The third day.

This was also the main event of this year’s military examination. Outside the martial arts arena, security was extremely tight—aside from the examinees themselves, no idle observers were permitted to enter and watch.

Inside the venue, four square fighting platforms labeled A, B, C, and D had been erected for martial competitions. Before dawn had fully broken, the supervising examiners had already arrived early at the scene to help oversee the preparation of weapons and the arrangement of the martial field. By the third quarter of the Mao hour, the examinees entered in two orderly lines, each one having their clothing inspected while waiting to draw their numbers.

At the front of the martial field, several long rectangular tables were arranged neatly on an elevated platform. Seated at these tables were none other than the chief examiner—Minister of War Wang Yin, academicians from the Clear City Academy, the supervising examiner Jing Wuwei, and Prime Minister Fu, who was purely there to observe on behalf of the Emperor.

Similar to the rules when taking the Clear City Academy examination, all examinees were prohibited from bringing their own weapons and could only select from the weapon racks provided at the examination site.

Zhou Qin had already mentally prepared herself to use a spear as a substitute for her staff, but unexpectedly, as soon as she entered the arena, she saw that the weapon racks at all four fighting platforms were hung with standard military iron staffs.

She rubbed her eyes in disbelief. “Good heavens, I thought for sure I wouldn’t have a staff to use this time.”

Changling glanced toward the elevated seats and thought to herself: No wonder he was nowhere to be found last night—he must have been arranging this matter.

After the supervising examiner verified the headcount, the examinees drew their numbers according to their rankings from the previous two days—number one would face number eighty, number two would face number seventy-nine, and so on. Those who drew their numbers went to the back to register and wait for the match roster.

Originally, Changling hadn’t paid any attention to this sort of junior martial competition—after all, as long as she passed the examination, she could participate in the Martial Arts Assembly. There was no need for her to steal the spotlight on such an occasion.

However, after what Mo Chuan had said last night, she inevitably developed some concerns—what if she drew Young Master Wang in the first two rounds? Wouldn’t that be pushing the poor man to his death?

After all… she was still nominally Jing Can’s younger sister.

Thinking about it carefully now, although Young Master Wang seemed to harbor some hostility toward her, he hadn’t caused her any trouble within the Clear City Academy, which showed he was a gentleman with a clear sense of gratitude and grudges. Such an outstanding young man—it would truly be unbearable to crush him.

She brooded over this for a while. The supervising examiner hung the match roster boards on the announcement board. On Platform A, Changling saw her own name: Jing Changting, versus Er Wen, third match.

Good.

As long as it wasn’t Wang Xun or Zhou Qin, all was well.

Changling secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Just as she turned her head, she saw Fu Yanyang squeezing through the crowd toward her, looking dejected. “Sister Ting, I’m at Platform C, first match right off the bat. This time I can only rely on myself.”

“Who’s your opponent?”

“Cai Ji.”

Changling thought for a moment but couldn’t recall who that was. “Just perform normally.”

In any case, if Second Young Master Fu couldn’t get through, it was only to be expected. The key concern was Zhou Qin’s situation…

Just as she was thinking this, Zhou Qin drifted over like a wandering ghost. Fu Yanyang, seeing her expression of “I’m doomed,” couldn’t help but ask, “Why such a defeated look? Which platform are you on, and who did you draw?”

“Platform B, second match,” Zhou Qin said weakly. “I’m facing Young Miss Fang. Master, what should I do?”

Changling was momentarily at a loss.

She could manipulate Fu Yanyang to last ten moves under Mo Chuan’s hands, but that didn’t mean she could help Zhou Qin defeat Fang Zhuyi. After all, a full incense stick’s worth of time was enough for over a hundred exchanges, and between Fang Zhuyi and Zhou Qin… there was at least a gap of three Fu Yanyangs.

The drums and gongs at all four fighting platforms had already sounded. Fu Yanyang patted Zhou Qin’s shoulder and said, “Running into Zhuyi is your misfortune, but don’t worry, I’ll come watch you after I finish my match. Even if you lose, lose with dignity, okay?”

With that thoroughly irritating remark, he ran off.

“Zhou Qin,” Changling said softly, “this is only your first battle. In the future in the jianghu, you’ll likely encounter many such opponents where the disparity in strength seems overwhelming. That doesn’t mean you’re destined to lose. Against Fang Zhuyi, you’re not without advantages.”

Zhou Qin listened in bewilderment. “What advantages?”

“In her impression, you’re a waste of space,” Changling said. “That is your advantage.”

