Xinshi and Guandong, of course, were doing well, which made sense given how much the boy’s mother was desperate for him to succeed. Too much investment… he resisted a sigh, moving on from those two. He’d deal with that bit of particular petty mortal politics when it came to it.

Raya Leth… it was kind of interesting to see her test as she worked on it. She was pretty sure she’d had to devise the answers to more than one question on the fly, from nothing but the elementary knowledge she’d been provided with. It was the sign of a remarkable intelligence… but only the sign of a remarkable intelligence. The capacity for cultivators to process knowledge, find patterns, and seek the weft and weave of the world only ever increased as they continued to ascend. It mattered far less that she was smart now, and more what she might be in the future. Unfortunately, given that those genius solutions had been for the very first few questions given she’d not paid any attention during class, he doubted that she’d get much of anywhere beyond a cushy mortal job. She did not have the… that essential characteristic of a cultivator. Of one who would defy the heavens themselves.

Urapmaphara Il… he was interesting. Kind of like an opposite of Raya— a scholar through and through. Whether that was because of his family situation or something else, he didn’t know— and he’d withhold judgement on that front—but where Raya had a great amount of natural talent to squander away, Uramaphara was fairly average… except in how much effort he put into his education. If only his Applied Combat scores were any good— then the sect might have even been interested in him! He, too, though, did not have the essence of the cultivator.

There were others. Each and every one of his students— he knew them more or less, and their scores on the test more or less comported with what he’d expected of them. Some of them did a better job than he’d expected— they’d probably studied or whatever. Some of them… did not. One of them just gave up part way through the test when he realized that— compared to Lily, who’d started doodling far more advanced formations in the margins of her exam— he stood no chance of getting anywhere.

How he’d ever thought he stood a chance in the first place with Xinshi there, Mingtian had no idea, but he just glanced over the kid’s paper and moved onwards— he had enough drama with the adults of the academy to get swept up in the adolescent’s social drama too.

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All too soon— for the students, that was— the first phase of the exam is over. He returned to the center of the room, then clapped— once, loudly. “Time’s up!” A chorus of groans and one or two muffled curses was their enthusiastic response to that

. “Turn in your tests, then take a ten minute break before the second half of the exam. No talking.” Those ten minutes passed fast, and at the end of them, he handed out the forms for the next part of the test. Then he sat down behind his desk and watched the chaos unfold.

To stop a tungsten cube from breaking an egg… it was going to be entertaining to see what they came up with. He hoped Lily grasped the implications of using lunar cold iron enchanted to weigh as much as tungsten, as opposed to anything else… or even just normal iron. It’d be fun to see what she’d do with that if she managed it— but, of course, none of the other students had even a chance of figuring that out. Well, none bar Xinshi and Avyr, but they didn’t have the proper tools to deal with it even if they could see the spiritual imprint of the metal.

Paradoxically, the second part of the exam almost seemed to pass faster, even if— objectively— there was double the amount of time allotted to it than the first. Maybe that was because he wasn’t exhaustively examining each tester while they worked. One by one they either finished or kept struggling, until it was only the worst few at formations— Raya amongst them— who were still trying to make something to stop the cube.

Then, it was over. “One by one, line up and bring your formations down in front of the class. I will then see whether or not you pass the test. After your formation is tested, you are dismissed.” The first student slowly stepped forward, placing her formation around the egg, and— with an elaborate series of handsigns and a ritual gesture, Mingtian raised his hands and with them, the iron cube to the roof.

A second passed, as it hung at the very top of its precise arc… before it plummeted down, straight through the student’s fairly decent shields as though they weren’t even there in the first place, and hit the floor with a resounding crack of wood against steel.

The student whimpered, and the egg… the poor egg hadn’t stood a chance, and now it stood in pieces, splattered across the whole floor. His gaze settled on her, cool and controlled— “fail. Next.”