15 minutes passed and the faculty finished setting up the machine, it looked like a big steel cylinder shaped frame. A pipe connected into the machine drawing water from a nearby container.
The teacher blew a whistle and the students walked back to the middle of the field.
"This is the reflex test, you will all be given cups. Stand in the middle of the circle and wait for the count down. The are nozzles on the top of the cylinder which will drop water droplets randomly, one at a time. The speed at which droplets fall will increase as time passes. Your job is to catch the water in the cup. Pay attention, water can drop anywhere around you. You are allowed to use any skills you have which may help in anyway. Understood?"
"Understood!"
Qiu Ye smiled when she heard she was allowed to use skills. While her body was not up to standard, she knew many skills which could help increase her reflexes and thinking speed. While most of those skills require much more training to reach the proper potential, simply understanding them would help her in this situation. But of course if she trained using them, her results would be better.
When it was her turn, she stepped in to the middle and closed her eyes, she focused and loosely but securely held the cup. When the countdown reached zero, Qiu Ye opened her eyes.
Her pupils dilated as time slowed down, her mind ran at 500% speed but her body remained the same. That was enough, however, she simply planned the most efficient route to catch all the water drops.
From Qiu Ye's perspective, her body moved in slow motion. But to everyone watching, her body spun in a flurry, not a single droplet of water reached the bottom of the cylinder. The test was almost reaching it's end and water was falling basically every millisecond now, yet Qiu Ye was able to catch every single one.
Even the nobles started having trouble towards the end, they were staring in astonishment as Qiu Ye finished the test without dropping a single droplet of water. As soon as the timer ended, Qiu Ye closed her eyes and opened them. The pupil returned to it's usual size.
Qiu Ye stumbled a bit walking out of the circle, but quickly caught herself and stood up straight to look at the leaderboard. Her eyes swam a bit while looking for her name, scanning from the bottom she couldn't find her name until she reached the top. Qiu Ye got first place with a 10/10 in reflexes.
She walked back into the crowd of people and sat down on the grass, the order was the same as last time so there were only two people after her. She still took as much time as she could to regain her energy. She had used this skill extremely often in her past life so she thought it wouldn't be as taxing since she understood it very well, but it sapped a lot more energy than she expected and now she needed all the time she could to regain it.
As she rested, she felt like something was forming barriers in her mind. Like something was fighting against the sudden burden of information and memories. Luckily Qiu Ye's will was dominating and she was able to press down what ever was causing trouble. "Maybe this body needs more time to get use to the new memories" she thought.
The next few tests went by like a breeze. Qiu Ye managed her way through a tough obstacle course, sprinted around the field, jumped over increasing heights, bent her way around a simulated laser field and caught tennis balls thrown at her. Next came the tests she was most interested in.
From the information she gathered from eavesdropping on the nobles, the next two tests were related to archery. One more directly and the other just as a medium for testing. In her past life, archery quickly diminished in popularity due to it's difficulty to learn and general flaws in combat. People found it much easier to use melee weapons or mechanised ranged weaponry due to it's much more simplistic design and skills. Beast soul bows and arrows were also incredibly rare so people wouldn't want to invest into it to be unable to reliably kill beasts of higher grades.
Martial art halls designed skills mostly suitable for fists and melee weapons because injecting energy directly in to weapon strikes is much more efficient than projectiles. This meant Qiu Ye didn't get into archery for at least the first two centuries of her past life. But as she started exploring ruins and finding ancient martial skills, she realised just how powerful archery was and how she could take advantage of it.
This life, Qiu Ye was going to change her style of combat into something much more cunning and ruthless. In her past life due to her inherent training, it was too difficult to make the huge leap to a different style. She wasted energy performing powerful moves and could only properly fight enemies straight on. This time she was going to do something different.
If she did well in the accuracy test, there's a high chance that she would get accepted into an archery program and properly solidify her base in archery. She walked up to the red line drawn in the grass and held up her bow. She nocked her arrow on the inside of the bow and drew the string with her right hand. Most of the other students chose to nock the arrow on the outside, but Qiu Ye found old historical teachings which nocked the arrow on the inside more so she wanted to get used to it as soon as she could. It was a little more difficult as nocking it on the outside made it easier for the arrow to lean on the bow when drawing with the right hand. As she drew the string with the arrow on the inside, she risked having the arrow drifting away from the bow pulling back.
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With the bow fully drawn, she pressed down with her thumb and released the arrow. The arrow spun in the air, the bow wasn't incredibly powerful so Qiu Ye adjusted with a clear arc. Though the shot looked pretty mundane to most of the people watching, the expert's jaws dropped looking at the trajectory of the arrow.
