A Sorcerer's Journey Chapter 3
"This place is much more extravagant than Zi Jue's," Ge Lin murmured as he was pushed forward in the crowd.
He couldn't wait. He peeked into the hall eagerly and saw a loosely dressed man sitting in the middle of the sitting room. The man's face was exactly as the girl who adored Ge Lin had described. It was covered by a thin film of mist or something.
"Is this what a sorcerer looks like?" Ge Lin wondered.
On the desk in front of the sorcerer stood a transparent crystal ball, which was oozing out some soft light, and the light wrapped the hall in a mysterious aura. Adding to the mystery was the constant croaking sounds from a red-eyed frog, which was crouching next to the ball .
Seeing a Sorcerer for the first time, Ge Lin was thrilled in delight, and his blood was pumping faster as he kept on the stare.
"It was her! The little girl at the Zi Jue Residence!" Ge Lin saw a chubby brown-haired girl standing still behind the Sorcerer, and her lips were pouting as if to say she was not happy about all this.
"She was the girl who threw Canine Olfactory Enhancement onto the ground at the Zi Jue Residence." Ge Lin said it out loud.
"The girl was the first pick. She has been chosen by the Sorcerer and she's the governor's daughter," someone from the crowd echoed.
"The governor must have bribed the Sorcerer," another person said bluntly.
'She gave in and had come to learn sorcery in accordance with the will of her father, the governor. That's why she is unhappy,' Ge Lin thought in his mind.
There were two other people who were standing behind the Sorcerer. Like the governor's daughter, they had been tested as qualified to learn sorcery but were selected at the Sorcerer's previous stop. The two looked a lot like each other.
"They must be a pair of siblings, or they may be related in some other way," Ge Lin murmured.
The boy of the siblings was full of disdain as he was flinging overbearing looks at the other candidates who were waiting in long lines for the test, while the girl of the siblings was a little bit timid as she was being closely watched by so many people.
"Being selected from among thousands of candidates as students for sorcery-learning must feels good, not to mention the fact that all the rich n.o.blemen and lords really nice to them. It's like being catapulted to fame," Ge Lin guessed.
Indeed, ever since the siblings - a fact which was confirmed by someone who knew them- Chris and Nina Hank, had emerged as would-be sorcerers from their poor hunting family, the local lords had been b.u.t.tering them up with both sweet words and gifts. The downpour of praises made Chris feel that he was the chosen one.
"Mental strength: six points. Failed! Next one." The Sorcerer read the information appeared on the crystal ball as the girl touched the crystal ball. That was the entirety of the qualification-testing process. You put your hands on the crystal ball and information about your mental strength, one of the key indicators of your qualification would emerge on the surface of it. The girl taking the test opened her eyes and stepped back, feeling embarra.s.sed.
"Another one failed..."
"How is it possible?"
The throng of people sighed as they clamored for the girl to quickly get off.
A whole day had almost pa.s.sed, and no one, except the daughter of the governor, had pa.s.sed the test. The rest of the crowd who hadn't taken the test would have gone home were it not for the one gold coin they had paid.
"Mental strength: 5 points. Failed! Next one."
The next test-taker curled his lip and sneaked out of the way.
As Ge Lin was marching closer to the forefront of the waiting line, people who had failed the test continued to pile up. He was getting nervous by the minute, and the closer he stepped forward, the more stressful he became. At one point he became so stressed that he wanted to give in.
It was the turn of the boy in front of Ge Lin to take the test. His name was Wade. He strode up to the crystal ball and put his left hand on it, with his eyes closed.
"Mental strength: 9 points. F..." The word of "failed" didn't finish. Wade tucked a bag of stones into the Sorcerer's cloak.
After checking the stones, the Sorcerer said calmly:
"Get behind me."
The boy was the son of the man who owned the Moon Restaurant, the biggest one in the Bi Seer City. So, he had gotten a rich daddy.
"Bribery?" Ge Lin was surprised, and a second later, he sighed. "I have nothing precious to offer the Sorcerer. He wouldn't have any interest in a couple of gold coins. I am so doomed."
"Thank you, Master!" Wade bent his body toward him to show his grat.i.tude.
