Chapter 9: 9

Chapter 9: Preliminary Approval

The door of the stress test room was closed tightly, and no one prompted them to continue.

The three of them didn’t enter the door immediately. Red Fedora took out wet wipes and band-aids from her bag and handled her wounds carefully. Blue Vest took out two bottles of sports drinks and gave one to the empty-handed Yin Ren.

“Drink it. It’ll make you feel better.”

Blue Vest took two sips and sat down at the edge of the corridor. “We have plenty of time. Let’s take a break first.”

Yin Ren took the drink with both hands, unscrewed the cap by following the other party, and took a sip.

It was very refreshing and sweet. He liked it a lot.

“You have great mentality, and you don’t panic when you see evil things. The last time we participated in the examination, a young man directly fainted.” Blue Vest sighed and looked at the ceiling.

“This isn’t your first time?”

“Second,” Blue Vest said. “That girl is my cousin. We all belong to a small family. Well, it’s a small clan, but that’s really it. We can’t really study well, but we have some talents, so we’re here to try our luck.”

Yin Ren sat down beside him. “Last time you guys…”

“I couldn’t handle the stress test.” Blue Vest was calm. “I can’t blame others. It was because I wasn’t ready yet.”

“What is the general test for the stress test?”

“I don’t know. The content of the examination changes every year. The evil things used in the vision test weren’t the same batch as last time. Just like a college entrance exam, this place is only serious about your skills. Nothing will be easy.”

There was insufficient lighting in the corridor. The white brush of light shone from the top of his head, making Blue Vest look extremely tired.

Red Fedora had finished wrapping her band-aid and took a few sips of the drink. She was obviously listening to the conversation between the two of them as she interjected with a firm tone, “The test can be retaken every year. It’s not a big deal if you don’t pass. Just come back again next year.”

There seemed to be something behind her words.

“That’s right. Don’t do things like bribing and cheating.” Blue Vest grinned.

Yin Ren drank his drink until the bottle was completely empty.

“I don’t understand… but I’m a bit impressed by your hard work. What’s that saying, ‘too much is just as bad as too little*’?” Yin Ren clinched the bottle as he spoke in a casual tone. “If the two of you force yourself too much, it can easily affect your performance.”

*(过犹不及) Idiom referring to doing too much is just like not doing enough, neither are appropriate. This idiom comes from the story in The Analects of Confucius. You can read about the story in my Kinky Thoughts.

Blue Vest only took his words as a courtesy and wanted to snort, but he choked it back when he looked at Red Fedora.

Red Fedora was looking at her scarred hands thoughtfully.

“Let’s go.” Half a minute later, she straightened up her hat and didn’t say much.

The temperature of the room in the stress test was low, and the room was much smaller than all the previous rooms.

The cement floor was covered in dust, and there was a desk and two chairs on it. A little girl sat motionless on one of the chairs. Her right elbow propped up her arm on the table, posing similarly to an arm-wrestling stance.

Judging by her body, the girl looked no more than five or six years old. Her hair was braided, and her shirt was a brownish yellow color, similar to that of corpse water. The arms under the sleeves were bruised and swollen, looking like they were rotting.

But she wasn’t a rotting corpse.

Her head had an earthy texture, just like someone had chopped off a human head and placed a clay ball with hair in its place. The clay mass was dry and larger than a human head. The flat “face” had no facial features and only deep cracks.

The cracks looked bottomless, and from time to time, soil debris would fall off and be brushed on the table.

Probably because there was no mouth, the little girl was very quiet. A long and slender phantom stood behind her. It was too vague to determine if it was a man or woman.

The phantom put its hand on the girl’s shoulders, and its ten fingers looked abnormal. As soon as the phantom’s neck reached the ceiling, its head disappeared behind the pale wall.

They didn’t say a single word.

Yin Ren had never seen such evil things. Just looking at the evil qi they were giving off, even if Blue Vest and Red Fedora fought together, they wouldn’t win.

Blue Vest swallowed his saliva. “This is… arm wrestling, right?”

