IRM Chapter 81

On the day of the test, when Ji Chi arrived at the Combat Academy’s testing hall, in another corner of the lobby, quite a few nervous and anxious test-takers had already gathered.

Some were softly reciting from classics, while others held various oddly-shaped metals, studying them with solemn expressions. They all shared one very similar characteristic—their legs were shaking so fast they left afterimages.

In such an environment, two steadfastly unmoved youths stood out extremely conspicuously.

Linton even let out a big yawn, his eyes red-rimmed. When he noticed Ji Chi’s gaze, he silently looked back, then slowly shuffled over toward Ji Chi.

Seeing his drowsy appearance as if he could fall asleep standing there, Ji Chi said with amusement, “I thought you didn’t take the test seriously. What’s this—did you secretly review until midnight?”

Linton curled his lips. “The test isn’t anything much….I was planning for the future. Planning for the future, understand?”

Ji Chi took it as a joke. “Planning what future? How much more do you want to swindle from me in the future?”

Linton didn’t respond. He hadn’t lied to Ji Chi—he really had thought a lot about future matters last night.

In the past, forced by so many hungry mouths waiting to be fed, Linton opened his eyes every day in anxiety and fell asleep in worry. Even in his dreams, there were gleaming gold coins hanging in the distant sky—desires he could see but never reach.

But just yesterday, those stars had fallen like a beautiful dream, pouring a clear spring into Linton’s parched heart, giving him the strength to nurture saplings full of hope.

After a moment of silence, Linton said, “I actually could have passed the Engineer Academy test last year, but due to certain accidents, I had to give up that opportunity.”

“Throughout this long year, I’ve actually been harboring resentment and unwillingness.” Linton turned his head, his gray eyes fixed on Ji Chi’s face. “But until yesterday, I suddenly began to feel fortunate—perhaps when I made that decision, it was the gods’ greatest gift to me.”

Hearing his somewhat incomprehensible words, Ji Chi waved his hand in front of him. “Wake up, we haven’t even started the test yet. Save the graduation speech for later.”

Linton was frustrated again by Ji Chi’s obliviousness. He dodged Ji Chi’s hand and sulked alone for a while, then turned back seriously and said, “You must pass. For the next three years, I hope we can be together at the Engineer Academy and become excellent engineers.”

Ji Chi gave a dry laugh, thinking: Sorry, brother, I can only stay at the Engineer Academy for two years, and I can’t graduate as an engineer either, or the Magic Academy professors will have my head.

Thinking Ji Chi lacked confidence, Linton was about to give him more pointers when the hall’s bell rang.

What followed was the test-takers’ battlefield.

Several Combat Academy teachers stood in the hall, dividing the test-takers into several teams and leading them in succession to the testing grounds on the building’s second floor.

Linton was in the team ahead of Ji Chi’s. When being led away, he turned back and anxiously shouted to Ji Chi, “Calm your mind—you can definitely do this!”

“Quiet! What’s all this noise!” A nearby teacher immediately glared at him.

Ji Chi smiled softly. Although he had prepared for a long time, he really didn’t take this test seriously, because his thinking hadn’t been assimilated by the people of this world.

In the original world’s perspective, missing the test meant one’s life was completely hopeless. But Ji Chi held to a simpler belief—all roads lead to Rome. As long as he gave his all, no path could trap him to death.

Within a few minutes, over a hundred test-takers had gathered on the second floor. These were the finest prospects from the southeastern part of the Saint Trilley Empire this year. The youths testing in Yiste Town were relatively few—over a thousand young men and women across the entire empire participated in the engineer test, but in the end, fewer than a hundred received admission notices.

Every academy was like this, so these youths either possessed rare talent or exceptional willpower. More often, those who could step into the academies were extraordinary in both aspects. They would fight their way through to the Combat Academy and reach the pinnacle of life.

Ji Chi’s team had only ten test-takers. They were first led into a quiet room. The room was airtight, with only magic lamps on the dome providing light. Several layers of magic arrays were drawn on the floor—Ji Chi found them somewhat familiar.

But the youths testing for engineering didn’t know about this. Some looked fearfully at the magic arrays on the ground, hesitating for a long while, not daring to step in.

The teacher in charge of discipline also wore a stern expression, looking unwilling to explain.

