Chapter 24

The next morning, Qian Yu woke up early like previously before going to go look for more Snowdrop Flowers and scouting. Besides the 2 he used on the beautiful woman to treat her wounds, he had 18 flowers. All together, that would be at least 90 gold coins and Qian Yu couldn't help but smile at his luck.

After two hours, he was already back at camp and the group proceeded to start hunting for beasts as they followed Qian Yu's path he had scouted out. Hours passed as they hunted beasts just like the day before.

*Clang!* Suddenly, the noises of battles from afar entered their ears.

"Quiet everyone," Zhao Xieren quietly said with her finger over her mouth.

Edging towards the noise, they soon saw over 20 disciples fighting in the open. Everyone in the tournament had white robes since it was more suited for the environment. Instead, each sect had different bands on their robes.

One group had a red band and the other had a brown band as they continued to fight. Staring at them from a cliff, Zhao Xieren silently gave out her orders, "Everybody, go down the mountain and surround them."

*Clank!* Meanwhile, the first casualty was finally taken as the two sides continued facing off. The Mountain Crushing Sect disciples fought mainly with their hands. However, disciples under the soul foundation stage couldn't use any techniques so they naturally fought with other weapons such as clubs or blunt weapons. On the other hand, the Fire Sword sect only fought with swords of course.

"Ahhh, take -!" A disciple from the Fire Sword sect had managed to attack a disciple from the Mountain Crushing Sect when he saw an opening. He was smiling as his attack landed and cut into the flesh of the enemy. However, his smile disappeared the moment a club hit him on his arm.

*Crack~!* the sounds of bones breaking under the attack could be heard as the Fire Sword disciple flew a couple meters in the air before falling down unconscious.

Seeing that, the other Fire Sword disciples immediately tensed up and prioritized avoiding the enemy's attack instead. While the Mountain Crushing Sect disciples were in the advantage, the same couldn't be said with the inner disciple leader of the group.

At the first layer of their cultivation technique, they would naturally learn how to control qi and turn it into earth qi but they weren't really able to do much with it. It wouldn't be until the following layers that they learned techniques such as Mountain Wall that could be used defensively. As for the main skill of the 1st layer, it was an offensive fist skill which was hard to use against the enemy leader who used a sword.

"God damn it, fight me without your weapon! Like a real man!" the Mountain Crushing inner disciple leader said. With the rapid sword slashes coming forward, he could barely block the attacks, much less try to find an opening and counter attack.

"Ha, I am one with the sword, the sword is me! Why would I fight without it!" His opponent laughed as he continued attacking.

After a few minutes of attacks, the Fire Sword inner disciple smiled as he stepped back and launched a full force attack.

"Burning Sword Slash!" he yelled out. All of a sudden, flames grew on the sword as he dashed forward.

*Swish!* he sliced forward at the Mountain Crushing disciple leader.

"AHHHH!!!" On the other hand, the Mountain Crushing sect inner disciple managed to block it but the flames continued forward slightly burning parts of his body. He roared in pain as he felt the fire burning his body.

*Slash!* The Fire Sword disciple leader didn't let this opportunity go to waste as he launched another attack across the chest.

*Thump!* the Mountain Crushing disciple leader flew back a few feet as blood gushed out from his wound. Barely hanging onto his consciousness, he bit his lips before taking out a special talisman. Channeling his qi into it, a flare shot out from the talisman.

"Woot! We won!" The remaining outer court disciples of the Fire Sword Sect yelled seeing their sudden victory. They weren't faring so well but their leader had managed to resolve their situation.

However their victory was short-lived as they noticed the arrival of a 3rd party.

"Charge!" a yell resounded as numerous figures appeared in front of them.

"What the hell! Where did they come from!" the Fire Sword disciples screamed.

Following Zhao Xierenn's shout, the disciples charged forward as Zhao Xieren led the encirclement and in a matter of seconds, they surrounded their prey.

Seeing their predicament, the inner disciple leader from the Fire Sword Sect pointed at Zhao Xieren, randomly blurting out, "I challenge you to a duel."

Hearing his challenge, Zhao Xieren chuckled as she remembered his actions earlier. "Why would I need to do that? You barely have any qi anyways," she smiled at him.

On the other hand, the inner disciple was embarrassed as he stomped his foot and took out a talisman and activated it like the previous one by the Mountain Sect inner disciple leader. It was a pointless fight without qi left. Further struggling was futile and it would only serve to embarrass him more.

After a few minutes, two elders could be seen flying through the air as they approached the 3 groups of disciples. One had red robes while the other had brown robes. Seeing the current predicament of their disciples and the unscathed disciples in pure white robes, they sighed at their disciples' unluckiness.

"Alright alright, let's go," they grabbed their disciples before flying off and leaving Qian Yu and everyone else behind. Seeing them leave, everyone couldn't help but be happy seeing as they had managed to eliminate two groups from the competition.

Truly, in a battle royale situation, one always had to be wary of getting attacked by a third party. It was only the 3rd day of the event yet 3 groups managed to arrive at the same spot around the same time. It was truly unfortunate and if they had gotten there a little earlier, they might have been the ones who left just now.

Nonetheless, everyone continued to forward. They still had a couple of hours left and knew that time couldn't be wasted.

Three hours later, they had stopped for the day. Looking at her bracelet, Zhao Xieren smiled as she announced, "Good job everyone, we currently have 60 points and are at 9th place!"

While this wasn't extremely good, her personal goal for this event was to be in the top 10 as she knew that the disciples under her control were pretty weak. Despite that, she had managed to enter the top 10 which made her happy.

"Hahaha, those guys were so unlucky!" one person said.

"Well, they were pretty dumb to be fighting for so long in an event like this. Praise Leader Zhao!" another disciple said happily.

"Haha, alright let's get settled down and prepare some food," Zhao Xieren dismissed everyone.

_________

Currently, in the largest tent on top of a mountain.

Two men were playing a game of go while one was cultivating. The last one was just staring at a jade board with many inscriptions on it.

On the jade board, it listed the leaderboards after 3 days.

1. Feng Lan - Ice Arts

2. Jiang Yin - Mountain Crushing

3. Li Yi - Fire Sword

4. Liao Shufen - Fire Sword

5. Lang Cheng - Ice Arts

6. Zhan Lin - Mountain Crushing

7. Ren Huo - Fire Sword

8. Zhan Fu - Mountain Crushing

9. Zhao Xieren - Ice Arts

10. Lang Mei - Ice Arts

Smiling, the man watching the jade board casually said, "Hahaha, looks like I'll be a couple thousands spirit stones in two weeks."

Hearing his words, one of the men playing go aggressively said, "Shut up fool" as he tried to save himself from defeat in the game.

Meanwhile, the other go player just laughed light heartedly while the man cultivating didn't do anything.