Mingtian paced up in front of the lecture hall, watching with some satisfaction as the entire group of elite students fell utterly silent at his presence. He’d proven himself over the year, and now… now they would have to prove themselves to him. “Today,” he began, drawing on all the depth of experience in public speaking he’d— reluctantly— gotten over his long life— “is the day of your final exam. In many ways, this will be one of the most important exams you ever take. You may think that your combat exams are the greater measure of your success or failure at this academy.” He snapped to a stop, almost violently dragging his gaze across each and every student, unflinchingly meeting their eyes. “You’d be wrong.

“Brute violence will only take you so far in this world. The vast majority of you will not continue along the path of cultivation, and the mere essence of brutality means nothing. Violence is not the measure of a person. More than any other form of power, the ingenuity you display on this test, that you learned in this

class, will buoy you forth into your careers, your lives, the future— of our turbulent times, your performance on this test will be a stalwart anchor… if, of course, you perform well.”

They were feeling the pressure now. Even the normally unflappable ones were looking a tiny bit nervous… really, only Lily didn’t look at least a little nervous. Now to hit them with the actual contents of the exam. “This test is a six hour free response examination split into two parts. You will be comprehensively tested on your knowledge of runes and formation structures in the first part, which will cover all major categories discussed during the course—” and also a bunch more, but well, the curve was there for a reason. “The second part of the exam, which will take four hours, will consist of the creation of a practical formations test. This,” he held up a fist sized silvery cube “is a block of lunar cold iron engraved with a formation to weigh as much as an equivalently sized block of tungsten. Your formation will have to prevent the cube from destroying this egg—” he may or may not have bought several cartons of eggs specifically for this exam— “when dropped from a height of… twenty eight and a half feet.” Specifically, the height of the classrooms. “Any questions?” One student tentatively raised their hand. “Questions are not permitted, begin.”

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The sound of paper flipping and pens madly scribbling was like music to his ears. It would be fun to see if anyone other than Lily did well on the exam. If they did, maybe he’d given them some lunar cold iron. Seriously, he had way too much lunar cold iron. The look of panic

on their faces as they realized that when he’d said the test was comprehensive, he’d meant it…

He’d say that it was totally designed as a test to stretch the absolute limits of his students and determine which ones truly stood out from the rest, and conveniently forget to mention that he’d built the whole thing off an incomplete knowledge of the learning capability of academy students based largely off Lily’s progress in the art. Which was to say, he’d scaled the curriculum back to meet the test, not the other way around— and that still resulted in an incredibly complex test.

It would work itself out. Probably. Unlike last time, he actively stalked through the room, carefully making sure no funny business was going on— but more actually, observing the students as they struggled. Lily, of course, moved through the whole examination with almost contemptuous ease, looking entirely relaxed. Avyr too had a pretty good grasp on the coursework— he wasn’t quite as enthused about it as his friend was, but he was exposed to formations pretty much every day, and had absorbed some of that information through a sort of knowledge osmosis. That and he was always around to help him with any problems he had… really, what he was struggling with most wasn’t, actually, the actual content of the test, but rather the test itself— he couldn’t quite manipulate his brush with the same dexterity as all the other students, though his advanced cultivation certainly helped bridge the gap.

Confident both his di— students— were doing well, he moved on to some of the other test performers. Most of them were… to say they were not doing well would be an understatement. It was understandable in many ways— of course they would have forgotten some of the minor details, of course most of them wouldn’t have exhaustively studied ever catalogue of runes he’d given them until they could call them to memory as easily as their own names— they had other classes that were far more immediate.