Chapter 159: The Four Trials

The rules were actually quite simple. From the first floor to the third, each floor had four doors with four different options. The examinees could arrange and combine them in any way they pleased; as long as they completed the challenges set by three gatekeepers and reached the third floor, they would achieve victory.

Soon, the challenge tasks for the four doors of the first floor were unveiled—

The East Door belonged to Li Xiaotong. With a swift twist of her body, she scaled the inner ring's outer wall, climbing up with rapid, scuttling motions.

Because the building had been constructed during a time of catastrophe, resources were scarce and public morale was at a low ebb. As the saying goes, once people are fed and warm, they think of romance, but when they are starved and freezing, they can't be bothered to think of anything at all. Consequently, the architectural style was extremely crude, resembling a smooth, straight-up-and-down cylinder—much like a beautiful woman's long, straight legs.

Although some windows had been installed, they were narrow and firmly embedded in the walls, fitted so tightly that not even an embroidery needle could be wedged between them.

Yet Li Xiaotong paid this no heed. Three floors, more than twenty meters of near-vertical walls, along with patches of moss that should have only increased the difficulty of the climb, seemed completely nonexistent to her. She scrambled up using hands and feet just like Spider-Man.

Emmm... She looked much better than Spider-Man!

Although her clothes were not as skin-tight as a superhero's, they miraculously maintained their shape—exposing what ought to be exposed, while keeping everything else strictly covered, managing to exude a rather ladylike grace even while climbing.

In the blink of an eye, she reached the ceiling at the highest point, transitioning from a vertical climb to a horizontal one, still maintaining her utmost ladylike composure as if gravity did not exist at all.

Arriving at the circular centerline, twenty meters away from both the inner and outer walls, she reached into her bosom and pulled out soft, round, thin... suction cups that prompted Alpha-ji to mentally complain.

One after another, she attached them to the ceiling overhead.

After sticking a dozen or so at regular intervals, feeling that it was sufficient, she grabbed a line resembling Spider-Man's webbing and slid right back down.

Li Xiaotong, Four-Star Chemistry Specialist. Seed Weapon: Glue.

"My challenge is very simple. Without using any tools other than your seed weapon, and without borrowing anyone else's strength, you must independently remove any single suction cup without damaging it. If you succeed, you pass."

The examinees standing before the door looked up at those suction cups and fell into deep thought.

The task looked simple on the surface, but upon careful reflection, it was truly anything but.

As for jumping, the standing high-jump record at Jiangcheng High School was only a little over eight meters, falling short by several multiples.

Climbing up the wall like Li Xiaotong? One would need a compatible ability to do that...

"Clang, clang, rattle!" Someone attempted a ranged approach, deciding not to attack the suction cup directly, but instead cutting a circle around it to drill the piece of ceiling down. That ought to work, too.

"Pfft"—no sooner had they fired a few shots than the suction cup was punctured by flying debris.

Another person brandished a water pistol, spraying it directly at the target in the hope that once the glue was soaked through, it would lose its effectiveness and drop off on its own... Even if that method worked, one would still have to wait a good long while to see results.

Some examinees continued to try, while others keenly sensed that this unassuming test question was not so simple, and turned their attention to the other doors.

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At the South Door was Xu Tianye, the third young master of the Xu family.

His test was even simpler.

On the left and right sides of the main door, he had pasted two bowl-sized target papers. An arc had been drawn on the ground twenty meters away from the door.

"You will stand outside the arc and attack the target papers. No restrictions on weapons or methods—as long as you can manage to scratch the target paper, I will consider myself defeated!"

Although the targets were a bit small, the shooting distance was short, a mere twenty meters.

Immediately, someone stepped forward, eager to try. "Boom..." Before they could even aim and fire, a wave of intense heat surged from behind Xu Tianye, the crimson thermal energy churning the air and instantly scorching the doorway until it glowed red like a furnace.

Even the examinees twenty meters away were forced to retreat repeatedly by the ferocious heat.