“Touching an unknown evil is taboo.” Red Fedora was worried.

No one knew what weird abilities they would have. At least these two didn’t look like they were powerful. Even if Shian wouldn’t let anything bad happen to them, it only ensured that “there would be no aftereffects”, not “there would be no pain”.

“Forget it. I… I’ll go first.” Blue Vest rolled up his sleeves and sat down in the chair.

The desk drawer was facing his stomach, and it was dark inside.

Despite a living person sitting in front of her, the little girl didn’t respond.

Blue Vest wiped the sweat from his forehead, rubbed his palms together, and outstretched his hand.

Swish.

The girl slowly turned her head. As she moved, more broken soil poured onto the table.

Blue Vest stared at the little corpse’s hand, trying his best not to look at the girl’s cracked “face”. He didn’t dare relax his vigilance. Using all his strength, he grabbed the little hand that came toward the table.

Red Fedora and Yin Ren looked at each other in silence. They watched Blue Vest’s face start to turn purple as blue veins burst out on his head.

The little girl’s hand was motionless.

Blue Vest gritted his teeth, took out a charm with his left hand, and attached it to his right wrist.

The charm spontaneously ignited without wind, and from the thin paper ash, another dark blue hand protruded from under Blue Vest’s right wrist. The two hands wrapped around the little girl’s hand, and together they were desperately trying to pull it down.

The dark blue hand was twice as long as a human hand, but it was thin and dry, like a skeleton’s. Its sharp nails pressed against the back of the girl’s hand but failed to leave any scratches on the corrupted skin.

The girl’s little hand seemed frozen in place, not even moving an inch.

After half a minute, she probably got tired of waiting, and a gust of wind blew out from her cracked skull. The ghost hand was instantly covered with dust. Blue Vest screamed in pain as the ghost hand on his wrist seemed to turn into a corpse in the ground. It quickly dried up and rotted, then disintegrated into brown and yellow bones before disappearing into the air.

Without the ghost hand, Blue Vest’s eyes were flushed. He faintly bit his lips, causing them to bleed.

He shivered and fumbled in his pocket, then stuck about six talismans to his lower arm. The next moment, his elbow looked as if it had bloomed into a deformed flower. Six ghostly hands protruded from the bend of his elbow and fiercely grabbed the little girl’s arm.

The little girl tilted her head.

Blue Vest shivered. There was a sticky whine that came out of his throat. He opened his mouth and vomited a large amount of dark yellow, muddy soup.

After a few breaths, the soup turned into a swamp-like, dark brown mud. Despite still having half his strength left, Blue Vest’s hand was easily pressed down by the little girl.

Blue Vest didn’t care about the outcome anymore. He pushed away the tables and chairs, fell to the ground, and scratched his throat in pain. His mouth and nostrils kept spewing out sticky mud. Red Fedora quickly stepped forward in shock. She pulled out a peach wood amulet from her bag and pressed it close to the center of Blue Vest’s brows.

The amulet that was attached to his skin made a sizzling sound like meat being grilled.

Blue Vest finally stopped scratching his throat. He lay breathless on the ground as the mud he vomited gradually became clear.

After tossing like this for more than ten minutes, Blue Vest barely returned to normal. His examination report fell to the ground and was soaked in muddy water. The report had an additional large dark brown fork, which looked like it was painted with muddy water.

“Ah, failed again. You guys go for it. I’ll sit for a while.”

After a while, Blue Vest picked up the report as he spoke weakly. His voice was hoarse and abnormal, and there were painful scratch wounds on his throat with a little blood still oozing out.

The little girl returned to her original posture, facing the doorway.

“Yes, this may be the wrong direction. We have to win it some other way…” Red Fedora stepped on the ground full of mud with a terrified expression.

Yin Ren: “I’ll go second.”

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“No, I’m more experienced. Let me…”

Before Red Fedora finished speaking, Yin Ren had already walked ahead in great strides and sat down.

He didn’t touch the hand, but carefully bent down and plunged one hand into the dark drawer. The desk was the style used by primary school students. It stood to reason that the drawer in the desk wouldn’t be any deeper than half an adult’s arm’s length, but Yin Ren’s shoulder was already stuck in it as he made a groping posture.

