Black Potential

Mu Chen managed to recover after a few seconds of gawking at me. By the way, if you were wondering why I knew his name, it was because I saw it appear next to him, manhua style, in the panel where he was revealed. No, I wasn't kidding.

It seemed that this world was…weird. Then again, with almost everybody acting unrealistically or ridiculously, I guess "weird" didn't even begin to describe this cultivation world.

"Ahem." Mu Chen cleared his throat and pointed toward the giant gemstone rock in the middle of the shrine. It pulsed faintly, emanating a soft aura of qi and pale blue light that swirled around the place gently. Already a few people had passed and were waiting by the side of the shrine, recording their personal details with the adminstrators and other Ten Thousand Sword Pavilion elders.

It didn't seem like anyone had failed so far, which made sense. Anybody who could pass through the gravitational array at the stairs had at least some form of ability or had reached an advanced cultivation realm.

"This will measure your potential," Mu Chen explained. "There are several colors. Starting from the weakest: light blue, cerulean, azure, purple, lavender and violet. As long as you can azure and above, you pass."

"What do they signify?" I asked, confused by the weird range of colors. Mu Chen scowled.

"Didn't I already say? Your potential."

"I'm asking what you mean by potential. It's such an ambiguous word. Every stupid cultivation story claims that they can measure talent, that all you have to do is put your hand on some crystal like that and voila! Your destiny is decided. You're either talented or trash." I shook my head. "But reality doesn't work like that. There's no such thing as a convenient device that can measure talent or potential – what the hell does talent even mean? That you're better than others? The only way to prove that you're better is through actions, not because some stone glows some stupid color."

"Just shut up and take the test already!" Mu Chen snapped impatiently. "Or are you afraid that you'll fail here? That the potential gemstone will expose your complete lack of talent? Are you admitting that you're a trash who has no qualifications to even step into my Ten Thousand Sword Pavilion?"

"Fine." I sighed, pushed my glasses up my nose and stepped forward to place my hand on the glowing gemstone. "I'll just go along with you for now."

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the gemstone darkened, turning from pale blue to dark violet in an instant. No, it went darker than violet, transforming into an inky blackness so deep that it almost resembled an abyss that swallowed any light that surrounded it.

"T…this…!" Mu Chen spluttered, his face pale. The gemstone howled and shook before shattering into many shards. I withdrew my hand, looking sheepish.

"Oh, sorry about that. Looks like I failed. I guess I'll leave now."

Whatever the case, it appeared that I wouldn't get the Ghost Iron Ore. Not that I wanted it in the first place, so that was fine. And if Jian Shen sought to humiliate me like this, then he didn't succeed. Even though I failed, I didn't get light blue or cerulean, so people would speculate about what caused me to fail. They would doubt Jian Shen's insinuations that I was a trash.

And even if they considered me trash, why should I care? As long as they didn't directly provoke me, I had no reason to beat them up. I had better things to do with my time than entertain trolls and haters.

"W…wait! Please wait!"

Before I could step onto the stairs, Mu Chen scrambled after me. It wasn't just him. All of the Ten Thousand Sword Pavilion elders were rushing forward frantically, their eyes wide. They all crashed to their knees and skidded to a stop right behind me, slamming their foreheads against the ground.

This was the first time I saw a sliding dogeza in real life.

"Uh? What? What's going on now?"

"That's…black! Black potential! It's the highest level, basically divine level talent, above even dark violet! You're a one in a millennium genius!"

Were these guys for real? There was no such thing as "one in a millennium genus" or divine level talent. Like I said, it wasn't as if some stupid stone could conveniently measure the talent of everyone and then dictate how people thought of them for the rest of their lives when they hadn't even achieved anything yet.

Achievements and recognition had to be earned, not decided by some talent measuring rock.

To be fair, the reason why I could do that was because I was already an Innate Realm and I overloaded the damned gemstone with my qi, which ended up staining it black and causing it to blow up. The potential gemstone wasn't overloaded because of my talent. It was overloaded because of my cultivation realm that I had spent years of hard work and perseverance to attain. I didn't think it would incur such an extreme reaction from the old dudes.

"You're Innate Realm, aren't you?"

"A rare talent!"

"You didn't fail, you passed! Passed with flying colors, and then some!"

"Please, come with us to register!"

"You'll definitely be elevated into a core disciple!"

The elders were babbling near incoherently by now. I was raising my hands and backing away, not wanting to deal with them. Below, Jian Shen was gaping at me, his eyes almost popping out of their sockets, mucus dripping from his nose, his tongue lolling out of a jaw that stretched so wide his chin was scraping the ground.

"H…how is this possible!?" He howled, grabbing his jaw and raising it back up. He flailed about, shaking his head and cursing. "This just isn't possible!"

The poor guy's schemes to humiliate me had backfired. Instead of exposing me as a cheating fraud, he had ended up putting me in the limelight and given me a chance to show off what a chad I was. Not that I was a chad, I was more of a nerd, but whatever.

"He must have cheated!" He screamed, flying up the stairs and waving his hands. Like me, he was unaffected by the array, but considering that he was a core disciple who had already been accepted by the sect and nurtured to a decent cultivation realm, that was to be expected. "Master! Don't be fooled! He must have cheated somehow!"

"So how did I cheat?" I asked, folding my arms.

"Silence, you fool!" Mu Chen stormed at the sprinting Jian Shen, catching his disciple by surprise. "Stop embarrassing the sect any more than you already have! There is no way to cheat with the potential gemstone! It never lies! We all watched him carefully, and he did nothing to cheat!"