Today’s sky was exceptionally clear, and the sun was exceptionally fierce.

The chief examiner and academicians on the elevated platform sat there dryly, roasting under the blazing sun, sweating profusely from the stifling heat.

Ye Qi’s gaze rolled around the various fighting platforms for quite a while before he spoke up. “This is way too far away, isn’t it? I can only see silhouettes, not faces. Lord Wang, can you see clearly?”

Wang Yin coughed lightly. “If the Marquis wishes to go take a closer look, that’s perfectly acceptable.”

“Those are Lord Wang’s own words, mind you.” Ye Qi stood up. “After all, if they’re testing for a whole day, we can’t very well sit here for the entire day, can we?”

Having said his piece, Ye Qi swaggered down the steps. The others didn’t dare imitate the young marquis by wandering about right from the start, calculating in their hearts whether to endure another hour or two, when they saw Prime Minister Fu leisurely rise to his feet. “I’ll go have a look as well.”

Fu Yanyang’s first match was against Cai Ji, the fellow scholar who, like him, had gotten dog-shit lucky to be used as a placeholder at the last minute.

Both being rookies, Cai Ji had at least carved a bloody path through Mo Chuan’s fists with his genuine abilities. Without any “expert guidance” today, Fu Yanyang naturally didn’t dare underestimate his opponent.

Fu Yangui knew his younger brother had been diligently studying martial arts recently, but as for what level he’d reached—well, he’d never had any expectations. But when he walked to the edge of the fighting platform and saw the soft sword in Fu Yanyang’s hand moving with gentle curves and elusive unpredictability, after just a few exchanges, it actually curved around his opponent’s steel sword and tore Cai Ji’s clothing—chest, waist, knees all falling victim—forcing the man into a position where he had no power to fight back at all.

If this weren’t his own younger brother, he would almost suspect this character was some ringer disguised as Fu Yanyang.

Ye Qi watched for a while. Estimating that Second Young Fu was eight or nine-tenths certain to win here, he was just about to switch platforms when, upon turning around, he spotted Fu Yangui. He let out a soft “Oh?” “Prime Minister Fu has also come to join the excitement?”

“To integrate the Limitless Whip technique into soft sword work—probably only the Marquis could think of that,” Fu Yangui said with a faint smile. “My younger brother is rather dull-witted. For him to have made such progress, I must express much gratitude for the Marquis’s dedicated instruction.”

“Little Fu isn’t stupid—he just happened to have an older brother who didn’t want him learning martial arts.” Ye Qi’s lips curved slightly. “Whether a person ultimately succeeds through scholarly or martial pursuits depends entirely on themselves. Others can’t make that decision for them, right?”

“The Marquis speaks most truly.”

The little disciple on the platform had just won a victory, while the young marquis below had finished his verbal sparring. His gaze swept around the remaining three fighting platforms in a circle. Just as he was pondering which side to wander over to first, he suddenly froze—because Changling and Zhou Qin had simultaneously mounted Platforms A and B.

Changling had originally thought that with different match schedules, she wouldn’t be able to watch Zhou Qin’s bout. Unexpectedly, the examinees in the first two matches on Platform A were vastly mismatched in ability—they decided the victor after just a few exchanges. So by the time her turn came, Zhou Qin on Platform B was just starting as well.

“Perfect,” Changling thought to herself. “I’ll make this quick too.”

Ye Qi hesitated for an instant. Thinking that Changling could definitely win in seconds, he lifted his foot and headed toward Platform B. Fu Yangui, unaware of the intricacies involved, spotted at a glance that graceful and elegant figure on Platform A and was involuntarily drawn over.

Changling’s opponent, Er Wen, lived up to his refined-sounding name, looking every bit the cultured gentleman. He wasn’t wearing the Clear City Academy uniform and seemed to be specially recruited from Western Xia.

Seeing his opponent was a beautiful woman with delicate features, he didn’t even know what to do with the blade in his hands. He hastily apologized, “Th-this humble one is Er Wen. If there are any improprieties shortly, please forgive me, Miss.”

Changling, dividing her attention to monitor the situation at Platform B, didn’t catch what the man said. She perfunctorily nodded once. “Mm.”

The supervising examiner called out, “Begin!”

As the drums and gongs sounded, Changling shifted her gaze back from the adjacent platform. The young man before her suddenly drew his blade with a sharp, clear whistle. Before his body had even landed, his blade had already arrived. Changling slightly sidestepped to avoid it, and the flagpole behind her was instantly cleaved in two. The watching examinees were shocked—though it was inevitable for blades and swords to have no eyes in martial competitions, for this examinee to lead with a killing strike was going too far. Moreover, he’d just spun through the air with that bizarre flickering motion, man and blade whirling together—what kind of peculiar blade technique was this?

