Losses and tests

Wei Sha's eyes blinked multiple times in quick succession. The more he blinked, the clearer the picture he received became.

Though from blinking the picture became brighter, nothing else.

Sight re-adjusted, he experienced the light as if a sun hanged centimetres away from his face.

'Too bright.' Wei Sha didn't like this, so he controlled his hand to block the light while already squinting and turning his head to the side.

But, right before his hand came between the light and his eyes, a sudden heat forced it to fall back.

"Augh," Wei Sha let out a shriek as he flapped his hand, attempting to shake off the heat.

[M-rnin-]

"M-morning," Wei Sha stuttered a response. The moment he heard Lin Siniang address him, he realised there might be complications coming his way.

Falling unconscious hadn't been in his plan.

His reasons to believe so only increased when glancing behind Lin Siniang, for there he saw Maf, lying breathless on the floor. 'I killed her Darken Mafu?'

[D- you kn-w ho- angr- I am?] In her sentence there was the usual static, but also another — a stutter one would speak in when they were about to explode into an emotional tirade of insults and scolds.

Jolts ran through his body. "I-I'm sorry," he said, leaning backwards much as he demonly could.

Lin Siniang didn't give him space; the bubble mirrored his movements while speaking [S-rry?] Her volume increased. [D- you thi-k a s-rry wil- sav- you?]

"I-I," he muttered. "I—"

Wei Sha didn't get another word out before Lin Siniang begun her tirade. And just like Wei Sha had expected, she cursed him with every insult one could find from a dictionary written on the topic.

'Maybe I just take this. . .' He calculated that his best possibility to survive would be to stay quiet.

X

[You. You. You] At the end of the tirade, Lin Siniang exhausted of all insults was stuck on saying "You".

[You-you plooky plock!] she threw her last insult before hovering to Maf's body meters away from him.

Wei Sha, feeling he had melted with the stone chair's back, stayed in place. 'At least she didn't toss me around like father would have,' he thought of a positive point.

[Maf! W-ke -p!" Lin Siniang tried to shout the Darken Mafu back to life. [Maf!]

'She can't wish it back to life?' So far, he had deemed that Lin Siniang could arrange anything she wanted here. But now, thinking about more in-depth, he realised the stupidity of his half-baked theory.

As he pondered, he still watched how Lin Siniang cried and yelled out the frustration she hadn't discharged on him.

'I kinda feel sorry for her.' He shook his head. 'No! She would have killed me!' Then he didn't anymore.

"Did I pass the test?" He even went ahead and changed to the topic he understood as Lin Siniang's base motive — the very thing she sought to accomplish with these tests. 'She only cares about this anyway,' he even reasoned to himself that his actions were fair.

[Yes] she answered while sobbing. [But] She raised herself by two meters into the air. [If you d- not pas- th- te-ts. I'-l creat- a Crim-om Mafu ou- of you]

The picture she threatened with passed in his mind. His head was stabled onto a lion's body and forced to test other aspirants aptitudes for all eternity.

"Sure," he said, a sweat drop on his forehead.

[The fourth test awaits] And like that, Wei Sha, in his mind, had returned Lin Siniang to her normal operations.

Wei Sha stood up from the chair.

Took a glance at Maf, thought, 'It was you or me, sorry.'

Then without further consideration for the matter, he followed Lin Siniang already hovering towards the next testing area while taking out the card.

'Three pro cent.' He bit his lip. 'This is going to take an eternity.'

X

His statement wasn't wrong in the slightest. The tests prepared by Lin Siniang would take an eternity, if not multiple.

Test four was about beating down a Lava Worm. Of course, it wasn't the same Lava Worm as he and Trainer Sen had fought against — in that case, Wei Sha would have met his doom without getting a hit in. Still, the small bugger gave Wei Sha a run for his money by inflicting burn marks onto his palms that had strangled the creature coated with a thin veil of lava.

