Chapter 76: The Exam Begins

Another hour later. The examiner for the second exam finally arrived at the scene. Instantly, the field fell silent. Seimei also woke up from his cultivation. "Let me introduce myself. My name is Tanigawa Masaki, and I will be your examiner for the next part of the exam." The Konoha Jonin in front of everyone said. After speaking, he pointed to the Forest of Death behind him and said, "I believe you already know that your second exam will take place in here. Next, I will introduce you to this place..." Then, he briefly explained the situation inside the Forest of Death. After listening to his description, everyone present couldn't help but gasp. No wonder, in his words, it was too dangerous inside. Before everyone could recover, Tanigawa Masaki took out a stack of 'consent forms' from his arms and said to himself, "Given the danger of the exam, all candidates must sign the 'consent form' and be responsible for their own lives." As he spoke, he handed the 'consent forms' in his hand to a Genin in the front row, motioning for him to pass them on. After everyone got the 'consent form', Tanigawa Masaki saw that some people looked hesitant and suddenly changed his tone, saying, "Of course, if you are afraid, you can also choose not to sign." However, before everyone could be happy, he continued, "But in that case, you will be considered to have given up, and you won't need to participate in the next exam." Hearing this, everyone immediately lost interest. They came here to take the exam. If they couldn't take the exam, why did they come here? Seimei took the 'consent form' and scanned it briefly. It was just some words like "I voluntarily participate in this Chunin Exam" and "I will bear all consequences for any accidents", not much different from the pre-exam commitment letter in his previous life. Seimei didn't hesitate much. After scanning it, he signed his name. Ten minutes later, all sixty people in the field signed the 'consent form' one after another, and no one gave up because of the danger. After collecting all the 'consent forms', Tanigawa Masaki nodded with satisfaction and then said, "Next, I will officially introduce the rules of the second exam to you." As he spoke, he took out two scrolls, one with the word "Heaven" written on it and the other with the word "Earth", and showed them to everyone. "What are these?" someone asked. "The Heaven Scroll and the Earth Scroll." Tanigawa Masaki didn't keep them in suspense and immediately gave the answer, then continued, "Next, you will fight around them." "Fight around them?" Someone looked at the scrolls in Tanigawa Masaki's hands and asked in confusion. "That's right!" Tanigawa Masaki replied, then put away the scrolls and said, "There are a total of sixty of you. Each of you will get a scroll, thirty of you will get the 'Heaven Scroll', and the other thirty will get the 'Earth Scroll'. And the condition for passing the exam is: any team that holds both the 'Heaven Scroll' and the 'Earth Scroll' and reaches the central tower will pass." Before Tanigawa Masaki could finish his words, someone immediately interrupted, "Teacher, some of our teams have more people, some have fewer, and some even have only one person in their team. Isn't this a bit unfair?" "Fair?" Tanigawa Masaki's expression turned serious, and he said coldly, "On the battlefield, will the enemy talk about fairness with you?" "Yeah, will the enemy talk about fairness?" Hearing this, everyone couldn't help but recall their experiences on the battlefield and fell silent. At this time, Tanigawa Masaki said again, "What's more, if you feel that there are too few people, you can choose to form alliances. Anyway, there are plenty of scrolls. Just grab more." Hearing this, many people's eyes lit up, especially those who were alone. They had already started looking for alliance partners. Only Seimei remained unmoved. Firstly, he was confident that even alone, he could obtain the scrolls he wanted. Secondly, this kind of alliance was not very reliable. With fewer people, they might not be able to defeat those teams with good teamwork. With more people, it was possible that they would start fighting amongst themselves first. Therefore, Seimei wasn't very optimistic about this model. But undeniably, giving each person a scroll instead of each team greatly increased the chances of passing. 'It seems that the difficulty of this Chunin Exam has indeed decreased.' Seimei thought to himself. Then, Tanigawa Masaki also explained the situations that would lead to failure. The first was that any team that didn't reach the central tower within the time limit, which was five days, would be eliminated. The second was that any team that lost members or lost the ability to continue fighting would be eliminated. In addition, he finally emphasized that it was absolutely not allowed to peek at the contents of the scrolls before reaching the central tower. As for the consequences of peeking... He didn't say, and no one asked. But Seimei knew that there was a 'hypnosis formula' sealed on it. Once opened, one would fall under its influence and fall asleep until the end of the exam. 'I wonder if my Sharingan can resist it? Should I try it?' This thought suddenly popped into Seimei's mind, but he quickly suppressed it. It was better not to do such a death-defying thing. With everything ready, the second exam officially began. The sixty people in the field were divided into thirty-two teams, each entering from an iron gate, and began their five-day survival test. ... As soon as he stepped into the Forest of Death, Seimei felt inexplicably depressed. He also knew the source of this feeling, which was that the surrounding environment was too dark. Although it was already close to evening, the sun hadn't set yet, and it was still bright outside. But here, the top of his head was covered with branches and green leaves. Except for sporadic light, he couldn't see the sun at all. Coupled with the humid and cold environment and the occasional roars of beasts from afar, it naturally gave people a particularly depressing feeling. Fortunately, Seimei was already used to surviving in harsh environments, so he quickly dispelled these negative emotions. After briefly identifying the direction, Seimei suddenly activated his Sharingan and then ran towards the nearest entrance at an extremely fast speed. Perhaps because he was on the outskirts of the forest, he didn't encounter any danger along the way. In just a few minutes, Seimei arrived at the entrance closest to him. After carefully checking, Seimei was lucky enough to find traces of someone passing by not long ago. The Forest of Death was almost circular, with a diameter of twenty kilometers, so the circumference was sixty kilometers. There were forty-four entrances distributed on this sixty-kilometer-long barbed wire fence, and they only had a total of thirty-two teams. Therefore, before arriving, Seimei didn't know if anyone had entered this entrance. Now it seemed that his luck seemed to be pretty good, just happening to encounter that 70% probability. With the help of the Sharingan's powerful insight, Seimei quickly determined the number of people in this team and their direction of travel - three people, northwest direction. Seimei didn't hesitate at all and immediately followed the traces they left behind, chasing after them. (End of this chapter)