5: Chapter 5 Special Assessment Mode

Martial Arts Examination Center, Super-Grade Monitoring Room.

It was so quiet here that one could hear the faint hum of precision instruments; it felt like a different world from the clamor of the outside exam grounds.

Dozens of giant light screens partitioned real-time footage, with waterfalls of data silently refreshing.

Zhou Wu and the square-faced invigilator, Zhang Zhenshan, had their gazes magnetically fixed on the central main screen.

There, it was Lin Yuan's solo show.

“The file says Mortal Realm Three Stars, yet one punch blew up a testing bracelet with a twelve-ton limit...”

The young invigilator Zhou Wu's throat tightened, every word sounding like it was being scraped off sandpaper.

“Old Zhang, what's this kid's background? How was a monster like this not designated as a seed player in advance?”

Zhang Zhenshan's face was grim.

“Either the file was recorded incorrectly, or he used some secret technique we can't understand to hide his strength.”

He paused, his tone certain.

“But ‘Beast Siege’, isn't something that can be passed by brute force alone.”

Zhou Wu deeply agreed.

The terror of “Beast Siege” never lay in the combat power of individual beasts, but in the endless, death-defying group charges.

Even a martial artist at the peak of the Strength Realm would eventually have their blood energy drained dry once they were trapped in it.

In their view, Lin Yuan's best outcome would be nothing more than killing a few more beasts before being completely submerged by the black tide of monsters.

Passing?

A pipe dream.

However, the scene that followed on the screen made all their judgments a complete joke.

A pale, nearly transparent flame drifted slowly from Lin Yuan's hand.

The expressions on the faces of the two people in the monitoring room instantly froze.

They saw a perfect circular blank zone abruptly appear within the crowded, violent beast tide on the screen.

It wasn't the charred blackness after an explosion.

Nor was it the remains of flying flesh and blood.

It was “nothingness.”

Absolute, pure void.

Swaths of beasts, along with the solid virtual ground beneath their feet, simply vanished into thin air, as clean as if a section had been precisely erased by a cosmic eraser.

“What's going on?!”

Zhou Wu sprang from his chair, his face almost pressed against the screen, blinking hard.

“Equipment failure? Dropped frames in the footage?”

He incoherently pulled up the auxiliary data stream nearby, his fingertips even trembling slightly.

System feedback: Everything normal.

【Target Units: Iron-skinned Hyena × 17, cleared.】

【Target Units: Scythe Mantis × 9, cleared.】

【...】

A series of cold “cleared” prompts frantically flooded the screen.

But the corresponding energy fluctuation curve was a dead straight line!

No heat energy.

No kinetic energy.

No shockwave.

Nothing at all!

It felt as if the virtual system had simply indifferently executed a “delete” command.

“Old Zhang... look at this data!” Zhou Wu's voice carried an irrepressible horror.

Zhang Zhenshan had already been staring intently at that eerie straight line, a layer of fine goosebumps rising on his skin.

On the screen, Lin Yuan's movements didn't pause for a moment.

He stood atop the city wall, his expression as calm as if he were performing a tedious exercise, simply waving his arm rhythmically down again and again.

Puff.

Puff.

Puff.

Every wave of his hand saw a pale flower of death drift down.

And every flower “gnawed” a clean circular gap out of the beast tide.

The entire virtual battlefield became a sketch being constantly wiped, quickly cleared at a speed that transcended the laws of physics.

That wasn't a battle.

That was... a cleanup.

Efficient, cold, and carrying an eerie beauty that made one's spine chill.

Zhou Wu felt his understanding collapsing; he remembered the baseless warning sign in his heart when Lin Yuan stepped into the exam grounds.

It wasn't an illusion!

“Plant Pact... this is definitely not the damn Plant Pact!”

Zhang Zhenshan stared at the screen, a crazy thought exploding in his mind.

“This kid... has Twin Talents! He hid a second talent!”

Twin Talents!

These two words made Zhou Wu's breath hitch.

That was a legend one in a hundred million!

Any possessor of Twin Talents, as long as they didn't fall prematurely, was destined to be a towering giant in the future!

But... what kind of talent could cause such a domineering, such an unreasonable effect?

Directly erasing the existence of a unit?

The number of beasts in the tide was plummeting at a rate visible to the naked eye.

1,237.

900.

600.

300.

When Lin Yuan leapt down from the city wall, turning into a pale meteor that smashed into the beast group and punched a half-step Strength Realm Armored Rhino into nothingness, the two were completely speechless.

In the monitoring room, only two heavy and suppressed breaths remained.

“Madman... what a madman...” Zhou Wu's face was pale as he murmured to himself.

Zhang Zhenshan looked at the absolute domain on the screen that Lin Yuan had cleared out of thin air, and a thought so absurd even he found it ridiculous couldn't help but bubble up.

“He... he might actually pass...”

“What?” Zhou Wu turned his head sharply, thinking he had misheard.