Passed another test, but taken damage again made Wei Sha realise, 'I need to conserve my body if I wish to be living after ten more tests.' The current speed of attrition wouldn't be sustainable for long. Sure, the damage on his body right now wasn't much — a hole in his neck and two burned palms. But ninety-six tests were awaiting him, and at the current rate, he would die by a thousand cuts or suffer a fatal blow due to hindrances.

This preservation tactic in mind, Wei Sha strode towards the fifth test.

'A written test?' The fifth test's room had no chair nor monster, but a desk on which lied a paper and a quill.

'This should be easy.' Weng Tonghe had taught him almost everything a demon in hell could learn from others, so Wei Sha didn't have a sliver of anxiety or fear.

A written test on any matter would be smooth sailing for him!

X

Or it would have been if the exam was about information regarding the last ten-thousand years or so!

'She must have formulated that test based on the information available when her last owner was still alive,' he reasoned while waiting for Lin Siniang to check his results.

'The. . .' Wei Sha halted his line of thought there to ponder for a clear designation for him before the flashback.

It took a minute, but in the end, he came up with a simple and effective term, 'The old me wouldn't have gained a single point from whatever that was.' He even nodded to that.

The flashback, in all reality, had been a rebirth of sorts for Wei Sha, and he couldn't deny it even if he wanted.

Lin Siniang hovered from the paper to Wei Sha.

Wei Sha, seeing her approach, crossed his finger and toes, praying for the best.

The bubble in front of him told the results. [By one point] Lin Siniang said, producing Wei Sha to cross them harder.

[You pass]

"Heh." Wei Sha wanted to laugh more, but couldn't produce a second laugh.

X

Test, another test, a third test, and so on. Test by test, Wei Sha got himself closer to completing the requirements to bond with Lin Siniang.

With sheer grit and belief in this leading him to cure his mother, Wei Sha crammed himself through all kinds of shit, figurative. . . and literal shit.

Along the way to a hundred, he gathered assumptions about Lin Siniang.

First, her motive appeared strong, if not stronger than his!

Lin Siniang's motive of finding the best host tied with another factor that came clear to him over time. As around the fiftieth test, her introductions to the tests stuttered. No longer were her instructions proper, but rather missing in fact.

For him, this meant she had wasted an untold number of demons to have the very best as her vessel. Wei Sha even began to think his aspirant number of 18862447767 might be chronological.

'Does she hold, or has she had a more coherent physical form?' Was another great question. Her mannerism and possession of feelings of a level, Wei Sha couldn't match made him consider that something like a bright-yellow bubble might not be her true appearance.

There were other questions too, but Wei Sha kept quiet. After the accident with Maf, she hadn't spoken anything unnecessary to him for twenty tests — she held onto a grudge like any demon. So now that she once again chatted with him, he didn't want to open a topic which might lead him into another fall.

Anyway, holding a natural and vague stance in every discussion and performing well in the tests got him far enough.

X

'Close!' Wei Sha dodged a bridge he was about to land on by an inch.

"Shoo! Shoo!" He screamed and swung a wooden pole at a flock of War Pelicans attempting to cut him in half with their beaks.

"Void fighting test my ass," Wei Sha muttered while glancing down at what he needed to evade next.

His fluttering robes getting in the way made this hard, but still, he perceived a vast plateau straight below him.

"Work," he swayed the wooden pole provided for this test. "Work you stupid stick!" The fact that this pole had been rotting for only Lin Siniang knows how long made the operation of the tool difficult at the best of times.

"Right on time!" he rejoiced as wings emerged from the sides of the pole and floated him off the path on which a War Pelican awaited him with an open beak.

Wei Sha gave the War Pelican in question a good kick which served as a boost too before floating towards the plateau's edge.

Thanks to that boost, the other War Pelicans were now at a safe distance away. This gave a breather for Wei Sha, who used it to ingrain much of the Void Plane.

What a prime sight for this he had too, for a vast Void Plateau floated still in the endless darkness surrounding, well, everything. Nevertheless, its flora and fauna were all exposed to his eye, not riddled with pieces of iron and under a patch.

Wei Sha's realisation about attrition had been on the nail's head. Ninety-eight cleared test had left scars on his body and face.