The moment had come at last. Ge Lin held out his hand as the Sorcerer ordered. He then extended his trembling hand towards the crystal ball and finally touched it. He then closed his eyes for the moment to come. That was when weird things occurred.
Ge Lin felt like that he was in a dream. The hall was suddenly shrouded by a huge upside-down transparent cauldron and everyone in it stood rooted to the spot and every movement they had made was in a very slow motion.
Ge Lin, with his eyes still almost unopened, noticed a line of bowls on a desk at the corner, and the bodies of the bowls were imprinted with sophisticated whorls. In the bowls were cakes and fruits served for the candidates who couldn't reach the cakes and fruits because they were moving like a snail..
At the time, a few jellyfish-like creatures were seen swimming around over the fruits. They had many tentacles with various colors, and they were all staring at Ge Lin after they detected his existence..
Ge Lin could feel that his body was shaking on seeing swimming jellyfishes in the air.
He steadied himself seconds later and made a few steps forward to have a closer look at the peculiar creatures, but his effort to move frightened them. They then waved their tentacles strongly and disappeared into the nearby wall as if they had melted into it.
Ge Lin was in shock, but he was in greater shock when he discovered about the candlestick. Among four other regular candlesticks on the desk, the one laid in the front suddenly turned into an enormous pig head and it was glowing. The pig head jerked in Ge Lin's direction as Ge Lin was watching him.
"It is a normal candle. I sawit. I was admiring its exquisite patterns on it," Ge Lin wondered.
The ghostly things gave Ge Lin the creeps.
"I am a Xian1 now. Neither the Dragons nor the other universe monsters can stop me anymore. I am undefeatable."
A howling sound took Ge Lin by surprise. Ge Lin turned and tracked the voice to a paper man coming out of a book.
"It is Becoming a Xian through Cultivation, and I know that book!" Ge Lin caught sight of the book t.i.tle while he was checking out the paper man.
The book was about how a man gained mastery of cultivation methods to become a Xian and how he did it by defeating all sorts of monsters existing in the universe.
"No way. Isn't he the hero of the book? He looks exactly like him - the long robe, thick beard, and a neck as long as a giraffe." Ge Lin was astonished.
"Where am I? Who are you? Are you a Xian, too?" The paper man asked a series of questions impatiently.
"I am not... not a Xian. I a...am here—" Ge Lin stuttered at the sight of a paper who talked.
Ge Lin didn't have the time to finish the sentence as the paper man, in his fury, pulled out the sword from the scabbard and prepared to charge at Ge Lin.
Although Ge Lin was still in his sense to tell that the sword was made of paper, he was almost paralyzed physically by this brutal violent action, and couldn't think of anything to fend the sword off.
At the moment, the book spine broke and widened gradually into a huge gap. It seemed that everyone in the hall would fall but they did not. They just hung in the air above the gap. It was as if there was an invisible floor that had kept them in the air, and there was a voice deep in the the gap repeating the paper man's words.
"What is this?"
"What is this?"
"You idiot."
"You idiot."
Then, like a bolt of lightning, a giant scarlet tongue spewed out from the deep gap and coiled around the paper man several rings and tied him up. Ge Lin noticed that the huge tongue was made up of a countless number of snakes, which were entangled together and each of the snakes were biting the paper man greedily.
The tongue then retracted back into the darkness of the gap with the paper man who was still stuck to it, and it retracted as forcibly as a compressed spring returning to its original state.
"Mental strength: 12 points, not bad. Get behind me," the Sorcerer said with smile that was rarely seen.
"This is not real? What was that?" Ge Lin slipped.
"What?" replied the Sorcerer.
"Nothing.Thank you. Master!" Ge Lin suddenly recovered from his mental stupor and realized that he was in the middle of the test.
Ge Lin moved behind the Sorcerer and his mind was still pondering the unbelievable things that had happened a few seconds ago. But everything had returned to normal. The cauldron was gone, the gap was closed, and people were moving at ordinary speed.
The rest of the candidates were all talking about him - a boy who had pa.s.sed the sorcerer test.
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FOOTNOTES
1: The Xian (also known as the Taoist G.o.ds) are a race of superhumanly powerful humanoid beings who have been wors.h.i.+pped by the Chinese and other East Asian cultures from 2000 BC into modern times. Essentially minor deities, often referred to as Immortals in other novels.