Alex was curious about what was happening inside the barrier.

The second person had gone in already but the first one hadn’t come out just yet. The old man called out another person, and he went in. why were the people coming out? Alex carefully listened to the people around him and realized that the people who passed were being sent on to the next stage of the test, while the ones who failed were being sent out of the tower.

There were many who had taken the test beforehand and at least understood what was happening inside the barrier. Who passed and who failed was being actively decided.

What counted as pass and fail though, no one truly understood just yet.

More and more people began going up the stage to take their tests, and soon a line formed as everyone wanted to be one of the people that took the tests early.

No one knew if there was a quota of some sort for the second test, so they needed to be one of the first few ones to pass.

Alex sat in the line that snaked around the entire room and realized he was one of the people more toward the back of the room. With his cultivation base, he hadn’t managed to force his way into the line at the front.

Judging by the size of the line and the rate at which people were passing, it was going to take over 10 hours to just get to him. He had a long wait ahead of him.

Thankfully, it didn’t look like there was any sort of quota for the second test. Either that or the first test was so severe that enough hadn’t passed to fill the quota.

Either way, Alex’s turn was here and that was all he had to worry about now.

Alex entered the barrier and was immediately told “Put this on.”

He was handed the belt he had seen the man pull out. He quickly took it and put it on. As soon as he put it on, Alex felt a sort of numbness around his Dantian as though it had stopped working.

He panicked for a quick second before realizing that nothing bad was happening. Then, he realized something else had happened.

The concealment technique that he semi-permanently used had been shut down completely. Any Qi going in and out of the Daintian had been blocked.

Alex didn’t understand what the point of this was at all.

“You’re done,” the man said and asked back the belt.

Alex handed it back and the man continued him along. He looked at the front of saw the woman standing next to the puppet, watching the man before him hit it.

The man struck the puppet and the woman stared at the result. Immortal Origin 8th realm.

“Fail!” the woman said and the man disappeared.

Alex was surprised by the result. Immortal Origin 8th realm had failed? That meant he had basically no chance at all.

“Hit the puppet with your best shot,” the woman said.

Alex nodded and did as he was told. Only, not entirely.

He wanted to get into the sect, but he also knew that he had to hide himself. He needed to enter the sect with the worst result he could possibly give. Show too much and he would have people wanting to know his secret.

He couldn’t afford that.

Alex created ice spears around him and filled them with just enough Qi where he could do good but not great.

He let the spears go and it struck the puppet. Frost appeared around the puppet for a second before it all melted away and the results were shown on the screen.

Immortal Ascendant 4th realm.

The woman gave the slightest hint of a surprise.

“You pass.”

Alex looked toward the woman in surprise. He passed? Why had the person before him failed with a better result?

Even as he tried to understand the situation, he was teleported away, arriving at a different hall with a scarce few people compared to before.

Nearly 1800 people had taken the test before him, and no more than 200 remained now. Nearly 9 in 10 people failed on the very first test.

A few people looked at Alex with a hint of surprise on their faces. Alex thought it was because of his cultivation base, but that should have shown some more surprise. No, this was something else.

‘The test hadn’t been for cultivation base,’ Alex thought.

The man had used the belt to remove any technique Alex was using at the moment and the woman had then tested him.

If all they wanted was to check his cultivation base, the man alone would be enough. But no, they had him use his attack.

‘They’re testing how strong we are compared to our cultivation base?’ Alex thought and the answer came to him right away.

Battle Power.

These people were testing Battle Power.

‘I showed a Battle Power of 3,’ Alex thought. No wonder the woman had shown surprise. Fang Yuxie had said that Battle Power of 1 or 2 was considered great, but 3 and 4 were considered incredible in this world.

‘Wow! Good thing I didn’t use my main skill,’ Alex thought. They would’ve realized that his Battle Power when used in his True Immolation Strike reached 10. He wondered what chaos that would bring to his life.

Alex waited to the side, wondering when the second test was going to start. There were at best 400 people behind in that line, so it should have been anytime soon.

People continued being second up every so often, slowly improving on the number. When the total number reached 228, it stopped.

That was the final person to come.

‘The second test will start anytime soon now,’ Alex thought. All he had to do now was wait.

The examiners came around early half an hour later, and everyone got back on their feet, ready for whatever the next test was going to be.

The woman stepped up front this time around and pulled out a stack of Talismans. She threw the stack to the person below and told him to pass it around.

A few minutes later, everyone in the room had the talisman in their hands.

“You have half an hour to fill up this talisman. Only fill it up with truths as we will test you on it later on.”

Alex looked at the talisman in his hand and saw a list of very intricate questions, each with long explanations to help the test taker understand just what was being asked of them to put in there.

There were questions such as where he had come from, what their family status was like, and whose bloodline, if any, they had.

Then there were questions about their professions if they were part of any. If they were, how good were they in said professions?

The questions also asked about the weapon they used and the weapon intents they had developed. They wanted him to answer everything precisely. Alex looked at the questions and wondered how truthfully he should answer these questions as one of them was about the previous sects he had been part of.

After thinking for a while, he began filling it up.