“Watch out!” Red Fedora screamed.

As soon as Yin Ren began to grope around the drawer, the little girl stood up slowly. She twisted her stiff joints, climbed on the table with all her limbs, and “looked down” at Yin Ren from above.

The phantom behind her let go of her hands and rushed in Yin Ren’s direction with its ten abnormally long, thin fingers. As the girl approached Yin Ren, the fingers retracted one by one into her palm.

It was a countdown.

Yin Ren continued to keep digging undistracted, without lifting his head.

The little girl didn’t let him go because of this. More broken mud trickled down and hit the side of Yin Ren’s face. The “face” without a facial feature was getting closer to him.

Just before it was about to touch him…

“Found it.”

Yin Blade took out a small red object and resumed his sitting posture. The little girl returned to her original position at a speed not possible for humans and assumed her original posture.

Yin Ren let out an exhale. He first picked up his examination report and put it neatly in front of the little girl. Then he carefully twisted the red thing and stuffed it into her slightly open right hand.

He didn’t touch her the entire time.

The little girl clenched the red object, adjusted the angle of Yin Ren’s examination report, and quickly raised her hand and pressed it. In the “stress resistance test” column of the examination form, suddenly there were… three small red flowers.

Blue Vest, Red Fedora: “……”

Yin Ren smiled politely at the eerie girl. “Thank you.”

The evil thing paused her movement for a moment, and another layer of soil fell from her face. She slowly raised her hand and added another stamp to Yin Ren.

Yin Ren: “……” This little girl was simply too polite.

After stamping the seal, the little girl put it on the table. The desk seemed to have turned into a swamp, and the seal was swallowed in a few seconds. She wiped away the dirt on the table and returned to her original posture.

Red Fedora exhaled. “Sure enough, Shian doesn’t encourage us to come into contact with unknown evil things. The solution was somewhere else.”

Blue Vest made an ugly expression. “As said, I only have myself to blame… There’s no surveillance here. Those two aren’t part of the exam, but they’re examiners.”

He looked at the low ceiling with a sad expression.

“I still lack the ability…”

With the demonstration, Red Fedora didn’t give up the near to seek the far. She immediately bent down and put her hand in the drawer.

However, not long after her hand reached in, Red Fedora trembled violently, and a layer of sweat quickly oozed on her face. As soon as the creepy phantom stretched out its finger, she quickly retracted her hand and retched.

Her report also fell to the ground, and a big fork painted in mud gradually appeared.

In another room.

“How’s the situation?” Professor Li asked.

Fu Xingchuan was collapsed on the recliner while staring intently at the tablet. The screen was divided into two upper and lower screens. One of the protagonists was Yin Ren, and the other was Zhong Chengshuo.

“It’s okay. All the measurements are back. Xiao Yin is generally talented and has good comprehension qualities. Xiao Zhong is perfect, as if he were specifically born for this… Lao Li, Xiao Zhong was similar to you back then.”

His words held a bit of relief. It would be fine if Zhong Chengshuo was actively scouted by them, but instead it was strange that he delivered himself to their doors. As for Yin Ren, apart from his face, Fu Xingchuan didn’t find anything strange.

The Three Divisions of Heaven were a test of power, while the Stress Test Room was a test of wits.

Observation, judgement, reaction speed, courage, and whether there was an “excess of curiosity”. For non-scientific employees, these qualities were related to life and death.

Yin Ren’s approach was correct. If one were to observe carefully and didn’t touch indiscriminately, they would be able to successfully retrieve the item in the desk drawer—this was something that Fu Xingchuan had performed himself. As long as you stuck your hand in, you could feel the thing that people fear the most.

“I remember those two with Yin Ren, Lu Hui and Lu Nana. It’s the same old problem. Her mentality isn’t there, and he’s too eager to succeed.”

Professor Li casually glanced at the screen.