“I said, he might really pass ‘Beast Siege’!” Zhang Zhenshan repeated each word emphatically, his tone a mix of shock and disbelief, “This subject has been established for twenty-seven years, and in the entire Luling City, fewer than a hundred people have passed it.”

Just then.

“It is indeed quite interesting.”

A cold female voice sounded behind them without warning.

Zhang Zhenshan and Zhou Wu's bodies tensed in an instant, and they spun around.

At some point, a man and a woman had already stood behind them.

The woman was dressed in a crisp military uniform, the two bars and two stars on her shoulders reflecting cold light; her face was cold and beautiful, her temperament like a drawn blade.

The man was also in military uniform, with two bars and one star, standing half a step behind her with a solemn expression like a silent iron tower.

“Chief... Chief Coordinator!”

“Adjutant Chen!”

Zhang Zhenshan and Zhou Wu immediately snapped to attention and gave the most standard military salute of their lives, their hearts pounding wildly.

Chief Coordinator of the examination area, Qin Wanshuang!

The highest commander of the entire Luling City Martial Arts Exam! Why would she appear here?!”

Qin Wanshuang ignored their stiffness.

From the moment she appeared, her gaze was locked on the central main screen.

Locked on that solitary figure wrapped in pale flames.

“File.”

She uttered the word, concise and to the point.

“Yes!”

Zhou Wu didn't dare delay for a second, hurriedly projecting Lin Yuan's file onto the light screen to the side.

【Name: Lin Yuan】

【Innate Talent: Plant Pact】

【Strength Assessment: Mortal Realm Three Stars】

Seeing this file, Adjutant Chen, who was behind Qin Wanshuang, furrowed his brows deeply.

“Reporting to the Chief Coordinator, the file is seriously inconsistent with the candidate's performance! Mortal Realm Three Stars? This is simply nonsense!”

“It's not nonsense.”

Qin Wanshuang's reaction was surprisingly calm; she just looked at the screen with interest.

“It's a pleasant surprise.”

Her gaze moved back and forth between the words “Plant Pact” and Lin Yuan's eerie flame ability.

“Twin Talents, and the attribute of the second talent... is some kind of peculiar flame?”

“Interesting, truly interesting.”

Instead of being horrified, a very slight curve appeared at the corner of her mouth.

“Not sticking to defense, taking the initiative to attack, seeking the optimal solution, and clearing the maximum number of enemies in the shortest time...”

“This combat instinct and ability to break through a situation interest me even more than the talent itself.”

Adjutant Chen's expression was full of confusion: “But Chief Coordinator, his ability is too strange, we...”

“Shh.”

Qin Wanshuang raised a fair finger, signaling him to be quiet.

The battle on the screen had already reached its end.

The moment Lin Yuan casually pushed out that head-sized pale fireball.

Everyone in the monitoring room subconsciously held their breath.

No sound.

No light.

Wherever the fireball passed, a fan-shaped, absolutely dark “pathway” was forcibly plowed out.

All beasts blocking this path, regardless of strength, vanished silently into the purest nothingness the instant they touched the fireball.

【Remaining Beasts: 0】

【Time Taken: Eleven minutes and twenty-seven seconds】

【Evaluation: ???】

When the system's cold settlement prompt sounded and those two glaring question marks appeared on the screen, the entire Super-Grade Monitoring Room fell into a dead silence.

The system... was unable to evaluate!

Lin Yuan's performance had already exceeded the cognitive limits of the system's database!

Zhou Wu and Zhang Zhenshan felt their worldviews completely crushed at this moment, then crudely reshaped.

Adjutant Chen's mouth hung open, but he couldn't make a sound, his expression completely frozen.

Only Qin Wanshuang.

In her cold eyes, a burst of burning light finally erupted.

She suddenly spoke, her voice not loud, yet every word was clear in the dead silent room.

“Activate Special Assessment Mode.”

“Ah?” Adjutant Chen was stunned.

“Increase the difficulty for him. I'll take responsibility if anything happens!”

A flash of shock passed through Adjutant Chen's eyes: “This... this is absolutely not okay! Special Assessment Mode is the final test prepared for top prospects at the peak of the Strength Realm or even the quasi-Qi Realm. He...”

He wanted to say that Lin Yuan's file was only Mortal Realm Three Stars; even if he hid his strength, it was impossible to cross such a huge chasm.

Qin Wanshuang slowly turned her head, her gaze as sharp as a blade.

“Adjutant Chen, don't forget what our primary mission in Luling City is.”

“It's to select the top prospects for the ‘Heavenly Talent Special Training Camp’!”

“In the Hundred Cities Contests of recent years, Luling has come in last every time. Do you want that shame to happen again?”

“If he really has the strength to crush everything, as the Chief Coordinator of the Luling City Martial Arts Exam, what's wrong with giving him a chance to prove himself?”

“I need a monster who can break the rules and create miracles!”

“If this Lin Yuan can't even break the ‘rules’ we've set, then he doesn't deserve to enter the ‘Heavenly Talent Special Training Camp’, much less carry the hope of Luling City's comeback!”