It was slow, flying through the air. It made sense since it was simply a light practice bow to allow people who didn't have any training in archery to give it a try. But as they watched, they saw the arrow spin faster and faster and pick up speed. The air around the arrow shaft seemed to warp and push the arrow forward. From it's initial to final speed, the arrow was at least 3 times faster.
As the arrow plunged into the bullseye of the target, it drilled even deeper. Wood chips and strands of linen were torn from the target as the arrow passed through completely and hit the grass about 3 meters behind the wooden stand.
Qiu Ye smiled in satisfaction, her drill arrow technique translated quite well into this new body of hers. The skill was originally a spear skill which she transcribed into archery. A simple yet profound skill which would give her an upper hand in any fight. Thankfully it didn't require much physical strength and simply needed proper understanding of the skill to be able to be pulled off.
She didn't feel tired like she did when she utilised her other skill on the reflex course, which supported her previous hypothesis. Her name shot up to the top of the board with a 10/10 and she noticed the supervisors at the side discussing and talking. Qiu Ye was glad she didn't exert herself too much as the next test would be the most taxing of all.
Her body was weak, and while she could compensate for her strength with her proficient understanding of her body structure and muscles, she couldn't increase her stamina and endurance just with her mind. Maybe a little bit by eliminating wasteful movements but it still all came down to training and time, which she didn't have.
The teachers told all the students to stand in a row with their legs shoulder width apart and handed them each a 30 pound bow and instructed them to fully draw and hold it when the whistle goes off. Qiu Ye gripped the bow and loosened up her shoulders. She closed her eyes and felt herself connect with the earth beneath her feet and the soft breeze cooling her skin. She then opened her eyes again and waited for the signal.
Once all the students were set up, the coach stood at the side with a stop watch and blew the whistle. Every student aimed the bow at the floor and pulled the string back with their shoulder. As if aiming forward without any arrows, every student held the bow fully drawn.
At first it seemed like most of the students felt pretty confident at the test, but just after a few seconds they started feeling the strain on their shoulders. After one minute, most of the people were starting to quiver (haha). At the crux of the second minute, more than half of the group has already given up.
Qiu Ye stood with her back straight and eyes clothes simply focusing on not over straining her arms. Though she could feel her shoulders tensing up and threatening to cramp, she breathed deeply and soothed her body as much as possible. She knew she wouldn't last much longer but since it was the last physical test she was just going to go as far as possible.
After another 30 seconds, Qiu Ye's entire body was shaking as she struggled to flex her muscles. Her fingers felt numb and suddenly slipped from the string, the force of the bow straightening knocked it out of her left hand and into the grass. Qiu Ye laid down on the grass with her arms sprawled out, breathing deeply. She wasn't looking forward to waking up the next day with extremely sore arms.
Looking at the leader board, it seems like she managed to beat one noble but lost to the other two nobles and another commoner, placing her at 4th place. After about 45 seconds the last noble dropped the bow and sat on the floor like the rest of the students, netting a 9/10. The teachers told the students to rest for the day and arrive at the school hall the next day to complete the final 3 tests. Each student was handed a basic elixir to repair their body so that today's exercise wouldn't impact the results of the tests done after.
Qiu Ye drank the elixir and instantly started refining it. Her body already felt better and her arms were almost back to normal. The teachers assigned each student an identification card with a small screen on the back. It allows students to enter and leave the campus and go to their personal dorm rooms. The screen on the back is a built in personalised statistic screen. Once calibrated with the data it will allow students to keep track of their growth simply by imbuing the card with a bit of their soul force. It essentially replicates the stat screen which shows up when people adventure into fractures - tears in space.
After everyone got their ID cards, they went to their dorm rooms and settled down. Qiu Ye unpacked her bag which arrived from her home and put some of her personal belongings down around. Qiu Ye didn't have many items of sentimental value, the stuff she brought with her were mostly due to practical value or for entertainment purposes.
It was around 3pm now so Qiu Ye finished packing up her things and cleared a space to sit down on the floor. She had her hair tied up in a pony tail during the tests and it was giving her a headache so now she untied it and let her hair fall down to her shoulders.
The night was young and Qiu Ye wanted to make the best of it so she searched through the archives of her mind to pick out any general training sutras and manuals she could find. She immediately got set in practising one of the most important skills she learnt in her past life which helped her boost her power immensely.
Sitting cross legged with the curtains drawn and only a lamp on, Qiu Ye recited the Eternal Pulse Sutra. When she closed her eyes, she could see every vein and capillary in her body pumping blood through her body. She envisioned her heart as an engine and her every organ as part of the machinery which allows her body to function. If she refined and made her heart stronger, she would have more energy and her body would become stronger and faster.
As she continued to practice the Eternal Pulse Sutra, her body was wrapped in a dim red glow. The hours quickly passed as she concentrated on reciting it and improving her body as fast as possible.