Fu Yangui’s eyes flashed slightly, thinking to himself: The Dragon-Severing Blade, known in the jianghu as Western Xia’s number one blade technique. Though this person hasn’t practiced it to the level of supernatural mastery, among young blade wielders, he could still be considered outstanding.

Changling had assumed anyone from Western Xia would likely be muddling through on false pretenses, but unexpectedly this weakling had some real skills. Originally, she hadn’t wanted to attract attention in this military examination. Against an opponent of this caliber, she really should have slowly dragged it out for over a hundred exchanges before cleverly defeating him. To draw her sword for such a minor character would truly be unworthy.

With this thought in mind, she hastily pretended she couldn’t draw her sword in time, clumsily dodging about. When Er Wen had forced her to the edge of the fighting platform, her sword actually slipped from her hands in her panic.

Seeing this, Er Wen immediately dissipated the killing intent from his blade, only waiting to deliver the final strike to make her surrender. But who would have known that the flower-like beauty before him would suddenly vanish without a trace!

Before he could turn around, his back suddenly went numb. Losing his center of gravity, he pitched forward, the entire person somehow being kicked off the fighting platform without any warning whatsoever.

Changling stood steadily on the fighting platform. The supervising examiner, slow to react, only then announced, “Jing Changting wins.”

Er Wen realized the girl had used trickery and pointed at her with trembling fingertips, furious. “You damn…”

With a single leap, Changling landed on the ground and swept past like a gust of wind, leaving him alone to curse.

She didn’t notice Fu Yangui in the back of the crowd, and naturally didn’t realize that he was gazing at her with slightly dazed eyes.

On Platform B, the incense stick had burned halfway down. As soon as Changling rushed over, she heard applause and cheers from the crowd—Fang Zhuyi had apparently executed some sword technique with extremely fierce momentum. Under that flurry of rapid strikes, Zhou Qin’s iron staff was suppressed, leaving her flustered and with nowhere to hide.

Changling spotted Ye Qi at a glance and naturally moved closer to him. “How’s it going?”

Seeing her arrival, Ye Qi said in a low voice, “Miss Fang has practiced this Rainbow Garment Sword to extreme purity. She’s basically shown no openings. For Miss Zhou to have held on until now relying on the Drifting Traces Step is no easy feat… but with this style of fighting, even if she makes it to the end of the incense stick, they’ll still judge Miss Fang the winner.”

As they spoke, the two on the platform exchanged several more moves of attack and evasion. As Ye Qi said, the gap in their martial skills couldn’t be compensated for by brute force. No matter how powerful Zhou Qin’s staff strikes were, if they couldn’t land, they were all wasted. On the contrary, Fang Zhuyi maintained her superior rhythm throughout—though she struggled to break through and was showing some impatience.

Fu Yanyang, watching from the side, was also anxious. “Strange. When this stinking girl fights me, she nearly beats me to pieces. How come today against Zhuyi, all her strength has run away?”

Ye Qi said, “It’s not that she lacks strength—it’s that Miss Fang is deflecting force with form. Miss Zhou can’t distinguish between feint and reality, which is why she’s being toyed with.”

Indeed, if they continued fighting like this, Zhou Qin would have absolutely no possibility of victory.

Unless… she could knock Fang Zhuyi’s sword flying.

Changling’s gaze shifted slightly—during the examinees’ matches, all spectators below the platform were forbidden from giving verbal hints. Naturally, she couldn’t speak directly to Zhou Qin, but within the rules, there was nothing saying she couldn’t talk to other people.

“Second Young Fu,” Changling lightly nudged Fu Yanyang with her elbow, “stay right behind me in a moment. Don’t lose track.”

Hearing the instruction, Fu Yanyang immediately nodded in understanding. Changling’s eyes remained fixed on the fighting platform, instantly locking onto the direction Zhou Qin would dodge next based on Fang Zhuyi’s attack pattern. She moved to that position one step ahead of them—and then, just as Zhou Qin retreated to that spot, Changling turned to Fu Yanyang and said, “Second Young Fu, aren’t you from Platform C? How do you have the leisure to come join the excitement here? Watch your soft sword carefully. If someone else picks it for the next match, you’ll have no weapon to use.”

Her voice wasn’t loud—among the whispering spectators, no one even noticed. But it happened to drill perfectly into Zhou Qin’s ears, becoming a unique hint—knock Fang Zhuyi’s sword away so she’d have no weapon to use.

