"You do not meet the cultivation requirement. Go back."
Even though Shura had mentally prepared himself for this exact moment, hearing the verdict in reality made him feel like the ground had crumbled away beneath his feet.
"Hahaha, trash!"
Wuchen laughed out loud when he heard this, prompting others to join him as more laughter followed, growing louder by the second.
"Of course he failed!"
"Did the fool really expect anything else?"
"You should accept reality, runt. Come kneel and serve me. At least that way, your pathetic life might still have some value." Wuchen smirked in contempt.
However, Shura didn't even glance at him and ignored him completely.
Since he knew this would happen and still dared to come here, he naturally had something to rely on.
Taking a deep breath, he calmed his heart.
"Wait, Elder. I have something."
Reaching into his sleeve, he took out a small bronze token, looking somewhat ancient and heavy, carved with the sigil of the Han Clan elders.
The moment the token appeared, no one laughed, and even Elder Han Rong's eyes narrowed.
"That is…" someone in the crowd whispered in disbelief.
"A Clan Elder Token…"
Shura held it out respectfully and said, "This belonged to Elder Han Liang."
Elder Han Liang was a former elder of the Han Clan and the late husband of the old lady who adopted Shura.
According to clan law, an Elder Token could override one eligibility rule for the summoning ritual.
But once the token was used, the holder would permanently relinquish the right to the elder seat it represented.
In fact, even without the seat, the token itself was a treasure, easily worth thousands of Dust Shards, enough for an ordinary person to live in comfort for the rest of their days.
Granny Liang could have sold it and secured her own future, and yet, instead, she had placed it in his hands, knowing all too well that in the history of the Han Clan, only a handful of ineligible people ever succeeded in entering a Gate.
No one present could comprehend her reasoning, and they all waited for Elder Han Rong, who looked at the bronze token for a long moment before raising his eyes towards Shura.
"Are you certain… that you wish to exchange this Elder Token for the right to participate in the Summoning?"
His voice was calm, but the meaning was clear.
Once used, the token will be gone forever. The legacy of Elder Han Liang, spent in a single, desperate gamble.
"Yes, Elder."
Shura cupped his fist and bowed politely. He had already made up his mind.
Moreover, Granny Liang had placed her faith in him, and he would not dishonor that trust by being indecisive at this moment.
"Very well." The elder reached out and took the token. "It is settled. You are permitted to participate in the Summoning Trial."
Placing the token beside him, he wrote another name onto the wooden register.
[Han Shura.]
A ripple spread through the crowd.
"Hmph! It's nothing more than a mayfly dreaming of swallowing the sun just because it has wings and a mouth!" Wuchen snorted loudly.
However, Shura paid him no mind.
This silent dismissal caused many to look at him with approval, while some took him for a fool, including the cold beauty Han Meiling, whose sharp eyes lingered on him for a brief second before turning away.
At the registration table, Elder Han Rong closed the wooden ledger.
"The registration is complete. Everyone, follow me to the Gate Platform."
In an instant, everyone quieted down and obediently followed the elder as he led them deeper into the heart of the valley.
Soon, they arrived at a vast, open field surrounded by lines of runes.
At the center of the field was a collection of portals glowing in two distinct colors: a vibrant red and a fiery orange.
Actually, at the far end of the platform was a third type of portal, completely out of place like a bizarre anomaly.
It was a hole of pure blackness, radiating an aura of such an overwhelming despair that it seemed to suck the very hope from the air around it.
No one had been found eligible to enter it, and it had existed there for thousands of years. For this reason, the Han Clan had long ago labeled it as the "Dead Gate."
Speaking about the eligibility to enter a Gate, it was said to depend on one's potential.
As for how, exactly? Shura had no idea.
'Compared to other clans, the Han clan is simply too backward.'
While he cursed the Han clan in his head, one by one, the youths began stepping forward, entering the portals of the lowest difficulty: the Red Gates.
Although a genius like Meiling could enter an Orange Gate considering her cultivation, she only gave it a look and still chose the Red Gate.
Even Wuchen, who had been boasting so loudly about going into an Orange Gate, meekly chose a faint Red Gate, completely forgetting his earlier bravado.
At some point, after the fatty Jin also disappeared into a swirling red vortex, it was finally Shura's turn.
