The Age of Trials: I Take the Gaokao at an Immortal Sect

Synopsis Blood and qi, core machinery, algorithmic permissions, divine contracts. Four incompatible civilizations coexist under one roof, with nine grades determining rank. Sixth grade qualifies you to apply, seventh grade puts you among the elite, and eighth grade is the highest. But any examinee scoring over 850 out of 850 has their records completely erased, leaving a blank file, and is sent to the “make-up exam,” a place with no end in sight. Gu Chi has awakened in this examination hall for the nineteenth time. The steel pocket watch in his arms is forever stuck at forty-one seconds, and the countdown in the upper-right corner of the blackboard always has 180 days left. Everyone thinks he is a seventh-grade prodigy from the Immortal Sect, steadily advancing through the ranks. Only he spends the long nights tallying everyone's time, the wear on every gear, and the fluctuations of every law of qi. But his greatest enemy has never been the examiners or the geniuses of the various academies. It is his own mind. With every resurrection, memories quietly disappear. To fill the gaps, his mind instinctively fabricates false clues. The scattered traces of kindness he leaves behind, however insignificant, flow together into a great river, pushing the world's predetermined course toward an unrecognizable future. Colder still, even the home he fights with all his might to protect is full of traces of seals that have been deliberately patched over. This is a tempering that has lasted through nineteen cycles. When four mutually incompatible powers are forcibly forged together inside the body of an outsider, the gatekeeper at the end of the make-up exam finally realizes: The one who came through the door is no lamb led to slaughter, but a weapon just fired from the barrel.