Ji Chi glanced at her, then stepped into the room first and explained, “The blue magic array is for silencing, the white one is for separation, and the red one is for restraint. As long as you don’t wave your test paper around while running and singing during the test, the magic arrays won’t do anything to you.”

The test-takers behind him laughed and smiled at Ji Chi with goodwill.

The teacher seated at the front of the room glared at him, seemingly blaming him for meddling. She scolded him quietly and told the test-takers to sit in their assigned seats according to their emblems.

The first test began—the content was engineering theory.

After taking their seats, a scroll floated in front of each person. When unrolled, the scroll was completely blank. Only when the bell rang again did ink-black writing emerge from the scroll.

Ji Chi quickly scanned the scroll, his pupils contracting slightly. Linton’s prediction was correct—among the dazzling array of test questions, concepts of defense and speed occupied more than half, and even the last essay question asked test-takers to discuss how to merge the two together.

The theory test lasted a full six hours. Everyone concentrated intently on the test paper before them, the uniformly distributed quill pens dancing with scratching sounds.

But intermittent clicking sounds kept disturbing their thoughts. The teacher who had been standing on the platform had somehow come down. She wore a pair of lambskin heeled shoes that made crisp sounds as she walked around the room. The sound wasn’t loud enough to trigger the silencing array, but it echoed eerily in the narrow room, constantly striking their taut nerves.

Several youths couldn’t help their temper and looked up angrily, but she looked back at them with what seemed like mockery and continued doing as she pleased.

Before long, only Ji Chi remained in the room with his eyes lowered, peacefully working through the problems, as if everything around him was irrelevant.

Ji Chi indeed wasn’t affected. He had undergone too much training of this kind—not to mention the beeping of heart monitors that never stopped for over twenty years, or Evan’s occasional chatter at the Magic Academy, or even during training, the bears’ insane verbal bombardment. These had all been excellent training opportunities for him.

It was just the sound of high heels—he didn’t care about it, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t perceived it.

That teacher seemed to have discovered Ji Chi as an anomaly. She wandered over to his side and began producing noise at close range. After waiting a while and seeing that Ji Chi still remained unmoved, she couldn’t help stopping beside him and leaning over to see which deity this was.

When she saw the name clearly on the scroll, her eyes widened and she cried out in surprise, “Ji Chi? How can it be you!”

This name was too familiar at the Combat Academy. Many people, even if they hadn’t seen him, had heard rumors about him.

After her initial surprise, the female teacher controlled her voice well, not exceeding the warning line of the silencing array. However, Ji Chi suddenly looked up with a smile and lightly tapped his right foot on the ground.

A surge of pure magic power spread within the magic array, instantly raising the array’s sensitivity several times. The female teacher’s trailing tone, which she hadn’t had time to lower, was recorded, and the blue silencing magic array lit up instantly.

Silencing Magic Array: Completely silences objects within the array that produce excessively loud sounds.

The female teacher seemed to have her throat gripped. She opened her mouth but couldn’t say a word. Sensing the change in magic power within the array, she looked angrily at Ji Chi, knowing it was his doing, and was about to slam the table and make him change the array back to normal.

In the next second, the separation array lit up. The female teacher’s palm hit the magic barrier and was repelled by scorching fire magic, her palm burned red.

Separation Magic Array: Within the array, when the distance between two human bodies shortens to a certain degree, a barrier automatically appears to separate them.

The pain from her palm drowned her reason. The female teacher gave Ji Chi a deep look, turned, and strode toward the room’s door, her snow-white skirt hem fluttering between her calves. Ji Chi leisurely waited until she was almost at the door before his toes touched the last array.

The blood-red restraint array lit up. The female teacher was restrained by the array at the instant she was about to step out the door, frozen at the doorway in a very strange posture. With ferocious and triumphant expressions mingled on her face, she looked like an abstract sculpture.

Restraint Magic Array: Restrains objects with excessive movement within the array.

The three arrays were originally meant to prevent test-takers from disturbing the testing ground, but they had all been placed on the female teacher’s head.

This sudden turn of events happened in an instant. The youths in the testing ground showed gleeful smiles at the corners of their eyes and brows. The depressed and tense mood since the test began also relaxed considerably. Only the rustling sound of answering remained in the room, bringing a sense of calm.

Under extreme concentration, six hours passed quickly. Because their testing ground had lost its supervisor, they stayed in their seats for an extra period of time.

