Ch192 - Challenge Round

Edited by Zaki

The Five-Yearly Sect Competition was held as scheduled. As in previous years, the competition started with the disciples of the First Elder, and descended one by one. The First Elder had nine disciples, but Zhou Xiangyun had died, and now there were only eight disciples left. No one had challenged the two disciples who were in the Spirit Profound Realm cultivation. Only two of the four disciples who were in the Spirit Emperor Realm were challenged, and the total number of people who challenged them was only four. After the four challenges, it was Jiang Xu’s turn.

With a leap, Jiang Xu flew down to the top of the ring. He looked at the many cultivators below.

At this moment, the viewing platform was full of cultivators from the inner door and the outer door. No matter what strength or level they were, they were all sitting on the stage watching the challenge rounds. Led by the Sect Master of Lingwu Sect, the Eighteen Peak Masters and the fifty-four Second-tier Elders, all sat in the viewing seats on the East side to watch the challenge. And the area to the West was divided into the challenge area. It was the place where the challengers stayed.

When everyone saw Jiang Xu flew into the ring, the people who had posted challenges to Jiang Xu immediately walked out and stood in the challenge area on the West side.

Seeing that the challenge area was filled with people standing one by one, Liu Mufeng couldn’t help the corner of his mouth twitch as he thought to himself,‘There were actually 2000 sword cultivators who challenged Xiao Xu, not 1800 as they had presumed before.’

“Jiang Xu, you can choose your challenger.” Looking at Jiang Xu in the ring, the Officiating Elder motioned Jiang Xu to choose his own challenger.

“Okay.” Nodding, Jiang Xu calmly took out a challenge letter from his storage ring. “Outer door disciple, Zhang Ming from the Material Area.”

“I, it’s me.” Hearing his name, a thin and withered cultivator in the challenge zone joyfully walked out from the crowd. It was not easy to be selected by this Senior Brother Jiang among the 2,000 disciples.

“I accept your challenge.” With that said, Jiang Xu raised his hand and daintily threw the challenge letter at Zhang Ming.

“Thank you Senior Brother Jiang.” He caught his challenge letter and put it in the storage ring. Zhang Ming then entered the ring.

Looking at Zhang Ming standing on the ring, Jiang Xu flipped his wrist and the long sword appeared in his right hand. He had been studying swordsmanship for a year in the Sword Intent Pagoda, and he had not gotten a chance to try the swordsmanship he had learned. Might as well give it a try today.

Seeing that Jiang Xu had shown his sword, Zhang Ming also immediately showed his own sword.

Looking at Jiang Xu who was standing on the East side of the ring, and Zhang Ming, the outer door disciple who was standing on the West side, the Officiating Elder spoke quietly. “I will repeat the rules of the competition again, this is a pure sword competition, you can’t use any other magic weapons, magic talismans, or array plates, except swords. Using spiritual magic, poisons and drugs are prohibited. The use of anything irrelevant to the sword competition is prohibited. If you are knocked off the stage, you are considered to have lost, and if you are seriously injured and fallen to the ground, you are also considered to have lost. Finally, a reminder, do not take each other’s life for the competition.”

“Yes, Elder Liu.” In response, the two replied in unison.

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“Hei!” The moment the Officiating Elder left, Jiang Xu made a direct move, and his sharp sword move mixed with a captivating aura directly attacked Zhang Ming.

“Ahh!”Zhang Ming didn’t expect Jiang Xu to take the shot first. He thought that the other party, as a Senior Brother in the Spiritual King Realm cultivation, would humbly let him go first. So, by the time he noticed it, Jiang Xu’s attack had already arrived. Swinging the sword, Zhang Ming wanted to block this move, but he couldn’t stop it, and the whole person was directly blown away by the violent sword energy. He fell heavily off the ring.

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With a white face, Zhang Ming got up from the ground and retreated from the field in dismay. The Officiating Elder once again landed on the stage. He looked at Jiang Xu. “Jiang Xu, you can get off the stage and rest, and the second challenge can be done in an hour.”

“No need Elder Liu, I’m not tired, let’s just go to the second challenge. I want to do the ten challenges in one go. If I take one hour break after every challenge, my challenge round will go till tomorrow, right?” Speaking of this, Jiang Xu was very helpless. The two Senior Brothers had already competed in their four challenges before, so it was already afternoon when it was his turn. If he didn’t hurry, for sure his challenge round would drag until the next day.

“This…” With a frown, the Officiating Elder looked at the Sect Master beside him.

“En, it’s okay, since Jiang Xu himself has no opinion, then the competition can continue.” Nodding, the Sect Master agreed.

“Thank you, Sect Master.” Bowing his head, Jiang Xu bowed deeply to the Sect Master.

“Okay, you can choose your next opponent.” Looking at Jiang Xu, the Officiating Elder responded.

“Yes.” In response, Jiang Xu took out the second challenge letter and picked out the second opponent.

Looking at the cultivators who were beaten down one by one on the challenge stage, there was a lot of discussion in the audience, “It’s the sixth one, it’s already the sixth one!”

“Yeah, Senior Brother Jiang is too powerful. He beat the challengers with only three or two moves, this is already the sixth one.”

“Oh, this Senior Brother Jiang is too powerful.”

