Chapter 66: Past Exam Questions Collection

"I can't reveal the specifics, but it will be in the next few days. The content of the entrance exam will be announced after the college entrance examination."

Chan Si was tight-lipped, so Chen Mobai could only suppress his curiosity and leave her office.

In the school's cultivation room, Chen Mobai didn't waste any time either. After cultivating the 'Spirit Nurturing and Deity Forging Art' for a while, he stopped when he felt his mind growing weary, and went online to check the entrance exams for the major Daoist Academies from previous years.

Last year's entrance exam involved representatives from the major Daoist Academies setting up nine interconnected formations. The difficulty of these formations progressed from simple to complex, one after another. The threshold for entering the Four Great Daoist Academies was to solve seven formations. However, among all the students in Danxia City, the best performer had only managed to solve six formations. Ultimately, that student could only attend the Star-Gazing Academy, one of the Ten Great Academies.

Chen Mobai frowned immediately upon seeing this. He wasn't entirely ignorant of formations. In fact, through his persistent inquiries with Chan Si over this period, he had gained a thorough understanding of the second-tier Azure Water Formation in the water mansion. Applying what he learned to other similar situations, he considered his proficiency in formations to be among the top three in his class.

So, with great confidence, he spent 100 Merit Points to download the past ten years of actual entrance exam papers from the Immortal Gate Exam Question Database. "Nine Formations Interlocked, Like Strung Pearls." The name of this actual exam paper was quite good, Chen Mobai mused to himself. Then he took out his stationery from his backpack, prepared to calculate the formations, and began working on the problems.

Half an hour later, he wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and dejectedly put down the paper and pen in his hands. He had barely managed to solve the first two formations. By the third formation, nearly half of the knowledge and formation patterns involved were beyond his scope of knowledge and also exceeded the content taught in the nine-year compulsory education textbooks. According to last year's results, solving two formations would qualify one to enroll in one of the Immortal Gate's 120 Prefectures. In other words, Chen Mobai's level reached its limit there.

But Chen Mobai certainly wouldn't admit that. He believed it was because the school taught too little about formations, and he himself had no interest in formations on a daily basis, so he hadn't delved into expanding his knowledge in that area.

So he switched to an actual exam paper set from the year before last. In that year, the Four Great Daoist Academies held separate exams. The Jumang Daoist Academy tested the cultivation techniques of a spiritual herb, requiring candidates to elevate this spiritual herb from first-tier to second-tier within a month. Chen Mobai wasn't very familiar with spiritual plants, so he skipped it. The Wuqi Daoist Academy, on the other hand, gave each eligible student a six-liang piece of refined iron, requiring them to forge it into a flying sword of at least second-tier quality. He skipped that too. The Butian Daoist Academy's entrance exam was to repair a defective formation disk... "Why formations again?" he thought, and skipped it. With his last shred of hope, Chen Mobai looked at the Kunpeng Daoist Academy's entrance exam question: Each student was to take a piece of bark from a second-tier Jade Phoenix Tree, draw a talisman on it, collect lightning and fire essences, and once the talisman reached second-tier, they would be admitted. His face expressionless, he continued to skip, and opened the actual exam paper from three years ago.

This year's exam had even more variations. It required teams of ten people to cooperate in cultivating a spiritual vein, elevating a first-tier spiritual vein to second-tier. This entire process would be recorded. If the cultivation was successful, representatives from the Daoist Academy would grade each team member on their leadership, cooperation, and skills during the process.

Still, it was a complete failure, with not a single person admitted to the Four Great Daoist Academies. Four years ago, five years ago... Chen Mobai finished reviewing the past ten years of actual exam papers, and was left with a blank look on his face. There wasn't a single year's entrance exam that he knew how to do.

However, Chen Mobai never really held out much hope for getting into the Four Great Daoist Academies anyway. His goal had always been the Ten Great Academies. More precisely, the Pure Yang Academy and the Taiyuan Academy. After all, the artificial primal spirit at the National Library, based on his spiritual root talent, had suggested that Chen Mobai follow the path of the Pure Yang Scroll and the Jade Purity Sutra, which offered a slight possibility of cultivating a Nascent Soul. He believed in the state.

Comforting himself in this way, Chen Mobai then looked at the actual exam papers from the years when the entrance exams were held separately, specifically for the Pure Yang Academy and the Taiyuan Academy among the Ten Great Academies. Upon seeing these, he finally felt a glimmer of confidence. Unlike the entrance exams for the Four Great Daoist Academies, which generally required a second-tier cultivation level to complete, the Ten Great Academies' requirements for their students were merely for a top-tier first-tier level of knowledge. Only occasionally, when many students applied in a particular year, would the threshold be raised to the second-tier.

After reviewing the ten years of actual exam papers, Chen Mobai also discovered some patterns. If the Four Great Daoist Academies and the Ten Great Academies jointly set the entrance exam, then it was usually focused on the four main subjects: arts, alchemy, artifacts, and formations. After all, these were fundamentals, and it was easy to distinguish students' aptitudes from these areas. However, if the exams were separate, then all sorts of bizarre and varied questions could appear. For instance, the Pure Yang Academy focused more on one's state of mind. The Taiyuan Academy valued background and powerful spiritual sense. The Five Thunders Academy offered direct admission to those with lightning spiritual roots. The Natural Academy offered direct admission to those with unusual spiritual roots. The Mountains and Seas Academy selected candidates suitable for sword cultivation...

Chen Mobai set his first choice as the Pure Yang Academy, his second choice as the Taiyuan Academy, and his third choice as the local Scarlet Cloud Academy. As for the Four Great Daoist Academies, after reviewing the actual exam papers from previous years, he truly had no confidence left.

Checking the time, he saw he still had a little bit left, so Chen Mobai started browsing the various flagship stores on the Immortal Gate network. He had his eye on a second-tier low-grade 'Profound Yang Purple Fire Talisman'. The Pure Yang Academy's official flagship store would put 100 of them up for sale at 6:45 PM tonight. The price was 68,000 Merit Points. The timing was a bit awkward. Normally, Chen Mobai would already be in the water mansion by then, but he understood. To ensure that every cultivator had a fair chance, and constrained by the limited resources of Geomantic Star, the Immortal Gate released elixirs, talismans, magical artifacts, and similar items at uncertain times. In other words, across 1440 minutes in a day, the major flagship stores could potentially put good items up for sale at any minute. While constantly monitoring would surely secure good items, the most popular elixirs among Qi Refinement cultivators, such as the Three Foundation-Building Treasures, were only listed three times a month. Even Foundation Establishment cultivators couldn't stare at a screen sleeplessly for an entire month, waiting for items to be listed. This was the greatest fairness the Immortal Gate could achieve given its limited resources.

Chen Mobai set an alarm for himself to remind him to snap up the 'Profound Yang Purple Fire Talisman' from the Pure Yang Academy that evening.

After leaving school, he decided not to cultivate today. The college entrance examination was the day after tomorrow, and even if he cultivated, his mind wouldn't settle. He called Qing Nü and invited her to dinner that evening. He had promised her before that he would treat her to grilled fish.

After returning home, Chen Mobai went to the water mansion and caught two descendants of the Azure Blood Carp. He didn't kill them; instead, he took them directly to the enthusiastic owner of the grilled fish restaurant. After Qing Nü finished eating, she couldn't stop praising it. She said she had never tasted such delicious fish in her life.