The village elder looked at the noisy crowd and said, "Okay hush everyone, I know you are excited about the selection, but now the martial school examiner is going to explain some important points of the selection so pay attention."

Hearing the elder's words, everyone stopped talking and remained silent, waiting for the examiner to speak.

Seeing this, the old man was satisfied and nodded to the examiner who soon began to speak: "We are part of the Ferocious Fists Martial School and as you may already know we are doing some tests to find young people with talent in martial arts to enter our school."

"Anyone between the ages of 5 and 15 and who has a cultivation of at least the 3rd stage of body refinement can sign up to take the test, to sign up just talk to the elder in your village and then he will give it to me a list of all participants."

The examiner paused for a moment and then continued: "We will perform 3 very simple tests, the first will be a test of strength, in the second we will measure your affinities with the elements and in the third we will measure your willpower."

Listening to the examiner's words Cyrus was not surprised by the first and second tests, but the third one left him surprised and he thought: "Willpower... I wonder how they are going to test this."

Having finished explaining the tests, the examiner then said: "The tests will be done tomorrow at 7 am so for those who are going to take the exam, don't be late, that's all."

When the examiner finished speaking the crowd exploded into noise with everyone talking at once discussing the exam.

Seeing this, the elder once again interrupted the noise, saying: "Enough, you all go home, the exam will be tomorrow, now let the martial school people rest for a while, you can discuss freely at your home."

Hearing the old man's words, the crowd began to laugh and dismiss each other as they talked.

As Cyrus and Ryan walked towards their homes, they kept talking excitedly, Ryan turned around and asked Cyrus, "Do you think the tests will be too hard?"

Cyrus then replied, "Of course the tests will be difficult, even my father failed the martial school test when he was out of the village."

Ryan nodded and said: "Well it doesn't matter even if it is very difficult, we will definitely pass."

Seeing his friend confidence, he just smiled, he didn't know how difficult the test would be, but he wasn't going to give up on this chance, he would give it his all.

Meanwhile in the northern part of the village the village elder is taking the martial school examiners to a house where they could stay for the night and rest.

The old man entered the house and said: "Here it is, I know it's not as luxurious a house as you might be used to, but you can rest well here."

The older examiner smiled kindly and said, "Don't worry about it, I thank you all for your hospitality, I couldn't ask for more than that."

The other 2 examiners agreed, seeing this the old man smiled and said goodbye saying that they could call him at any time if they had any problems.

So as soon as the old man left the house, the gentle expression left the faces of the 3 examiners and what replaced it was a frightening smile.

One of them couldn't help but burst into laughter: "HAHAHAHA... I always feel like laughing at times like these, I could hardly hold back 'I thank you for the hostility' HAHAHAHAHA... you're so two-faced Noah, I almost couldn't help myself when you said this."

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

Seeing his friend couldn't stop laughing, Noah looked at him with a smile on his face and said: "You have to say things like that to fool these hillbillies, I had no other choice."

Then he looked around and sat down on one of the chairs in the room and said with a disgusted expression: "But this place is really rubbish, look, this house really must be the worst place we've been to on this entire trip."

Then the third examiner also sat on another chair and said, "Of the places we've been to, this is definitely the poorest, but what irritates me the most is having to go through this blatant pretense, why don't we just kidnap these brats? It would be easier."

Then Noah spoke with a joking expression on his face: "You know we can't do that Yan, because you might draw attention from those fair schools with your stupid rules of how cultivators should behave 'It's wrong to use mortal children as slaves' you know stupid rules like that."

The other two then started laughing at Noah's jokes and then Yan turned and said: "Okay, really they are a pain in the ass and a bunch of hypocrites they despise mortals as much as we do, anyway are you ready for tomorrow?"

Kyle, who hadn't stopped laughing yet, said: "Yes, I already got everything ready, we just need to install the matrix tomorrow."

Yan nodded and said: "Well, I can't wait to get out of this end of the world, as soon as I get back, I'm going to spend a month just having fun with different women."

Kyle laughed and said: "A pervert as always just thinking about women huh, I particularly like missions like this, they make it fun for me to trick innocent people and the look on their faces when they discover the truth is always something that makes me excited."

Yan looked at his companion's expression and spoke with disgust: "And you call me a pervert if you look in the mirror, you bastard."

Seeing that the two were about to get into another argument, Noah hurried over and said: "Ok, enough, you two are weird..., leave that aside for now we need to prepare for tomorrow, after all, keeping a straight face during all this is a challenge, so let's get some rest."

Hearing Noah's words, the two stopped arguing and started looking for a place to rest.

Meanwhile everyone in the village was busy, the children started to prepare for the tests and their parents did their best to give their children tips on how not to be nervous and do their best and cheer them up saying that everything would work out.

Meanwhile Cyrus was in the garden of his house practicing the movements of his fist martial skill with Ryan.

Ryan was only at the beginning of the 4th stage of body refinement so Cyrus had to suppress his cultivation to train with him.

They continued to train until the end of the afternoon when Ryan said: "I think that's good for today, I'm going home to rest for tomorrow, you also want to do the same Cyrus, I know you're crazy and train until exhaustion, but tomorrow we have to be in our best condition."

Cyrus laughed and said, "I know, I plan to rest for tomorrow too don't worry."

Ryan then said: "Okay then I'll go, but first let's make a promise."

Cyrus was surprised and said, "A promise?"

Ryan smiled and said: "That's right, we're both going to pass this test and then we're going to explore the world together and go to all kinds of places and meet all kinds of people, after all I know you, you're the silent type if you go out alone it's easy to be mistaken for a mute, so you need someone like me to liven things up."

Cyrus laughed loudly at his friend's joke and said: "Okay then, but you're going to have to train a lot so that I don't leave you too far behind, after all I'm not going to have dead weight on my team."

Ryan laughed back and said, "You'll see if I train seriously, I can get a lot stronger than you, so we'll see who will be the dead weight."

So, the two said goodbye while Ryan went to his house, Cyrus then started to prepare something to eat while thinking, "Well things will definitely be more fun with Ryan around so I hope we pass the test."

Thinking about his future adventures, Cyrus smiled and then continued eating his meal in a good mood.

Meanwhile, the atmosphere throughout the village was the same, everyone excited and happy with the possibility of entering a martial school, several friends promising to go on adventures together and even some young couples promising to get married after passing the exam and in this atmosphere everyone from the village went to sleep and many couldn't sleep, as they were very excited about tomorrow, one of them, of course, was Ryan, who wouldn't sit still.

The next day Cyrus got up early and went towards the entrance of the village where the tests would take place and it didn't take long for him to see a crowd already around the place.

Cyrus ran towards the place and soon heard a familiar voice calling him: "Hey Cyrus here."

Cyrus then turned around and saw Ryan along with some children from the village so he ran towards them and quickly greeted everyone.

Then he looked at Ryan who had two dark circles around his eyes and laughed as he said, "Dude you look terrible what happened?"

Ryan got in a bad mood and replied, "Shut up, I just couldn't sleep well last night, but that won't bother me at all today."

Cyrus laughed and was going to continue with the game, but before he could say anything he saw the examiners approaching and so he remained quiet waiting for them to start the tests.