"Three… Two… One…"
After ten seconds, to Elder Tantai's surprise, none of the disciples decided to leave the examination.
"Now then, let's continue with the examination, shall we?"
Elder Tantai placed a foot-long purple-colored incense stick into the ground and said, "I want everybody to sit around the incense stick."
The disciples followed her instruction, and a few moments later, all 121 disciples sat around the incense stick.
"The exam will officially begin once I light the incense stick. If you're poisoned, I will immediately apply the antidote, but you will automatically fail the examination."
The disciples swallowed nervously, and they watched as Elder Tantai lit the incense stick.
Once the incense stick was lit, purple smoke began to fill the area quickly, but Elder Tantai remained standing directly beside the poisonous incense stick without a care in the world.
Meanwhile, the disciples quickly began releasing their spiritual energy, covering their body with it so that the poisonous smoke won't be able to touch them. Of course, it required tremendous effort and a lot of stamina to maintain this state, and the disciples could feel their spiritual energy depleting at a rapid rate.
As for Yuan, since he was a peak Spirit Warrior, he had plenty of spiritual energy to spare, and compared to the other disciples, he only needed to expend some of his spiritual energy to block the poison since his spiritual energy was much more powerful.
"Brother Yuan, you don't even need to use any spiritual energy to defend against poison at this level," Xiao Hua's voice suddenly resounded in his head.
"Furthermore, with Brother Yuan's ability to resist poison, something that he'd obtained from consuming the Demonic Spider's Monster Core, the Weeping Serpent's poison won't have any effect on you."
'Really? Let me try it…'
Trusting Xiao Hua's words, Yuan stopped cultivating and covering his body with spiritual energy, allowing the purple smoke to engulf his body.
'Xiao Hua's right. I don't feel any different.' Yuan was pleasantly surprised by this.
However, when the sect elder saw this, she immediately retrieved a brown pill and tossed it at Yuan.
"Eat it quickly or you'll die!" Elder Tantai thought Yuan had already exhausted his cultivation and was exposed to the poison.
"Eh?" Yuan subconsciously caught the brown pill, but he didn't eat it and instead said to her, "But I'm fine."
"What?" Elder Tantai's eyes widened with surprise after hearing Yuan's word, and upon closer inspection, Yuan didn't appear to be struggling at all.
'What is going on?' she asked herself.
Yuan was clearly exposed to the Weeping Serpent's poison, but for some reason, he was completely fine.
'Does he have a unique physique that protects him from poison?' Elder Tantai could only think of this logical explanation to Yuan's situation. However, if that was the case, why didn't he do it early to save some spiritual energy?
Elder Tantai decided to not think too deeply about this as long as Yuan was fine.
"Keep the pill just in case you feel any symptoms. If you feel unpleasant or sick even the slightest at any moment, consume that pill immediately or you will really die," she then said to him.
"I understand." Yuan nodded his head and proceeded to sit there with a calm atmosphere around him.
"..."
Despite listening to their puzzling conversation, the other disciples did not stop focusing on protecting themselves, fearing that if they lose focus for even a second that they might fail the exam.
Fifteen minutes later, the incense stick only burned halfway to the end, and over half of the disciples there were already soaked in sweat, looking like they could barely hold on.
Elder Tantai took note of the disciples who she believes will fail soon and prepared the antidote in advance.
A minute later, the first disciple to exhaust his cultivation base before the entire incense stick burned, and Elder Tantai tossed the pill at him.
The disciple did not hesitate to consume the pill, as he could feel his skin burning the second the smoke touched his body.
After another couple of minutes later, over a dozen disciples swallowed the same pill, failing the examination.
The incense stick lasted for exactly thirty minutes, and at the end of the test, fifty-one disciples failed the examination.
"70 of you remaining, huh? Much better than I'd expected, to be honest." Elder Tantai nodded her head in approval.
"You have ten minutes to rest before we begin the next test." Elder Tantai said to them afterward.
The disciples immediately sat down to cultivate and restore their spiritual energy.
While the disciples rested, Elder Tantai prepared the next test by placing a Training Puppet in the middle of the field.
Ten minutes later, Elder Tantai clapped her hands and spoke loudly, "You are done resting! If you continue, I will immediately fail you! Gather in front of me!"
The disciples quickly stopped their cultivation and stood up after hearing Elder Tantai's words.
A few moments later, all of the disciples gathered in front of Elder Tantai.
"I will now explain the second test." Elder Tantai said as she pointed at the silver-colored training puppet that looked slightly different compared to the ones in the Practice Area.
"Some of you might have seen this before, but this is a special training puppet mostly used by Inner Court and Core disciples because they are more durable than the ones in the Outer Court, and they have a special feature that allows them to gauge how powerful their attacks are."
As her sentence ended, Elder Tantai turned around and punched the training puppet.
Boom!
The impact sounded very powerful, but the training puppet only moved back a couple of meters.
A few seconds later, the training puppet began changing colors from silver to a dark yellow color.
"The colors will determine how much damage it'd sustained. There are three colors— Green, yellow, and red. Green means nonlethal damage. Yellow is lethal. As for red, it means you can kill even a Spirit Warrior magical beast with that strike, and the darker the color the more damage they sustain. In order to pass this test, you must make the puppet turn yellow." Elder Tantai explained.