Until this point, Zhou Qin had been single-mindedly thinking about how to break Fang Zhuyi’s sword techniques. The more she fought, the more defeated she felt, helpless to resist. Changling’s timely intervention had the effect of a sudden awakening. In an instant, her form abruptly leaped up, lunging toward Fang Zhuyi’s face with a staff strike.

This was a desperate fighting style. As long as Fang Zhuyi successfully evaded, she could easily place her sword at Zhou Qin’s throat.

Fang Zhuyi thought Zhou Qin had become blinded by battle frenzy. Her lips curving in a smirk, she also tilted to the side and rose up. Unexpectedly, Zhou Qin’s iron staff suddenly circled and spun mid-motion, rotating in an extremely abrupt arc. Fang Zhuyi’s foot hadn’t touched the ground yet, and she couldn’t avoid it in time. At this moment, she had no choice but to meet it head-on. Immediately, her sword swung diagonally to meet the iron staff—

With a “clang,” Fang Zhuyi barely managed to maintain her grip on the sword hilt, feeling her entire arm aching and numb. When she looked again, the steel-forged longsword had actually been bent by the violent force of the iron staff?!

Zhou Qin, having landed one successful strike, left no gaps whatsoever. Her iron staff swept over with incomparable speed. Fang Zhuyi didn’t even have time to defend herself before feeling her palm suddenly empty—the sword was knocked right out of her hands!

Fang Zhuyi was completely stunned, even forgetting to leap backward. At this moment, the incense stick burned out. The iron staff stopped right at her temple with perfect timing, and the supervising examiner announced loudly, “This match—Zhou Qin wins—”

This time, not only was Fang Zhuyi frozen on the platform, even Zhou Qin took quite a while to come back to her senses. Only when she heard Fu Yanyang laughing loudly did she react. “Zhou Qin! What dog-shit luck! You actually won!”

Zhou Qin stared numbly at the staff in her hands. “I… I really won?”

“That’s right, isn’t it?”

Zhou Qin jumped off the fighting platform with a face full of joy, pulling Fu Yanyang’s hand in uncontainable excitement. “How did I win?”

“I didn’t see clearly either, but you just won anyway.”

A hall-of-fame level rookie had won a match she should have inevitably lost. As her sparring partner, Fu Yanyang felt he deserved at least half the credit. Right now, he wanted nothing more than to jump around in circles with Zhou Qin. He didn’t even notice Fang Zhuyi leaving with a cold expression.

Changling breathed a slight sigh of relief. As she turned around, she saw the young marquis throw her a “you’re really something” look. She blinked and returned an “at least you recognize talent” expression, making Ye Qi laugh silently.

Perhaps because they’d encountered big moves right at the start, the following matches for all three of them went unexpectedly smoothly.

“Smoothly” meant that for Zhou Qin and Fu Yanyang, they encountered opponents slightly inferior to themselves and narrowly won through hard fighting. For Changling, it meant she once again perfectly avoided Wang Xun, pretended to struggle for half an incense stick’s worth of time, then slapped her opponent off the platform with a single palm strike.

After winning two consecutive matches, all three smoothly advanced to compete for the Martial Presented Scholar positions.

Among the examinees who made it into the top twenty, naturally none were easy pickings. Fu Yanyang was beaten into a tumbling mess shortly after mounting the platform. Zhou Qin, as if her governing and conception vessels had been opened after her comeback victory against Fang Zhuyi—actually managed to luck into winning another match, ultimately placing seventeenth. Changling surveyed the rankings and chose to perform a “bitter struggle” on the top-ten-to-top-five platform, letting herself “collapse from exhaustion” and fall off—missing the chance to face Young Master Wang in a final showdown for the martial examination’s pinnacle.

In the end, Wang Xun unsurprisingly seized first place, achieving his long-desired Champion title.

Unfortunately, this Champion title came three years too late. The person he’d hoped would see it would never see it.

Wang Xun’s face showed neither sorrow nor joy. Changling gazed faintly at him on the fighting platform, suddenly feeling that perhaps Mo Chuan had been wrong. He didn’t owe anyone a Champion title.

He and she were the same—both debt collectors.

Jing Can to Wang Xun was perhaps like Shen Yao to her.

And tomorrow, she would see Shen Yao.

Author’s Note:

In the martial examination, there were no true opponents worthy of Sister Ling.

If you want to see Sister Ling and Lord Qi join forces in male-female double combat, Yanling Mountain and the Martial Arts Assembly arc is their true stage.