Youths from other testing grounds had already started coming out one after another. When passing their room, they were all startled by the thing at the door.

“Whoa! What the hell is that!”

“It’s a person, right? Can you see?”

“Yeah! Still wearing white clothes! Why is it standing here scaring people? No public morals…”

Finally, a teacher from next door sensed something was wrong and came to the rescue. But because Ji Chi had “accidentally” input too much MP, the other teacher had no way to solve it and could only let the sculpture be admired by passersby.

The six-hour theory test had consumed a great deal of the test-takers’ mental energy, but this battle wasn’t over yet. They only had half an hour of rest time before immediately beginning the practical test.

The third floor of the hall was a dedicated rest area with free food and drinks. All the test-takers wolfed down food here to replenish their energy.

Ji Chi also got a portion of human food—a very substantial sandwich with a very familiar taste. He had eaten it many times in the Magic Academy cafeteria.

Ji Chi looked back and indeed saw several familiar auntie figures. One auntie winked at Ji Chi with a smile and blew him a kiss.

Ji Chi broke open the bread to look—the onions he usually tried hard to decline but that were still stuffed into his bread were gone. This was special care from the aunties.

Ji Chi’s mouth twitched as he ate this sandwich filled with love with very complicated feelings.

The next test began. They were led to the doors of small rooms—small refining workshops where they would forge their own equipment.

When the workshop door closed and the question appeared before them, it was indeed the content Linton had mentioned.

This question was extremely difficult for most test-takers, because after all, they had just entered the field of engineering. To suddenly create equipment that even masters were troubled by was undoubtedly a fantasy.

But this test’s purpose wasn’t in the completion level of the equipment, but in the engineer’s ideas.

No matter how difficult a technique was, with day and night practice, it would eventually be mastered. But innovative, forward-thinking ideas weren’t something everyone possessed.

When most people still had no ideas, Ji Chi had already begun preparing for refining. Before Linton’s prediction, watching the young master who was frustratingly slow every day, he had also thought about solving this problem.

In the magic sword tradition, defense was always associated with heavy armor, and many people’s direction for improvement also started from armor…

But why couldn’t offensive weapons also possess defensive power?

Ji Chi picked and chose among the materials equipped in the refining workshop, finally selecting three main materials: rock iron, night silkworm silk, and flowing gold.

Rock iron was hard and solid—good material for making a frame. Night silkworm silk was flexible and dense, able to block the smallest weapons. Flowing gold had extremely high malleability—covering it under the silkworm silk could protect the silk from being torn.

Ji Chi didn’t refine too seriously. In just thirty minutes, he walked out of the refining workshop and went up to the teachers in charge of registration.

“So fast? There are still over two hours left! Little fellow, don’t give up! If you go back now, I’ll pretend I didn’t see you,” a teacher kindly reminded him.

Ji Chi shook his head and said, “I did my best.”

His best had only produced equipment of [Excellent] quality. If he worked on it for another two hours, the quality would probably surge toward [Epic], and that would be hard to wrap up.

That teacher nodded regretfully. “Alright then, put your work here.”

Ji Chi placed a dark, long strip on the table, bowed slightly to them, and walked toward the stairs.

That teacher looked at the dark strip and shook his head with a light sigh. “Today’s students—giving up just like that. It really shouldn’t be… one’s status doesn’t determine one’s future path. Being unfortunate enough to be born a commoner means needing to be even stronger. Sigh, let me see what status he is.”

“Oh, a commoner. That really is bad. This Ji Chi… wait, sounds a bit familiar.”

“Isn’t this that all-profession genius from the Magic Academy? He’s taking the engineer exam too? Really something!”

“Eh, don’t believe that random nonsense. There are always some students who think they’re special. Look at this—what has he even made? Like he’s just fooling around.”

One teacher picked up that dark thing and waved it, but suddenly discovered that this equipment was unexpectedly light. The sound of cutting through air rang out sharply, and the pointed end flashed with frightening cold light.

“Hey, not bad—this weapon is quite handy… huh? There’s even a button here.”

He couldn’t help flipping out his thumb and pressing it. With a swoosh, the cone-shaped weapon spread open like an umbrella. On the back of the umbrella ribs, golden flowing gold flowed like spring water, lighting up the several people’s astonished expressions.

They looked at each other, almost unable to speak. “This is… a defensive weapon?”