Chapter 102: Number One Hundred and Eighty-Six

A greater honor has been achieved.

Lin Zhan did not linger in the Celestial Goods Hall. He was not injured, and had, without even noticing, broken through to the second rank of the Yellow Stage. Staying there was no longer of great use.

He handed over some of the remaining spirit-stones from his storage ring all at once to Uncle Lian, telling him to find the innkeeper of the Fuyang Inn and pass them on as compensation for the damage.

Though the upper-grade spirit-stone he had already given before was enough to buy the whole inn, that was another matter: Lin Zhan still felt he had wronged the old brother. That place might have been the one trade that fed his family, and now it had been ruined in an instant.

By now, Lin Zhan was truly penniless, a broke fellow.

As for Golden Lion, he did not even say goodbye. He had heard what work Golden Lion was doing, and only wished him success in his heart.

Perhaps when he passed through Fuyang City again, this place would be Golden Lion’s domain. This was Golden Lion’s battlefield, and Lin Zhan would be only a passerby; whatever brotherly bond they had would be spoken of another day.

South of Fuyang City lay the true Wangxi Peak region. The closer one got to Wangxi’s main summit, the more people hurried forward.

This stretch took two days, and by the time he reached the base of the main peak, registrations for the Great Tournament had just opened.

Lin Zhan still looked like a Fifth-Rank Human-Stage disciple, except he no longer wore his laborer uniform. The light-blue robe he had worn before had been torn in battle; now he wore another one, still light blue.

At the foothills of Wangxi Peak stood a mountain gate, and a few white-robed disciples were checking identities at a checkpoint.

Lin Zhan calmly handed over his identity card as a labor-disciple of Flame Peak.

“Lin Zhan, labor disciple of Flame Peak?”

One disciple took the card and repeated his name.

“Another labor disciple?”

“Mm. He’s the sixth labor-disciple. This time so many labor disciples came for the tournament. That’s not normal at all.”

“Whatever. Our job is only to verify identity and hand out competition numbers. Whether these labor disciples possess god-defying skills is up to their own fate.”

After exchanging a few words, the disciple returned the card and gave Lin Zhan a number plate marked 186, along with the black competition robe.

The number plate was engraved with a formation; when Lin Zhan took it, streams of information flooded into his mind.

“Participants in this year’s Flame Mountain disciples’ tournament are expected to be three thousand. It is a knockout format. The venue is South of the Northern Frontier Forest. It is divided into thirty sectors; one hundred disciples enter each. The top ten from each sector advance—that leaves three hundred, who then enter the Southlight Abyss. Finally, the top ten are selected.
The top ten in this competition will receive important inheritances from each peak. The top three may choose a peak for cultivation and become the main disciples personally taught by that peak’s master.”

“The number plate records wins and losses by formation. Each disciple has a small combat-power index. During combat, the defeated disciple’s power value is automatically transferred to the victor, and that defeated disciple is also automatically sent out of the battle zone.
This tournament is not one of those ‘strike once, stop’; everyone should give their all before surrender, leaving life and death to heaven’s decree. But the winner is forbidden to kill an opponent who has already surrendered, or they will be disqualified.”

These stern notices gave Lin Zhan an immediate sense of urgency.

After entering the assembly ground with the other registrants and changing into the black robes, he noticed no one seemed to care whether one was laborer or inner-door or outer-door disciple anymore. Everyone was the same: black robe, number plate at the waist.

Then they all sat in the gathering ground and waited.

“Disciples numbered one through one hundred, gather over here!”

A senior-looking cultivator hovered over the square.

With a fluttering sound, the black-robed disciples from one to one hundred stood together at once.

“I’ll take you to Sector One!”

With one sweeping motion of his broad sleeve, the elder carried the hundred disciples away as if wrapping them in air.

That left the rest, and nerves began to rise. Several fellow disciples who had registered together huddled to exchange last-minute talk.

They seemed to be discussing team tactics—once teleported to the battle grounds, moving as a group would raise the odds.

Lin Zhan felt a trace of contempt. “Judging from this, once we arrive each of us will be scattered to different places. I may never meet my own people. Better to rely on luck.”

As the number of registrants kept increasing and plates had reached into the three hundreds, Lin Zhan knew it was almost his turn.

“Disciples one hundred and one through two hundred, come with the elder!”

The second batch of a hundred rose in silence and gathered, and the arriving elder lifted his sleeves and departed.

That was the same method he had felt when he first came to Flame Peak. That time, after he had ruined the talent-testing Spirit-Force Gate, the enraged Elder Huang had swept him up and tossed him into the labor hall.

In moments like this one, you must let yourself go utterly—no need to force cultivation—and you will be carried through the air all by yourself.

A hundred were taken away effortlessly, with a layer of invisible qi-shield surrounding the group.

Lin Zhan thought that when he reached the late Yellow Stage, he too should possess such an ability. This technique—mastering the control of people and objects—was advanced cultivation.

“This is Sector Two for the preliminary rounds, the outer ring of the Northern Frontier Forest. Go now. Good luck.”

Like shooting stars, one hundred points of light rushed off with the elder’s sleeve movement and vanished into the vast wild jungle.

Beast cries rose, startled birds flew up in flocks, as though this place had already been marked as a field of chaos.

Lin Zhan raised a black ink knife into the air and, knife in hand, swept his spiritual sense over the patch where he would land.

THUD!

At last he landed gently enough, lucky and unharmed.

He crouched quickly like a cat, moved fast, and found a rocky nook before lifting his waist-level number plate.

The 186 plate flickered the instant it hit the ground. Lin Zhan sensed that its attribute score was one.
On its backside, he could also see small white specks distributed across it, with one red point standing out clearly.

“This must be the position marker for everyone,” he thought.

He shifted slightly, and the red point moved as well.

Ah, the red one was myself; the white points were the other contestants.

In the few breaths he spent checking, several white points had already gone dark.

“Good heavens—has the fight already begun?”

Lin Zhan steadied himself and immediately shifted position.

Here, everyone knows everyone else’s positions, and if you stay somewhere for too long, it is easy to be surrounded and flanked.

Since too many people count on luck, if one remains still long enough, others may assume they are injured or trapped and think the score is easy. Then they would rush in.

What tactic to adopt still had to be judged by observation first; before he was sure of his footing, any reckless move would mean defeat.