9 tailed fox in TDG

a handsome boy can be seen sitting surrounded by scrolls, bottles of blood, brushes, carving tools and all kinds of materials like various metals, wood, stone

this boy is tang meng 'with my cultivation already at 136 points and steadily increasing on its own i can finally focus on my inscriptions' 

tang meng is carefully and slowly engraving a dazzlingly complex pattern onto a small cube of metal, around him he has similarly engraved cubes of various materials.

'looks like the wood cube handles this surprisingly well, better than the metal even. That's a welcome surprise, that means it will only be cheaper to make'

tang meng takes out a demon spirit right before infusing it into the wooden cube upon which the engravings light up with a faint blue light.

"this should be able to hold up to 10 demon spirits up to black gold rank but not yet legend rank" tang meng muses.

'perhaps i should get registered as an inscription master, that way nobody will question my future achievements in the field. i can't share this one with them yet though, the dark guild is still around after all'

...

first person POV

inscription association

the building is empty, not a single person in sight except the woman behind the desk.

'this place is more abandoned then i thought'

"hello senior sister, my name is tang meng, may i ask you how i could go about becoming an inscription master?" i ask the woman behind the desk

she looks up, slightly surprised by my age but remains professional "hello little brother, unlike in the alchemy association we don't have a lot of tests or evaluations, you just need to make the best inscription you can and it needs to be functional, i'm a master myself so i can evaluate it and see if its good enough to award you the position of an apprentice or even a master"

"can i do that right now?" i ask

"sure, but you will need to make the scroll with the materials provided and you will also need to pay for those materials regardless of your success"

i pay her a deposit in advance in case i mess up, then she leads me to a side room where she watches me like a hawk as i get to work with black gold rank materials and begin drawing on a scroll. after an hour of slowly and meticulously drawing, the scroll is complete.

In a isolated testing room she tests the scroll, it unleashes a powerful cold energy causing a snowstorm that freezes the room in a layer of ice before she manages to stop the scroll.

"this is definitely good enough for a master badge, oh and my name is ye meiling if you need help with anything in the future you can contact me." she says, still in shock that a thirteen year old just earned the title of inscription master.

about 20 minutes later she hands me my badge and i decide to leave before she asks questions.

as she watches me leave she wonders to herself 'did i really just hand that badge to a thirteen year old. I need to tell my dad.'

as i'm walking away from the association i have an idea for another array, if i can figure out how to draw in the souls from dead demon beasts from something like a horde and into one of my tails, that could give my cultivation a massive boost.

'not like i have to put any time into cultivating, so i might as well try to figure that out'

...

1 month later

I've spent some time cultivating and went to see nie lie in the library a few times, seeing as i technically do work there, the rest of my time was spent on physical training or making designs for various arrays, I've given one of my designs to the inscription association and i made sure it is only usable for defense, it will essentially make a giant dome shield around all of glory city. and as such it is mostly useless to the dark guild.

ye meiling wasn't able to evaluate it on her own so i will have to return once a grandmaster has taken a look at it.

over the past month i've discovered that with each breakthrough my tail's capacity increases by 20 points of soul force per day until at 5 star bronze rank it cultivated 100 points of soul force per day but it stayed like that even after i went up to silver rank, i've also noticed that it takes a day or so after each breakthrough before my tail is fully upgraded, this might increase in the future but i'm unsure about it.

'2400 points of soul force. hehe i'm going to give everyone a surprise, if i arrive on time that is.'

i run to the exam field, already technically too late by the time i leave home, i end up jumping over the wall just as the first student is going up to do his strength test, its that brat shen yue.

...

third person POV

"tang meng, where have you been these past few days?" nie lie asks

"i've been training hard, be prepared for a big surprise" tang meng says, failing to contain a smirk

"i'll look forward to it" nie lie

as expected, lu piao was a 3 star bronze, du ze went past 5 stars and exploded the crystal and nie lie got a perfect 100 in both strength and soul force just to taunt shen xiu who was practically fuming in rage or embarrassment it is hard to tell which one it is, the others all had 2 or 3 stars as well except for ning'er and ziyun who both exploded the crystal.

finally it was tang mengs turn, confidently he walked up to the testing machine, unknown to him however is that he had extra spectators.

"is this the kid you told me about meiling? The inscription master who made that array?" asks ye shuo

"yes he is" ye meiling

at that moment a loud bang resounded as tang meng hit the machine, promptly breaking it.

"erm... do i need to go again?" tang meng

"no need for that" vice-principal ye sheng say, already used to the repeated surprises now.

next tang meng goes to test his soul force, predictably it explodes the crystal but by now people had gotten somewhat numb to it.

'I need to inform the city lord about him, this kid has offended the sacred family and has likely attracted the attention of the dark guild with his array' ye shuo 

...

'accepted to the genius class, as expected'

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A/N: ye meiling is a character i made up purely because not a lot was said about inscriptions and how one becomes an inscription master. She is the daughter of ye shuo who is an elder of the ye family, and if im not mistaken in the original novel ye shuo was actually the one who recommended nie lie to become a collection deacon but in the manhua they replaced him with ye xiu.