Knowing his own limits, he bypassed all the dark red portals and came to a stop before the lightest, palest red-colored portal, as if it were barely holding its shape.
'At least this one shouldn't reject me,' he thought.
But as the old saying goes, man proposes, and heaven disposes. The very instant his fingertips made contact with the shimmering surface of the Gate—
Zap!
A violent, electrical current shot up his arm.
"Hiss!"
Shura's hand was flung backward as if he'd touched a live wire, and a searing pain, like being branded with a hot iron, made him suck in a breath of cold air.
The sleeve of his robe was torn to shreds, and strange, red tattoos, like strips of swirling designs that had always been on him like a birthmark, appeared in the light.
Nevertheless, Shura ignored the pain, the torn cloth, and the revealed marks.
It was all meaningless because he realized that he couldn't even enter the lightest Red Gate.
"Damn it!"
He cursed out loud.
Unable to accept this failure, he tried again and again.
But the more he tried, the more violent the backlash became.
The Gate seemed to actively despise his touch, so much so that the final rejection directly sent him flying backward, rolling on the ground in dust.
His body convulsed due to the residual shock.
Unfortunately, as he forced himself to his feet once more, the Gate before his eyes began to flicker violently, meaning it was almost reaching the limit of energy the clan had allocated to it for maintaining its operation.
In fact, it was for this severe consumption of energy that these Gates waste on rejecting ineligible people that an eligibility test was conducted beforehand.
"No! No! No!"
Shura roared in denial as cold dread washed over him, because he understood that if he didn't enter the Gate soon, allowing it to stabilize, it would vanish, and once the Gate vanished, he would be officially disqualified and would be escorted down from the platform.
A wave of despair washed over Shura, and he felt suffocated, as if the entire world were against him.
'Why, why, why?! I gave everything I had! So why can't I enter when scum like Wuchen can? Am I truly not fated to walk the path of a cultivator?'
Feeling a wave of dizziness, his vision blurred, and the disappointed sigh of Elder Han Rong and the mocking whispers of the crowd faded into the background.
The world dissolved around him, and all of a sudden, he found himself standing alone on a strange cliff, engulfed by an impenetrable fog.
Swoosh!
A chilling wind whipped at his clothes, and a female voice, ancient and timeless, as if carried across millennia from a forgotten past, whispered directly in his mind.
'Fate is strong before the coward and weak before the courageous. No matter what it takes, you must never give up. Be the master of your own fate!'
"Who's there?!"
Startled out of his stupor, Shura screamed and whipped his head around, only to find himself back on the Gate Platform.
The fog was gone, replaced by the same Red Gate flickering weakly, on the verge of disappearing.
'Be the master of your own fate.'
It felt like a dream, yet the words echoed in his head.
Phew—!
Taking a deep breath, Shura forced himself to stand tall.
It didn't matter if that encounter was a hallucination or a message from some ancient being.
What mattered was that it made him realize one undeniable truth: to master his fate, he had to become stronger, and for that, he could never, ever give up.
If he were to die, then so be it.
But he would die on his feet, fighting. He would never, ever accept a life of slavery.
Having his mind made up, a fire ignited in Shura's eyes.
"Ahhhhh!"
He thought no more, and with a loud roar, he charged at the flickering Red Gate like a madman.
This time, no matter how fierce the backlash, he planted his feet and pushed forward.
Blood trickled from his eyes, nose, and ears. The skin on his hands sizzled and peeled away. His muscle fibers tore and snapped one by one.
The stench of burning flesh filled the air.
But this scene of utter horror, instead of breaking his spirit, seemed to snap something deep inside him.
Since he was already crippled, what more did he have to lose?
He pushed with everything he had, pouring his very soul until all that remained of his hand was all bones.
And carved into those bones were the same strange tattoos that were on his skin, the origin of which was a mystery even to him.
Unfortunately, the portal still refused to let him move forward even a single inch.
For a heart-stopping moment, it felt as if all his struggles were for naught. A fool's futile endeavor.
He would soon be crippled for life and left like a living joke for the entire clan to laugh at.
But it was then that something unexpected happened.
The strange tattoos on his exposed bone, when they came in direct contact with the Gate's energy, flared to life with a faint glow. And before anyone could react or see what happened—
Swish!
Shura vanished.
Leaving behind the Red Gate that had stabilized.
It was a miracle.