If a piece of background music were played at this moment, no special effects would be needed to film a martial arts epic.

Under the gushing heat, air molecules writhed and struggled like fish in a hot pan or fresh tadpoles, blurring the entire South Door into a hazy mass.

The two bowl-sized target papers looked like moon reflections during a tsunami amidst the raging flames, or a beauty with all her makeup washed off, their original forms completely unrecognizable.

Two examinees barely managed to fire a shot—Chang Kongqi used his specialty air cannon, while Jing Xin deployed a momentum beam—but unsurprisingly, both missed completely.

Xu Tianye, Four-Star Thermodynamics Specialist. Seed Weapon: Hairdryer.

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At the West Door was a nameless extra among the Twelve Heroes.

Twenty meters away from the door, a circle had also been drawn. However, this circle was the exact opposite of Xu Tianye's. While that circle required people to stand outside and shoot inward, this one required people to stand inside...

"My test places no limit on the number of challengers. The rule is, as long as you can stand inside the circle and listen to a complete song from beginning to end, you pass!" the extra said, pointing a finger, his voice hoarse and deep with a built-in subwoofer sound effect.

With that, he put down a lunchbox-sized speaker he had been holding.

The speaker hit the ground and instantly expanded in the wind, growing to the size of a washing machine in the blink of an eye, before splitting into two, and then three, rapidly forming a pin-shaped array aimed directly at the twenty-meter circle.

"The wind is roaring, the horses are crying,

The Yellow River is roaring, the Yellow River is roaring!

..."

The speakers were roaring, and the earth was crying out.

A rendition of the Yellow River Cantata, bursting with heroic and magnificent passion to the absolute extreme!

The resonance and amplification of the three speakers truly produced the shocking and stirring thunder of the Yellow River! One could even faintly feel water droplets splashing against one's face...

As rings of sound waves overlapped, resonated, and intensified, the rippling fluctuations of the air became visible to the naked eye.

Those were acoustic shock waves, the kind usually produced only by explosions.

By this time, quite a few people were already standing within the inner circle, instantly swaying unsteadily, stumbling around, dizzy and plagued by ringing ears.

The weak ones were immediately knocked out of the circle in failure, while the stronger ones tried to stubborn it out, attempting to transform their seed weapons or something to steady their bodies.

Yet the moment they concentrated, they realized... they simply could not concentrate at all.

Their brains felt as if they had been tossed into a blender and whipped into a frenzy, reduced to slush, pulp, and paste—how could they possibly execute any operations?

Dazed, confused, and bewildered, they too met with failure.

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At the North Door was another nameless extra among the Twelve Heroes.

"My rule is the simplest. Anyone who can carry a seed weapon and walk through this door is considered a winner."

"Whatever items you can take with you, take them; those you cannot take with you must stay right here until the exam is over," the extra with a somewhat greasy appearance said very politely and courteously before the North Door.

"If you don't take it out when passing through, then once you're inside, please continue to keep it put away and do not take it out either!"

It sounded very, very, very simple—as simple as a girl lying in bed without even needing you to give her a push.

Yet the examinees treated her with the cautious reverence usually reserved for a female Hulk.

They all knew the Twelve Heroes and were well aware of each person's capabilities. They simply had no way of guessing what kind of test questions they would come up with or how they would apply their abilities to the test.

Yet this particular challenge was entirely straightforward and direct.

The North Door extra was an electromagnetic specialist. Seed Weapon: Lifting Electromagnet.

At the entrance, massive electromagnetic suction cups were lined up like a T-stage, possessing tremendous suction power. Anyone walking across them could forget about taking away anything containing even a hint of magnetism.

And when it came to seed weapons and modern technology, who didn't carry at least a bit of magnetism?

Although a Three-Star practitioner could modify the magnetic properties of a seed weapon, under the pull of a Four-Star magnetic field, whether that modification could remain stable or be reversed and degraded was anyone's guess.

This was the most direct confrontation of pure abilities.