“Yin Ren seems stable. As for Zhong Chengshuo…”

“Zero points in his spiritual vision, just like you. It’s estimated that you can only see extremely evil objects and environmental phenomena. He answered 100% correctly in the random question bank, and his clinical response was frighteningly fast. The last one hour of the VR test…”

The corners of Fu Xingchuan’s mouth twitched.

“The two people who tested with him almost peed their pants—one of them really peed—while Xiao Zhong’s first sentence was to ask, ‘Will this device be used in games?’. For a science post, the standard answer is the same as those who are talented.”

Fu Xingchuan just prayed that there wasn’t anything wrong with Zhong Chengshuo.

Professor Li told him about the “eye wall” incident when they were surveilling the two at the restaurant. So far, Fu Xingchuan has made a preliminary inference.

There were remnants of evil qi on Yin Ren’s dagger. When the Evil Spirit seal was broken, it probably became disordered and stained its evil qi everywhere. At the time of the incident, Zhong Chengshuo said that he was with Yin Ren. This could be a smokescreen; however, it was difficult to say who was the one that was throwing it.

If the ghost was the “wasn’t easy to sense things” Zhong Chengshuo, it must mean it was something extremely difficult to deal with. It could be under the influence of an Evil Spirit, so being overly cautious wasn’t an exaggeration.

As for the Evil Spirit itself, Fu Xingchuan didn’t consider it. No matter how powerful it was, it was essentially something with substance and couldn’t possess humans.

While Fu Xingchuan was pondering, Zhong Chengshuo had completed the last test. Yin Ren also left the stress room with the Lu siblings. He raised his head and walked straight past the “black door”.

The stronger the ability, the greater the attraction emitted by the black door. It was a targeted deduction point, specializing in the treatment of difficult miscellaneous problems like “self-proclaimed protagonist” and “those who have a death wish”.

He didn’t know whether it was a lack of strength or because of a cautious personality, but Yin Ren didn’t touch this trap.

Within half a minute, a short message popped up at the top of the tablet:

[Science Post (Red Seal) Physical Examination Passed: 005-Luo Bin, 011-Zhong Chengshuo]

[Non-scientific Post (Black Seal) Physical Examination Passed: 012-Yin Ren]

The author has something to say:

Mud-faced girl: ? I’m supervising the exam. Why is someone coming to arm wrestle with me? So aggressive!

Lord Ghost King: As long as I become a waste, no one can use me.jpg

Salted fish Yin, specializes in horror films flag syndrome! Although he doesn’t seem to be in trouble (……

Kinky Thoughts:

The idiom of how the saying “too much is just as bad as too little” comes from a story in The Analects of Confucius. It tells the story of Zeng Zi, who was a dutiful and respectful son.

One day, Zeng Zi and his father were weeding the fields when he accidentally cut off the crops. His father became extremely angry and beat him black and blue until he fell unconscious.

When he woke up, not only was he not angry, but he stood up and happily said to his father, “I have offended you just now, and you were right to teach me a lesson. Please don’t be angry with me.” Then he returned to his room and practiced his zither to let his father know that his body was healthy and there was nothing wrong.

When Confucius heard about this, he thought that Zeng Zi had gone too far. “If Zeng Zi comes, don’t let him in.”

When Zeng Zi heard about this, he sent someone to explain to Confucius. Confucius then replied, “Have you not heard the story of Shun? Shun served his father, Gusou, very diligently and thoughtfully. When his father asked him to come, Shun would obediently come, but if his father wanted to kill him, he would never let his father find him. If his father beat him with a whip, he would endure the punishment, but if his father were to use a cane, he would run away. Therefore, Gusou didn’t commit the fault of not keeping with one’s duty as a father and Shun didn’t lose his honesty and beautiful filial piety. Zeng Zi, you let your father violently beat you regardless of your physical condition and didn’t try to evade death. If you were to die, your father would’ve committed grave injustice. Compared to unfilial piety, what is more important? Are you not also the subject of the Son of Heaven?”

Hearing this, Zeng Zi said, “I have committed a serious crime!” so he went to Confucius for help examining his faults.

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