“Hmph! I don’t think he’s that powerful, it can only be said that there are too many people challenging him, and the ones selected by Senior Brother Jiang are all Spiritual Master Realm cultivators from the outer door.”

“Yes, the strength of the selected challengers is indeed not high.”

“However, even if the strength of the challengers he had chosen is not high, it is still very powerful to fight six people back to back.”

“No, he might not be able to fight six Spiritual Master Realm cultivators in one go, right?”

“Stop arguing, stop arguing, the seventh challenger is on stage.”

Hearing this, everyone who was arguing immediately looked towards the arena. At this moment, Jiang Xu was fighting against Fang Heng. It has always been Fang Heng’s dream to have a good fight with Jiang Xu. Now, he finally got his wish. Therefore, as soon as he came to the ring, he took out his best moves. After exchanging 30 moves with Jiang Xu, he was forced off the ring.

“This one has some skills! He actually fought with Senior Brother Jiang for so long.”

“Yes, this Fang Heng is quite powerful.”

“Che, what do you guys know? Fang Heng is the Cousin of Jiang Xu’s partner Liu Mufeng. Jiang Xu just gave him some face, right?”

“So it’s a cousin, then it’s no wonder.”

“Exactly, I was thinking how could he hold up for so long?”

“This kid is a bit interesting, huh?” Looking at Jiang Xu on the stage, the Sect Master smiled and glanced at the First Elder beside him.

“En, Little Seven’s talent is pretty good. He went to the Sword Intent Pagoda for a year before, and now, his swordsmanship has improved a lot compared to when he had just started.” Speaking of this apprentice, the First Elder was also very satisfied. Although Jiang Xu hadn’t been by his side for more than a year, the First Elder also felt honored to see his apprentice doing so well today.

Raising his eyes and looking at Sect Master Xuanyuan Chen sitting on the main seat, the Third Elder couldn’t help but raise his brows. He couldn’t help thinking,‘Xuanyuan Chen, this guy seldom praises his disciples like this.’

Originally the competition was expected to continue until the next day, but Jiang Xu competed for an hour and directly knocked all ten people out of the ring.

Looking at Jiang Xu who flew off the ring, the audience responded with warm applause, cheers and shouts came one after another.

Jiang Xu returned to his seat and sat down, and Liu Mufeng immediately gave the Qi Replenishing Pill to his wife. “How is it? You’re not hurt, are you?”

“No, they can’t hurt me.” With a wave of his hand, Jiang Xu assured he was fine. These ten people were all chosen by him, and they were the ones with the lowest strength. How could a three-star or five-star Spiritual Master Realm cultivator hurt him, a seven-star Spiritual King Realm cultivator?

“Good to know that you are okay.” Seeing that his lover was all right, Liu Mufeng was secretly relieved. He knew thatXiaoXu would not be defeated by those people, but watching his lover blow ten people away in one breath, Liu Mufeng was still somewhat worried. However, now he could finally feel at ease.

After Jiang Xu stepped down, Zhou Xianglan came on stage. Seeing that there were more people challenging her than Jiang Xu, Liu Mufeng inwardly thought, ‘It seems that these people think Zhou Xianglan is a soft persimmon. I wonder if these people would still have the guts to challenge the other if they knew that Zhou Xianglan was a sorcerer.’

The challenge round for the First Elder’s disciples lasted for two days. The challenge of the Second Elder’s disciples lasted for three days. Soon it was the turn of the Third Elder disciples’ challenge. This year, the sixth-level alchemists did not receive a challenge letter, so neither Shen Xin nor Qiao Yu needed to participate. However, there were a lot of challenges for fifth-level alchemists. The Third Senior Brother Gong Rui received five challenge letters. Fourth Senior Sister Lin Yu received eight challenge letters, and Fifth Senior Brother Zhang Hao also received nine challenge letters.

The competition of alchemists was different from that of sword cultivators and martial arts cultivators. There was no need to compete one by one. As long as the Third Elder could come up with the question, all the challengers and the challenged could concoct alchemy together at the same time. The first criterion for judging victory or defeat was the speed of alchemy, the second was the number of pills, and the third was the quality of the pills. These three points would be used as the criteria for judging.

The Third Elder was a person who did not play cards according to the routine, which could be seen from the problem he had posed when he selected disciples previously. Therefore, his questions were very tricky and weird. For example, he would ask you to use ten spiritual plants to refine a medicinal pill that required fifteen spiritual plants. Another example, he would deliberately give you the wrong spiritual plants and ask you to concoct pills by adding other spiritual plants. His problems tested the comprehensive knowledge the person had about the spiritual plants. Anyway, the questions were very harsh, let alone the challengers, even the three disciples of the Third Elder were stumbling.

There was no danger, Gong Rui, Lin Yu, and Zhang Hao all kept their positions and sat back in their seats. The three of them secretly breathed a sigh of relief and unconsciously kept their eyes on Liu Mufeng. Because, the next one to compete was Liu Mufeng. As fellow Senior Brothers and Sister, the biggest wish of the three at the moment was to hope that Liu Mufeng could be defeated by others and be thrown out of the Pill Peak.

Ever since Liu Mufeng had moved into Master’s Palace, the three of them had become extremely jealous of Liu Mufeng. So they very much hoped that Liu Mufeng would lose the competition and get out of their Pill Peak.