After Jiang Yuan and Shen Hanbing moved away from the registration area, they arrived on the other side of the square.
Jiang Yuan stopped and asked Shen Hanbing, “Who was that person just now?”
“That was Ye Xingchen, the young master of the Ye family. He’s a really repulsive person. When I see his hypocritical appearance, I can’t help but want to kill him!” Shen Hanbing expressed her disgust when talking about the person.
“Oh? What makes you dislike him so much?” Jiang Yuan inquired.
Shen Hanbing responded with disdain, “If it weren’t for the fact that he’s the son of the Martial Arts Union’s Zhongzhou Branch Master, I would have killed him with a single strike a long time ago.”
“I see,” Jiang Yuan immediately understood. No wonder the young man’s words had such influence; he was the son of someone in power.
“In any case, he’s no good person,” Shen Hanbing concluded.
Just as she finished speaking, her communication talisman on her person buzzed.
After infusing it with her spiritual energy, a man’s voice came through.
“The Earth Ranking is calling for an emergency meeting. All Earth Ranking members staying in Zhongzhou are required to attend within half an hour.”
Hearing the message from the communication talisman, Shen Hanbing furrowed her brows. “An emergency has come up. Master, you stay here for the assessment, I need to go.”
“Go ahead,” Jiang Yuan nodded indifferently.
Shen Hanbing nodded in response and then with a swish, turned into a black shadow and departed.
Jiang Yuan remained in the square and waited for the assessment to begin.
Half an incense stick’s time later, several guards carried a stone tablet to the center of the square.
An elderly man in his sixties stood in front of the stone tablet and announced, “The Martial Arts Union’s assessment is divided into three stages.”
“The first stage is the Power Assessment.”
“The second stage is the Perception Assessment.”
“The third stage is the Trial Assessment.”
“The first stage, the Power Assessment, serves as a preliminary round. Those who fail this assessment will be eliminated and won’t qualify for the subsequent stages.”
It was widely known that the Power Assessment measured not just strength but also various attributes like explosive power and endurance.
Strength is relative; when a person attacks a target, they must also withstand the same force. If a person has the strength of a thousand jin (catty) in their punch but their physical endurance can’t keep up, they’ll get injured due to being unable to bear their own strength.
However, this scenario is unlikely to occur. In most cases, if a person’s strength passes the assessment, their physical endurance will also meet the standard.
Therefore, the Power Assessment became a universal screening criterion in the country.
After a brief pause, the elderly man continued, “The rules for the Power Assessment are simple: use all your strength to strike the stone tablet with one punch.”
“The stone tablet is enhanced with a special array that can accurately calculate the strength of each punch. The number of glowing halos will determine your strength. One halo represents a thousand jin of strength, and so on. Ten halos signify passing.”
Hearing the elder’s words, the people present couldn’t help but be astonished.
Ten glowing halos.
This represented ten thousand jin of power!
What does that mean?
The average person’s punching strength averages around two hundred jin.
At Body Refining Stage 1, it’s around three hundred jin.
At Body Refining Stage 2, it’s about four hundred fifty jin.
And so on, with each level of cultivation, punching strength increases by fifty percent.
By the time you reach Body Refining Stage 9, your punching strength will be around seven to eight thousand jin.
Body Refining Realm focuses on tempering the physical body which can enhance strength.
However, once you step into the Yuan Condensation Realm, you’re focused on cultivating your elemental energy, and it won’t further enhance your physical strength. So, no matter how high you advance in cultivation beyond that, your strength won’t increase anymore; it’ll only increase your elemental energy reserves.
If you don’t specifically train your physical body, even if you reach the True Martial Realm or higher, your strength will still be at the level of Body Refining Stage 9.
Even among the people present who had stepped into the Yuan Condensation Realm, very few had achieved the strength of ten thousand jin.
After entering the Yuan Condensation Realm, most people only focused on cultivating elemental energy and neglected physical training, and therefore, they couldn’t achieve such a feat.
This was essentially a shortsighted approach, as rapid cultivation without a stable foundation was not a wise strategy.
The physical body is the foundation of cultivation, and only by making it strong can you go further and last longer on your martial path.
The purpose of the Martial Arts Union’s Power Assessment was to eliminate those martial artists who were too hasty, lacked a stable foundation, or focused only on quick progress.
After the elderly man announced the rules, the first stage of the Power Assessment quickly began.
The order of participants was determined by the order of registration. Jiang Yuan had registered relatively late, so he was placed near the end.
One by one, the participants were called by name and came to the stone tablet where they struck it with a punch using their full strength.
“Seven halos, seven thousand jin, not qualified!”
“Eight halos, eight thousand jin, not qualified!”
After half an hour of assessment, over ninety percent of the participants had been eliminated, leaving behind only the geniuses from various major families.
“Liu Haonan, who just returned from training outside, and managed to achieve a result of fifteen thousand jin. He must have obtained some extraordinary opportunity during his journey.”
“Lin Wu from the Lin family is a true genius. He’s not a strength-focused martial artist, yet he managed to achieve a result of seventeen thousand jin. I doubt anyone can achieve a better result in today’s assessment.”
The failures left the area disheartened while the successful participants stood proudly and with great confidence.
As the assessment neared its conclusion, it was finally Jiang Yuan’s turn to take the stage.
His appearance caused quite a stir.
“Why is an uncultivated person coming up?”
“No… this can’t be right. How can someone without any cultivation participate in the assessment?”
“I’m not kidding, you can go and sense his cultivation yourself.”
Many people released their senses to discreetly check Jiang Yuan’s cultivation. Upon discovering that he had no cultivation aura, they couldn’t help but show disdain.
“Really! He has no cultivation. Is he here to make a mockery of the event?”
“What do you think he can achieve? Even 250 jin would be an overestimation, don’t you think?”
“Don’t underestimate him too much. He might surprise us by achieving 250 jin, don’t you think? Hahaha.”
People openly laughed, showing no restraint in their mockery of Jiang Yuan.
However, Jiang Yuan paid no attention to this. He walked up to the stone tablet and lightly tapped it with his fist.
The light tap seemed like a polite knock on a door. Yet, even with what appeared to be minimal force, it released an overwhelming power!
Boom!
With a thunderous explosion, the stone tablet shattered into countless fragments and scattered in all directions.
In an instant, the entire arena fell into stunned silence.
Complete silence.
Not a word was spoken.
No sound was made.
It was as if even the air had frozen.
Everyone was petrified in their places, wearing expressions of shattered beliefs as if they had witnessed the most unimaginable event in the world.
__________
In martial arts and traditional Chinese measurements, “jin” (斤) is a unit of weight or mass. One jin is roughly equal to 0.5 kilograms or 1.102 pounds. It’s used to measure the strength or force exerted in martial arts to describe a martial artist’s power.
