Situ Gu's gaze continuously swept across the crowd, pausing momentarily on Kong Ran before moving away without a ripple on this lowest quality Vast Energy sheet.
Kong Ran's situation was considered relatively better; most cultivators tasted the bitter fruit of failure in the first round of attempts.
The difficulty of creating Vast Energy is considerably higher than the previous Mountain and River Page and Heavenly Star Paper.
Chu Xuangu and Song Taosheng placed the latter two as the first deliberately, so that cultivators participating in the Xingyun Trial would generally achieve success first, gaining benefits and ensuring influence.
If Vast Energy were placed first, many might fail and develop conspiracy theories, thinking the Confucian Cultivator Group set up this trial to intentionally trouble them, rather than genuinely wanting to teach everyone the spirit paper's creation method.
"Back when I first refined the Vast Energy, I also failed."