"Yeah, I can vouch for that." Another elder raised his hand. "The arrays detected no talismans or external objects on him. He passed the gravitational array with his own abilities."

"The potential gemstone wouldn't be affected by relics or artifacts anyway," another elder added. "It only measures the person."

Mu Chen turned back to me, rubbing his hands nervously. "Please, this young sir, let's proceed to registration."

"I think you guys misunderstood something." I pointed at Jian Shen. "I only took the trial because this guy promised to give me his Ghost Iron Ore if I passed. I never had any intention of joining the Ten Thousand Sword Pavilion."

"What?! Why?!" Mu Chen and the elders spluttered. I snorted.

"Are you seriously asking me that now? Did you forget everything you said earlier? About how I was trash who didn't have the qualifications to set foot onto Ten Thousand Sword Pavilion premises? Or that you'll expose me for cheating and humiliate me in front of everybody? And now that I've proven you wrong, you expect me to forget about all those insults and happily agree to join you? Is there something wrong with your minds?"

"No…that…that was…"

All the other elders were turning to Mu Chen and Jian Shen, who had just reached the top of the stairs. The latter, particularly, looked as if he regretted running all the way up here. He had arrived at the most inopportune time possible.

"This is all your fault! Why did you have to insult him?!"

"What's with all these stupid convoluted schemes of humiliation? Are you some kind of edgelord indulging in middle school teenage fantasies of getting back at people you don't like?"

"Why did you have to offend an Innate Realm cultivator with black potential?! Now he refuses to join our sect because of all your insulting and abusive comments!"

"The patriarch will hear about this! Thanks to your nonsense, we let a rare prodigy slip away!"

"This was our chance to finally compete with the Azure Water Sect who have a disciple with the Divine Spirit Constitution! And you fucking blew it!"

"Make no mistake, we'll lodge a complaint to the patriarch! The two of you had best get ready to be kicked out of the sect!"

Mu Chen mumbled incoherently for a few seconds, and then he finally turned on a trembling Jian Shen, veins popping out of his temples and his face red with rage.

"You un-filial disciple! Are you blind!? Calling other people trash! I told you not to indulge in these stupid convoluted schemes of revenge and humiliation, but you didn't listen? Now our sect has suffered a great loss because you put personal interests over those of the sect's!"

Then he turned on the other elders.

"And stop being hypocrites! All of you listened to his schemes and said absolutely nothing! While the black potential boy was being insulted and accused of cheating, none of you stood up for him, none of you stepped forward to speak up for him! And now you want to make it seem like it's my fault that he refused to join our sect? You're just as culpable as I am! At least I told my disciple off and constantly protested against his nonsensical machinations, but none of you said a single word!"

"He's your disciple, why should we be responsible for reprimanding him?" One of the other elders argued. "Don't shove the blame to us when you can't even control your own disciple!"

"I'm not blaming you for my disciple, but why is it that none of you stood up to defend him, and now you're suddenly acting surprised that he doesn't want to join our Ten Thousand Sword Pavilion? You think he didn't notice the fact that you're hypocrites, is it?"

As the elders argued, I took the chance and strolled down the stairs. Raising my hand, I waved to my wife, who was waiting patiently for me below.

"Sorry to keep you waiting. I hope that didn't take too long."

"No, not at all, husband." Lan Bei Er held my hand cheerfully. "You kept your promise. That whole thing only lasted a few minutes."

"I wonder if it's over yet." I murmured with a shake of my head. "I still have to watch out for assassinations later."

"Huh? Assassinations?"

"You'll see," was all I said.

Meanwhile, up above, while the elders were still arguing, Jian Shen finally stammered out a suggestion.

"We can't let that trash go after he embarrassed us."

"You're still calling him trash? You're the trash!" Mu Chen yelled at him. "And you're the one who embarrassed us! Not him!"

"Be that as it may," Jian Shen said, shrinking back. "We can't let him go like this. If we can't have him, nobody can. We need to kill him now before he joins any of the other sects – especially Azure Water Sect. Tackle the problem at its root so that we won't regret it later. Let's send a few experts to take his life before he becomes strong enough to pose a threat to us!"

"Murder your fucking head ah!" Mu Chen shrieked and smacked Jian Shen's face. "What do you think this is, your bloody Jian family's backyard, is it? You think we can just go around killing people for no good reason ah? Fuck you, you understand! We're in the Huang Kingdom! You think the laws are for show, is it? Even if you're royalty, you still need to abide by the laws set by the government, you can't just go around assassinating people for no bloody reason! You want to go to jail, is it? Or you want to get your head chopped off ah?"

"Don't everything also resort to murder eh," another elder added, shaking his head. "Just what goes in your mind all day? Fighting and killing ah? Grow up, can or not?"

"You already cost us a rare prodigy," a third elder growled, slapping Jian Shen's other cheek. "Don't drag us along into your criminal schemes. If you want to go to hell, go alone. Don't involve us."

Jian Shen looked as if he was going to cry. Before the elders could say anything, he turned and ran off, rubbing his face and sobbing.

"This isn't over!" He snarled under his breath as he jumped on top of a flying sword and have it carry him away from the bickering elders of Ten Thousand Sword Pavilion. "Hei Ye, you fucking bastard! I'll definitely have my revenge!"

The moron didn't realize that I could still hear him even from this far down here…