129 Doing It On Purpose

Entering the stage, still eating her ice cream, Elizabeth was as surprised to find an old-school pen and paper test arrangement set up in each of the competitor blocks as the spectators were to find her audaciously eating even as the Event was about to begin. After taking a seat in her block, even if Elizabeth never went to a school outside of her home, she knew the golden rule of test taking: No one starts until the proctor/announcer gives the go-ahead. However, even if she didn't touch her test, she could tell from the thickness of the stack of papers that she would be in for a long exam. It looked less like a test sheet than it did a coverless tome…

As always, after the competitors settled into their spots, the announcer came to the mic to announce, "Welcome everyone to the third Event of the day, the Medical Event! Starting the Event with the Qualification Stage, competitors will be tasked to answer several questions related to medicine and cultivator anatomy ranging from basic to theoretical. Competitors who wish to progress to the Second Stage must at least score an eighty, else they'll be deemed too incompetent to effectively treat any of the patients we bring out… Apart from that disqualifying rule, only the top 500 competitors will make it to the Second Stage. So, with fifteen minutes on the clock… GO!"

With her ice cream in one hand and a pen in the other, Elizabeth's eyes lit up with a concentric ring of cyan which indicated that she was using her Timeworn Eyes.

[Name: ______ Style of Medicine: ______

Question 1: What is the name of a practitioner's energy source?

Answer:

Question 2: What are the two Major types of Meridians?

Answer:

Question 3: How many Acupoints are there on the human body?

Answer:

…

Question 52: Given the diagram shown below, where a tear running lengthwise on the bicep of a practitioner has been rotting for several days, what would be the best way to treat the injury?

Answer:

…

Question 100: A practitioner's body while more resistant to disease and illness is not completely immune. Assume a practitioner with a cultivation base at the Saint Stage somehow develops Cancer. What methods for treatment would theoretically treat the anomalous cancer cells?

Answer:

For the next twenty pages, fill out where each meridian, accupoint, bone, and muscle structure fits in the given diagrams.

Turn to the section of your given Style of Medicine to complete the last part of the exam

…

Acupoint Section:

Question 1: Name the most basic general healing acupoint formation

Answer:

...

Question 21: What is the best formation to heal a broken femur?

Answer:

...

Question 55: Given a maximum of 22 needles, along what acupoints would you channel energy to restore a severed leg?

Answer:

…

Question 100: Assuming a cultivator at the Saint Stage is afflicted with an autoimmune disease like Lupus, how would you use acupoint needles to mitigate the effects?

Answer:]

Waking up from her answering frenzy, Elizabeth checked with her internal clock and was shocked to find that she still had over five minutes left. 'What's with all these easy questions?' To her, it was as if she were doing elementary arithmetic. Although there were several trick questions spread out throughout the tome-like exam, they were all unbelievably easy questions she could resolve in practice; not theory!

Not knowing that the theoretical questions were each given a whole page for the competitors to answer because even the best Acupoint Masters of the Martial Society had no clue what the actual answer was, Elizabeth answered everything concisely, resulting in her quick finish. She had nothing else to do, so for the next five minutes, it was back to meditation.

Alas, five minutes wasn't enough to get much of anything done. But, she earned herself another five minutes as she waited for the attendants to pick up the competitor scores and for the judges to score the exams as well. Again, everything she seemed to do was groundbreaking or heaven-shattering as the judges, particularly those proficient in the way of Martial Acupoint, went absolutely insane after reading through her theoretical answers.

"Right… Right… Right… HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE? A little girl like her eclipses all of us in knowledge? Fuck! Even for the theoretical questions that we don't have someone we could use to validate her response, her answers are so straightforward I'd be willing to bet they are all 100% correct!"

In the judges VIP area, yet another set of judges tasted the bitterness one demonic fifteen-year-old lass could instill. Most shook their heads in acceptance, as had the various judges of Events prior, but as always, there were bound to be malicious elders who had thoughts on seeking Elizabeth out to know how she could possibly know so much about the given secondary occupation. But, just like the other judges of similar ill intent, there was nothing they could do whilst the tournament continued. Even during the "breaks" Elizabeth would take once the Formations and Alchemy Events arrived, she would probably stay within the Tournament Square, where there were countless other Spirit Realm elders would easily disrupt their plans.

In any case, the judges, both the civil and malicious types, went about their jobs to quickly process all the remaining competitors' tests. The results they concluded were passed onto the announcer and unsurprisingly, Elizabeth took first place on her Seventh Stage with a score so absurd, it surpassed the scope of the test's supposed 100% max…

The interviewer from before feared this being the case, but as reality came to smack him in the face, he had to swallow the bitter pill, go back on stage, and ask, "So… Ms. Ultimatia, what are your thoughts on the First Stage of the Medical Event?"

"Huh? I mean, I guess it does what it's supposed to do, right? I mean, seriously… If you can't even get an eighty for such an easy test, I wouldn't want you trying to play the part of a doctor on me either..." Unfortunately, as she had grown to expect these kinds of low-quality results from the tournament, she hadn't realized that in this First Stage only three hundred or so people continued, even though several thousand entered to participate… Although she was only speaking her mind, it was the most direct insult she had thrown at her competitors who had failed, thus far.

"E-easy questions?" Biding his time, the interview only asked for her to set the record straight.

"Yeah, SUPER easy questions is more like it, to be honest. I still can't believe they set up most of the relatively advanced questions to be theoretical, as if there wasn't a clearly defined method of treatment already existing! It's so sad..." It really was sad, at least to her, who could already guesstimate that any and all rewards she would probably earn from taking the champion title for medicine would end up being worthless.

"..." Like the crowd, the interviewer had absolutely nothing he could say after hearing such extreme defamation. If it wasn't clear before, she had to be doing it on purpose now! With nothing left to add, the interviewer awkwardly wished her to continue on with her good luck before leaving the arena grounds.

With everyone's attention being drawn to the sound of the announcer sideswiping away Elizabeth's terrifying influence, he said, "Moving on to Stage Two of the Medical Stage, the Physical Healing Stage, the remaining competitors are to pick and treat as many patients as they can. Treating physical wounds are always easier to deal with than sicknesses. So, only the best of the best will be allowed to deal with those ailments in the next and final Stage. As per usual, only the top hundred will make to the next stage, unless you are disqualified by providing worthless or damaging treatment to a patient. Now then, please turn to the north side of the arena. May our patients please come out."

As the announcer's voice faded, several people appeared by the north side of the arena. However, Elizabeth could tell almost right away that there were barely any practitioners participating as patients. All of the patients Elizabeth could see from where she stood possessed varying degrees of injury. Some had obvious injuries like casts supporting a broken limb or gauze bandaging up torn tissue. But others either had injuries that were hidden under the patients' clothes or they were hard to spot from a distance.

In any case, after the patients became visible to everyone in the arena, the announcer came back to the mic to say, "Now then, after I call for the time to start, practitioners will have twenty minutes to pick who they want to treat, transport them over their block safely, and treat as many as they can before the time limit runs out. So, get ready… GO!"

Shaking her head, Elizabeth frowned as she found this to be also a pretty twisted game. Standing by her block and watching as her fellow competitors acted like savages trying to fight for the easiest patients to heal, and treating their fellow man as nothing but tools to acquire points, she honestly felt that her actions, as brutal and unforgiving as they may seem on the surface, were at least a degree more civil than the animals she watched on the Medical Event's Second Stage.