Chapter 354: Bai Jingxuan's Examination

When Bai Jingxuan stepped into the examination room with a hint of unease, what she saw was a space decorated almost entirely in white.

The floor, the walls, the ceiling were all flawless pure white, and even the lighting carried not the slightest trace of any other color. The room was filled with many large pieces of equipment whose purpose was unclear and which sat in standby mode; their casings were all white, emitting a faint hum within this quiet space.

At the center of the room stood two women in white coats. Their gazes did not fall on Bai Jingxuan as she entered; at that moment, the two women were looking down, tapping frequently on the light screens in front of them, seemingly recording something.

Bang.

The examination room's door closed behind Bai Jingxuan, and the well-timed noise caused the two people who appeared to be examiners to raise their heads.

"Examinee number, Boxue, correct?" one of them spoke up to ask.

"…Yes." Bai Jingxuan stood at attention and responded.

"Mm, then starting now we will be conducting testing and evaluation of your magical gear. The first item is testing of ability specifications—go over to the instrument on the far left of the examination room and input your data first."

The examiner who had spoken first extended a hand and pointed to the side of the room: "Operation is very simple—manifest your magical gear, then stand still and don't move for one minute, and let the instrument scan you once."

"Oh, okay."

Bai Jingxuan gave a simple reply, then obediently walked toward the direction the examiner had indicated.

She had no intention of asking any more questions; in fact, right now she could only hope the examiners wouldn't pay her too much attention. After all, one knows one's own situation best—this examination was probably the moment when the residual beast magical power on her body would be most likely to be exposed.

From the time they departed from Fang Ting City until the moment the examination officially began, Senior Cuique had already emphasized to her many times to be careful about hiding herself. During the previous labyrinth examination there had been many off-site observers, and this examination presumably also had many pairs of eyes watching from the shadows; if she were to expose something here that shouldn't be exposed, she feared even Emerald would have a hard time extracting her from the situation.

Bai Jingxuan was very obedient, and she wanted to become a powerful magical girl, so she didn't want to expose any problems. But the more she worried about gain and loss, the more intensely nervous she became.

Admittedly, out of the need to conceal the base color of her own magical power, she had already done plenty of study and training. Not only had she learned the muddying technique from Margaret back in Fang Ting City, she had also continued to train on her own initiative after arriving at the Nation. Theoretically speaking, there should be no possibility of her being exposed now. But a thing like nervousness is often irrational, to the point that as she passed between the equipment, her toe accidentally kicked the sharp corner of some instrument, nearly causing her to fall on the spot.

This caused the examiners to direct their gazes toward her position.

Fortunately they didn't pay it much mind either—among the examinees participating, there were plenty of people more nervous than Bai Jingxuan; in fact, those who weren't nervous were the minority. So very quickly, they redirected their attention to the data work at hand.

Bai Jingxuan walked somewhat sheepishly to the corner of the room, carefully uttered "Tianyin," and manifested her magical gear.

At Senior Cuique's suggestion, over the past two months Bai Jingxuan had never again swung her magical gear around as a melee weapon, mostly relying on magical power to levitate it. At the same time, she had also begun learning to apply Tianyin's abilities more into her own combat; although this kind of divided-attention behavior was no small difficulty, it did indeed cause the form of her magical gear to begin evolving in a benign direction.

Compared to two months ago, the appearance of the magical gear Tianyin had already undergone no small change; the most obvious point was that the support frame, which had previously been on the verge of becoming a hammer handle, had shortened considerably. Looking at it now, it had returned to the form of its original music box, rather than a hammer capable of playing music.

The instrument's scanning process didn't encounter any mishaps; one minute later, the instrument in front of Bai Jingxuan lit up with a green indicator light, indicating that its data input had been completed. Accompanying this change, the examiner's voice also sounded simultaneously not far away:

"Magical power activity is very strong, the degree of original-form manifestation is relatively low, but judging from the magical power wave field, your magical gear's ability specifications aren't bad—at least above Grade 3."

While checking the data on the light screen in her hand, this examiner asked: "You're currently Leaf-rank?"

"Yes." Even though she knew she had already gotten past one hurdle, Bai Jingxuan still came across as rather reserved.

"Having a Grade 3 wave field at Leaf-rank, with such a low degree of manifestation…unbelievable, completely unlike data that would appear on a single piece of magical gear. Generally speaking, you'd need at least a swarm-form magical gear to have values like yours."

The examiner continued to flip through the values, and a few shades of surprise appeared on her previously plain expression: "No direct magical-body interference phenomena, but there is interaction and indirect influence—is your magical gear's ability to apply status effects to yourself or others?"

"Yes."

"Interesting, interesting…" Judging from her expression, after hearing Bai Jingxuan's answer, this examiner could be considered to have thoroughly perked up.

"Excuse me, may I ask, what do all those words you mentioned mean?" Seeing that the other party didn't seem to have noticed any problems with her, Bai Jingxuan's courage recovered somewhat, and her curiosity naturally rose to the surface.

"Which words?"

"Like, uh, magical power wave field, salting, driving snakes and stuff…" Bai Jingxuan said quietly.

"Oh, those are some of our professional terminology, all indicators related to magical gear—you kids don't need to learn them."

The talkative examiner blinked, and looking at Bai Jingxuan's cautious and careful appearance, a relatively kind smile appeared on her face; she did not correct or mock the obviously off-target words in this "child's" repetition:

"But the concept of magical power wave field I can explain to you. Generally speaking, the concept of magical power wave field is 'the depth of influence exerted on the world'; if you find this explanation hard to understand, you can also understand this concept directly as 'the intensity of the ability.'"

"The intensity of the ability…?"

Bai Jingxuan repeated along: "Then, what does the so-called Grade 3 mean?"

"A magical girl whose ability is relatively at the average value, after she awakens her magical gear at Sprout-rank and undergoes a period of training, her magical gear's wave field will generally reach an intensity of Grade 1."

Probably because she had become interested in Bai Jingxuan's magical gear, the examiner was especially patient: "By Leaf-rank, her wave field will be Grade 2, and starting at Bud-rank it will fluctuate between Grade 3 and Grade 4, and at Flower-rank it will be around Grade 5 to Grade 6."

"Then, my Grade 3 means…"

"Mm, much stronger than ordinary people."

The examiner affirmed Bai Jingxuan's statement: "In fact, it's almost impossible to reach this kind of wave field at Leaf-rank, unless the base color of your magical power is different from that of ordinary people."

Her next sentence made the hairs on Bai Jingxuan's body instantly stand on end.

—"Or rather, judging from this data, without a doubt, you should be a Deviant."