CHAPTER 115: THIRD DAY

Chapter 115: Third Day

.

The excitement from the audience today was much louder than in the previous two days, and that was because the matches between third stage cultivators were about to take place.

In other words, the battles would be fiercer and naturally much more exciting.

The number of people who had decided to come watch today’s matches was far greater than on the previous days, since not only first and second year students had shown up, but also many from the third year, either to watch or to cheer for their friends.

In the past days, few of the third years had bothered to come watch their juniors fight, as most didn’t feel the need.

After all, these students were weaker than them in cultivation level.

This kind of superiority complex was something that developed naturally once one reached a certain level.

After all, one can’t expect a lion to regard a rabbit as an equal.

Of course, this attitude varied from person to person.

There were those who didn’t want to be associated with anyone weaker than themselves, and those who didn’t really care much about the gap in cultivation level.

Everyone had their own worldview, and it would continue to change from day to day.

One couldn’t expect everyone to think the same, especially in the world of cultivators, where most of the time the strong ruled over the weak.

That said, the battles didn’t take long to begin.

The third year participants were divided into ten groups across ten arenas.

At first glance, it might have seemed random, but it wasn’t entirely so.

The strongest weren’t all put together in the same group, but instead spread out so that each arena had one or more strong students..

This way, the matches would be fairer, and at the same time it would serve as a decisive test to see if these so called "strongest" of the third years could maintain their position until the very end.

Of course, even if in all ten arenas the strongest managed to win, their number would eventually be reduced to five or fewer once the finals began on the fourth day, when all students from every year would be mixed together instead of separated.

If all the third years managed to crush those from the lower years, then fine. But if one or two students from the other years managed to stand on par with their seniors, or even beat them, then even better.

Either way, it was a win for the academy.

In Arena No.6, Li Duoji stared at his opponent with an emotionless expression, waiting for the referee’s signal to start the match.

[introduced in ch 31]

He was considered one of the most talented prodigies of his year, if not of the entire academy.

He was a rare dual element cultivator, and as luck would have it, one of his elements was lightning.

His talent for cultivation was already outstanding, and his affinity with lightning was of a rare grade.

Having such a high affinity with an element that was very hard to cultivate and to even obtain in the first place was already extraordinary. If you then added his strong talent for cultivation, he was basically the perfect prodigy, the kind born once in a century.

The kind of prodigy that all major families tried to bring into the world, or at the very least, to recruit if they couldn’t.

Li Duoji had been lucky enough to be born into one of the most prestigious families in Lushan Province’s capital.

Naturally, the treatment he had received from his family since birth had been good, to say the least.

And it was logical since, if he continued to progress like this, he would have a very high chance of advancing beyond the Mortal realm and stepping into the Spirit realm, a goal every cultivator dreamed of achieving.

It might sound like just a small difference in realms, but those who had reached the peak of the fifth stage of the mortal realm knew very well just how hard it actually was to break through to the next realm.

There were cultivators who had been stuck at the peak of the fifth stage for centuries, still trying and failing to advance, simply because their talent wasn’t enough.

For Zhu Rong, whose talent was only average and who had suffered from deformed meridians in his past life, the distance between the two realms had been even greater,

so much so that even attempting to advance was nothing short of a death sentence.

Normal cultivators with average talent might take centuries, but eventually, with the right enlightenment, they could at least try to break through.

But for him, not even that was possible, because his cultivation path had already been cut off before he even reached the peak of the Mortal realm.

The fact that he had even managed to get that far despite his condition was already a miracle, and he knew it well.

But knowing this didn’t make him happy.

Instead, he felt bitter, bitter that his problem hadn’t been discovered earlier, bitterness that had followed him all the way to his grave.

These were the kinds of emotions many cultivators eventually experienced in their lives, especially those who failed to advance or who reached the end of their lifespan knowing they no longer had any chance left.

But for geniuses like Li Duoji, none of this was a problem.

With his talent, as long as nothing went wrong, he could probably step into the Spirit realm in less than a hundred years, maybe even sooner.

The elders of his family, as well as the patriarch himself, knew this well.

That was why they hadn’t held back in nurturing his growth since birth.

As a result, he had only grown stronger, even breaking through to the third stage in his second year.

Everyone knew that he had already reached the peak of the third stage some time ago, and some even speculated that he might have already stepped into the fourth stage.

Nothing had been confirmed, but considering his talent, the possibility wasn’t completely out of the question.

The fourth stage was usually reserved for academy instructors, most of whom ranged from the fourth to the fifth stage.

Few, like Liang Yuexin, had become instructors before reaching that level, but even that had been due to a mix of influence, status, and talent.

But that’s a story for another time.

Unlike Li Duoji, who was calm and impassive as he looked at his opponent, the same couldn’t be said for the student standing across from him.

His face was visibly grim, clearly unhappy with the opponent he had ended up against.

The first match of the day had been decided by a random draw, and from then on, the tournament would proceed with the winners advancing.

But he had been unlucky enough to be chosen first, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, his opponent was exactly the one person he didn’t want to face.

In his mind, he cursed the referee who had drawn the names.