The Entrance Exam was the Ju Empire's favorite kind of circus.
Mortals came in hope. Cultivators came in calculation. Sects arrived to watch, and the greater powerhouses took the high seats as if they were there for the continent's future. What they wanted was simpler. Talent. A child they could point to later and call their own.
The requirements were plain enough. No candidate younger than the fifth stage of Qi Condensation, and none older than twenty. Five phases, each of them timed, and the less energy spent in passing, the cleaner the name looked on paper. The Emperor usually rewarded the victor with pills and cultivation resources. The sects claimed the rest and called it recruitment.
Shi Residence.
Once the Shi family announced their withdrawal from worldly affairs, the lesser powers slept more easily. A few houses that had hoped to stand in that new shade went home disappointed. Serving under the Shi had sounded like a fine life, right up until the Shi closed the door.
Imperial Capital.
The city gate was a flood.
People packed the lines. Families brought their descendants the way other men brought livestock, except these could speak. At the front stood a six-foot guard in bronze, helmet on, a low-grade spear in his right hand. Spirit Awakening qi rolled off him until some of the children went to their knees. Behind him a heavy man sat with a ledger and wrote names as if the empire's future depended on his handwriting.
"Get in line."
To him they were children. In cultivation, they were. In years, they were.
Then a shout cut through from the rear.
"Make way for the Kang family."
Blue-armored guards opened a path around a boy who looked as if he had never waited for anything in his life. Blue robes. A level-five tiger under him. Rings along his right hand. Black hair. A pretty face that already understood its own value.
"Isn't that Kang Mu?"
"That's him."
"They say he reached the sixth stage of Qi Condensation at six, and that he cultivates the Kang family's finest method."
The Kang were not a lower-class name. They sat among the high houses: beasts, cultivators, and a rare art that let them raise a companion to their own rank and stand as strong as the thing they rode. Kang Mu was already a disciple of the Beast Sect's leader, which made the next scrap of gossip the only one that explained his presence.
"Then why is he here at all?"
"You idiot. He's here for Lou Yan of the Lou family. They're engaged."
He wore Spirit Awakening like perfume. In the stories he was eighteen. The testing stone would say what it said. He carried the Heavenly Beast Art, found by a great-grandfather after a war ten thousand years gone, and he carried the sort of arrogance talent likes to feed.
He stopped before the registrar. The spear-guard did not challenge him. Challenging him would have been a career with no career after it.
"Register my name," Kang Mu said. "And pair me only with these so-called geniuses."
He walked on without waiting to be liked.
"It is only natural that Young Master Kang show these peasants their place," the registrar murmured, and wrote the name as if it were a blessing.
Influential houses kept arriving. Most of the line was still middle and low class, trying to look as if they belonged.
Then someone pointed at the sky.
"Hey. Look. The Moonflower Sect."
Three women in white came in as though the air had been holding a place for them. Veils. Figures their dresses did not trouble to hide. Moonflower was a women's sect. They cultivated the Moon Goddess technique, drank moonlight at night, and could still work ordinary qi when the sky was unkind.
"They cover their faces because they're too beautiful."
"Fool. Nobody knows why. A man pulled a veil once. He was dead before he saw what lay under it."
"That's why you don't trouble them."
After that the other sects arrived, each making an entrance as if the capital were a stage they had rented.
Six names ran the eastern continent. People argued the order and were still unwise to take any of them lightly: Heavenly Rain, Sunblaze, Moonflower, Puppet, Devil, and Beast. Equal in the ways that mattered. Gold, yellow, white, green, black, brown. Representatives sent to choose children, their own realms tucked out of public sight.
The stands grew loud enough to be foolish.
The Emperor rose, lifted his hands, and the noise died as if it had been cut.
He declared the Entrance Competition open.
Then the cheering returned, because Ju Han liked that part as well.
Candidates took wooden slates with numbers burned into them. A man sprang onto the stage and spoke like a drum.
"You are all qualified to participate. Talent and capability will carry you. There are five phases. You will know the next when you have passed the one before it."
Children from powerful families did not even blink. Some had bought the phases from home weeks ago.
"First test. Age and cultivation. If you are over twenty, or beneath the fifth stage of Qi Condensation, step out now."
People looked about, hoping someone else would be the fool. No one moved. The line held.
For the crowd, the poor children were never the point. The houses were. Kang Mu came forward with his guards and a smirk meant to finish the fighting phase before it began. Overwhelm them. Make them quit. Win. Impress Lou Yan.
Lou Yan was sixteen, at the fifth stage of Mind Accumulation: a genius, and beautiful in the way that made a Beast Sect disciple cross a capital.
Kang Mu set his hands on the circular stone. It stood twice his height, five gems of different colors set into it like a judging eye.
The announcer told him to let go.
"Kang Mu of the Kang family. Age nineteen. Cultivation: Spirit Awakening, seventh stage. Not bad."
The stands erupted anyway.
"What? At that age?"
"Why do you think the Kang sit in the empire's top ten?"
He stood as if heaven had chosen his posture. Pride filled the Kang seats. No one was shocked that he was strong. They would have been shocked if he were not.
"Lou Yan of the Lou family. Age sixteen. Cultivation: Mind Accumulation, fifth stage."
Another wave. She was leaving the stage when a woman in white and a veil was simply there in her path, as if the air had always held that shape.
"Little girl. You have the talent to join our Moonflower Sect. How about it?"
Charming. Polite. The sort of politeness that still expected yes.
"Thank you, Elder. It would be an honor."
"Good. I will see that you receive the finest resources. Many times what you are given now."
Energy lifted Lou Yan toward the Moonflower seats. Inner disciple, just like that. Prestige. A future. Kang Mu's smirk made a small, private twitch that only someone watching for it would have caught.
The line shortened. Influential children kept proving outstanding, because that was what blood and money were for.
Then the last group came.
Three of them.
Two girls, one gold-haired, one silver. A young man whose silver had gold in it, as if even his hair had refused to choose. Their clothes had not been made in this world. Their presence did not belong in a registration line. They looked like gods who had grown bored and decided, for a while, to stand in the dirt.
The strangest part, the part the crowd would worry at all night, was the realm.
All three of them were Qi Condensation.