitly stated—you followed the wrong markers down the wrong route. If the markers were wrong, the prompt was naturally wrong as well.
Those who had acquired high scores by plundering others encountered the bandits. This was meant to teach them that there is always someone better, and heaven beyond heaven; if you make a habit of plundering others, you must be mentally prepared to be plundered in turn.
Their prompts were indeed truthful, but... without surrendering half their points, virtually no one could pass.