With his train of thought now straightened out, what followed was only natural.
Suddenly, Jiang Chen's spiritual sense stirred slightly. Joy welled up in his heart as his body shot toward the spot where the spatial fluctuations were emanating: "This is it—open up for me!"
Jiang Chen was brimming with confidence as he launched himself toward that patch of void.
In that instant, a blinding light erupted from the void like a bolt of lightning streaking downward. The white light flashed, and Jiang Chen's figure vanished from the labyrinth.
The next moment, the surroundings returned to complete calm. Jiang Chen had disappeared from where he stood.
Whoosh!
Jiang Chen's figure touched down on a stretch of open ground. Behind him stood a palace—the very same one they had entered earlier.
The only difference was that he now stood at the palace's back entrance, whereas before he had gone in through the front.
"So I made it out after all," Jiang Chen murmured, a trace of a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. Just then, footsteps sounded nearby, followed by a round of applause.
"Not bad, not bad. You found the way out in under a quarter of an hour. It seems your attainments in spatial formations are quite impressive."
The praise came from the person in charge of this stage—a middle-aged man in crimson robes, whose expression radiated undisguised admiration.
Jiang Chen smiled faintly and clasped his hands courteously. "I had some luck on my side."
The crimson-robed man raised an eyebrow. "On the path of martial cultivation, there may be the occasional stroke of fortune now and then. But your result is the best anyone has achieved at this stage so far, and it's unlikely anyone who comes after will surpass you. In this particular domain, you are the most talented prodigy of this entire selection!"
Jiang Chen chuckled. "I was fortunate enough to receive guidance from a great expert in the past, which gave me at least a superficial understanding of spatial formations."
There was not a hint of arrogance in his words. His composed, unruffled demeanor only deepened the crimson-robed man's admiration.
"Well done. It's rare for a young man to remain so level-headed in the face of both praise and censure."
The second stage of the examination gave each batch half an hour to complete. One after another, participants continued to emerge from the labyrinth.
Of the twenty or thirty who had passed the first stage, only nine managed to walk out by the time the half-hour expired—not even ten.
The elimination rate was truly staggering.
A batch of a hundred people had been whittled down to just nine. And there was still one final stage of the qualifying round left. Judging by the attrition rates of the first two stages, the elimination rate of the last one would doubtless be just as severe.
Approximately eighteen to nineteen thousand participants had entered this competition.
At a hundred per batch, that meant nearly two hundred batches.
If each batch managed to keep around nine people through the second stage, that would leave close to two thousand. But according to what the person in charge had said, no more than five hundred would ultimately pass the qualifying round.
By that reckoning, the third stage of the qualifying round would be even more ruthless. Out of those nine remaining, perhaps only two or three would survive.
Among this batch of a hundred, only nine remained—and every last one of them was an elite, or at the very least considered themselves one.
As a result, the wariness between them grew all the more pronounced.
At this juncture, cooperation was obviously out of the question. They were direct competitors now.
Everyone wanted someone else eliminated so that they could stay.
After all, once they passed the third stage, they would have cleared the qualifying round and earned the right to serve under the City Lord's Manor—and with that, to mount a serious bid for the honored position of a City Lord's Manor vassal.
The remaining nine were led to the entrance of the third stage.
The one in charge was a bald old man, flanked by two middle-aged assistants.
Seeing that nine people from this batch had survived, they were somewhat surprised.
"Not bad—nine people from this batch? It seems the quality here was rather high," the bald old man remarked, clearly taken aback.
A middle-aged man beside him grinned. "Old Lu, how many of these nine do you think will pass the third stage?"
The bald old man laughed heartily. "I won't make idle guesses. But I have a feeling this batch won't do poorly. It might even turn out to be one of the top-performing batches."
By now, Jiang Chen and the other eight had arrived before them.
The bald old man smiled. "First, allow me to congratulate you talented ones. The fact that you've made it here means you've already proven yourselves one-in-a-hundred prodigies. However, going forward, you must demonstrate that you are one-in-a-thousand. Only by passing this third stage will you have truly cleared the qualifying round. If you fail this stage, everything you've achieved before amounts to nothing."
The old man's words sent a chill through the hearts of all nine.
They understood the logic, of course. They had all known it already.
But hearing it spoken aloud by the examiner carried an entirely different weight.
"The third stage is a comprehensive test. It will assess your combat strength, your speed, your willpower, and your courage all at once!"
"Remember—this stage carries a genuine risk to your lives. If anyone wishes to withdraw, now is the time. Once the examination begins, there will be no turning back. Life and death may hinge on a single moment," the bald old man warned.
Withdraw?
In the world of martial cultivation, the very concept of surrendering did not exist. Every person who dared to participate in this selection was someone who refused to bow to fear of death.
Judging from the expressions on their faces, not a single one had any intention of giving up.