190 Second Best

Alex logged into the game at midnight. He originally planned on cultivating when he came here, but then he remembered what happened this morning.

"If I also mess up the time of me waking up tomorrow morning as well, I will miss the exam," he thought. So he decided to just not cultivate his Qi for now. Since he could manage to cultivate his body without going unconscious now, he decided to do that instead.

He called out Pearl and told him to cultivate. Within minutes, Pearl was glowing gold, and he had started to cultivate. Intense pain shot throughout Alex's body, but it was nowhere near concerning for Alex. He was perfectly fine handling this sort of pain, even though it hurt a lot. His pain tolerance had really gone up a few realms after the continuous body cultivation in the Tiger sect.

Throughout the entire night, he cultivated his body, and a bit before 7 in the morning, he stopped. He sent Pearl back into his arm and logged out. After getting refreshed, he went to the kitchen to have some food. Hannah didn't seem to have woken up yet, so he prepared breakfast only for himself and ate it.

After having his breakfast, he logged back into the game.

The exam started at 8 am, so he decided to leave now. He slowly trekked down the mountain and reached the Elder's hall a bit before it was time for the exam.

'Woah,' he thought as he looked at the slew of disciples standing outside the Elder's Hall. 'What's going on?' he wondered. There were nearly a thousand of them here.

If it had been only a few disciples in front of the Elder's Hall, he would've just assumed they were here for the exam, but the disciples in here were from all 3 sections of the sect numbering in 4 digits.

'I… am at the right place, right?' he thought.

"Alright everyone, come on in," an Elder said and the crowd of disciples walked in. Alex didn't know what was going on, but since his master told him to come here, he didn't think he was in the wrong reason. So, he just followed the group of disciples.

He passed a number of doors and took a sudden left turn. He sent out his spiritual sense to look at everything and realized that he was walking into a big open area.

As soon as the disciples walked into the open area, nearly 90% of them split from the group and started sitting on the floor all around the room. Alex was a little confused.

'Do I sit down too?' he wondered.

"Alright, Examinees and Viewers come with me," the elder said once more and walked even further.

'That's where I go?' Alex thought and walked along, but he still looked at the different disciples sitting on the ground, as if they were at a concert or something.

'A concert… wait a second. Of course.' He felt like facepalming right now.

'God, I can't believe I forgot about the weekly lectures. No wonder there are so many disciples in here,' Alex thought.

The elder took them through a narrower corridor to a different open room, only this time it didn't have many places to sit as there were fire pits all over the floor.

'Are we supposed to make alchemy out in the open?' he wondered.

The entire floor was about a hundred meters long and 50 meters wide. There were about 60 fire pits on the ground and a section had been separated for the spectators.

"Wait here for the other elders to arrive," The elder said and left. Alex took the time to send away his spiritual sense into the crowd to see who was here.

'Oh, it's the core disciple from yesterday,' he thought when he noticed the core disciple that was with Zhou Mi, the one that had bumped into him the day before yesterday.

He found Zhou Mi right next to her as well. He then found a man next to him, another core disciple, and he was looking directly at him. He started walking and came up right next to him.

Alex looked at him in surprise and he hadn't expected to see a core disciple's robe on the man's shoulders this soon. He smiled and said, "Congratulations, brother Kong. I see I missed your actual ascension."

"Thank you, Brother Yu. You could've come watched me pass it as well. I did it last week," he said.

"I was out of sect for the last two weeks, so I couldn't have even if I knew it," he said.

"It's alright. Why are you here? To spectate?" he asked.

"Oh no, I'm taking part in the exams as well," he said. "What about you? It can't be you are already going to take your examinations for the elder role, right?" he asked.

"Oh, you know about that? I'm quite surprised. Also, No. I'm actually here to cheer for sister Mi who is going to take part in the core disciple exam today," he said.

"Oh," he said as he looked towards Zhou Mi. He also saw the core disciple with her and asked, "by the way, brother Kong. Who is that senior with Sister Zhou Mi? They look so similar," he asked.

Kong Yuhan didn't even have to look back to know who he was talking about. He looked at Alex with a small shocked expression on his face.

"You don't know who that is?" he asked as if not knowing who she was unheard of.

Alex started to get more curious. 'Just who is she to garner such a reaction from a core disciple?' he wondered.

"Brother Kong, you seem to forget that I am quite new around here," he said.

"Yeah, but it's still unusual for anyone to not know who she is. Although, I guess outer sect disciples might have only heard her name and never really seen her."

He then turned to Alex and started whispering as he said, " That is Zhou Mei, the second highest-ranking disciple of the sect."