The second level of the prison was a deeper circle of hell. The air grew colder, thicker with the metallic tang of old blood and the faint, ozone-tinged scent of fear-sweat. Qin Minfeng descended with a predator's caution, his earlier confidence replaced by a cold, simmering unease. Initially, he had seen 'Ox' as a target, and the other top contenders as mere obstacles. His journey had convinced him of his own singular destiny—opportunities always found him, his potential was a bottomless well, resources poured in and were digested with terrifying speed. He was certain that even if the first-tier geniuses stood above him now, a few choice treasures would bridge the gap. Just as the old ghost had whispered: he was chosen, favored by fate itself.
But the prey had turned out to be… unexpected.
Too strong.
No wonder the old ghost urged me to eliminate him for merit points back then…The thought was a bitter pill. Ox must have already been flagged by the system as high-potential even then. And I failed.Regret, sharp and acidic, coiled in his gut. I was too focused on Zhou Linglang. I should have killed him in that bandit den, consequences be damned.
Regret was useless now. He looked down at the faint, glowing sigil on his palm—a Team Resonance Mark, a one-use artifact for coordination when communication devices were jammed. He'd known where the others were the moment he stepped onto this level. But he'd been careful, observing. Most cell doors on this level were already shattered, their inhabitants either dead or roaming free. The vanguard of the first-tier had swept through like a storm, already descending to richer hunting grounds below. Good. That meant relative safety here.
Moving like a wraith, he avoided the occasional skirmish or fleeing examinee and found the other three. They were in the process of battering down a reinforced cell door, their coordinated attacks efficient and brutal. Their point tallies on the invisible scoreboard were already climbing, faster than his. A cold fact settled in his mind: Chen Sihai and Donglong Zhao still didn't truly see him as one of them. Sending him after Ox was them making him clean up his own mess. When it came to harvesting real points, the bond of their three allied families was tighter, their futures intertwined. He was an add-on, a hanger-on.
Hanger-on?Resentment flared. He conveniently forgot the mountains of resources they'd already poured into him. It was a lot. But it was never enough. Human desire was a bottomless pit.
Gritting his teeth, he activated the mark, pouring his mana into it to send a pulse of urgent communication before he even reached them.
A flicker of awareness crossed the three faces mid-assault. "Trouble," Qin Minfeng's mental voice was strained, laced with forced panic.
"So urgent, using the mark?" Donglong Zhao's response was calm, analytical. He heard the ragged edge in Qin Minfeng's psychic 'breath'. "You can't handle him?"
Beside him, Chen Sihai's expression darkened instantly. Lian Sujin's eyes widened with shock. Their earlier assessment of Ox's strength had been theoretical. If he could pressure Qin Minfeng to this point…
"He's strong. Really strong. I'm no match. I had to run the moment I realized." Qin Minfeng's mental voice was a masterpiece of controlled desperation. "He's chasing me. You're on the second level? Get to the third, now. I'll lead him away, deep into the other sectors. The first-tier monsters are down there—he won't dare go all out with them around. You'll be safe. A'Jin, stay hidden."
The words were perfectly crafted. Lian Sujin and the hot-headed Chen Sihai would hear self-sacrifice. Donglong Zhao only cared about one thing.
"Did you engage?"
"Briefly."
"Your assessment. Be specific."
"High second-tier, top thirty. His perception is terrifying. And he has this ability… an instantaneous materialization of light into solid form. But even if all three of his elemental affinities are over 100k, his mana reserves shouldn't support such high-speed, large-scale manipulation unless… he has a treasure augmenting him. With a treasure like that, his area-of-effect capabilities are monstrous. A two-man team from our group might not be enough. We should retreat for now. Let the Xie family handle it—Xie Baiyu and Xie Kunpeng from the main and second branches are here. Either of them could erase him. Leave him to them."
Every word was truth, or plausible speculation. He admitted weakness, advocated caution, and planted a seed: a treasure. A treasure that could materialize light. Donglong Zhao, a lightning specialist whose element shared kinship with light… wouldn't he be tempted? Wouldn't he want such a power amplifier for himself?
Qin Minfeng waited, deliberately letting the sounds of his frantic flight—the scuff of boots on stone, the rasp of his breath—filter through the link.
Bang!He even threw a fake energy blast against a wall for sound effect.
A pause, then Donglong Zhao's decisive thought came through. "Lead him here. We're setting up. Hurry. Don't waste time."
"Understood."
The link severed. Qin Minfeng exhaled, a thin, cold smile touching his lips. He focused his senses behind him.
Strange. He's not close.A flicker of doubt. But he was certain. Ox wouldn't let him go.
Then, a shift in the ambient light, a faint hum of gathering photons. There!
He poured on the speed, a dark blur down the grim stone corridor. Behind him, a streak of condensed light gave chase, ricocheting off walls and ceiling with impossible agility, closing the gap with chilling efficiency.
Meanwhile, in the side corridor, the three nobles finished their work. The cell door exploded inward.
"Time's up. He's leading the rat here," Donglong Zhao stated, his voice devoid of warmth. They exchanged a look and began their preparations, a silent, efficient ritual of powering up.
Chen Sihai, ever the most self-centered, summoned his trump card first—a shimmering, permanent-grade card that dissolved into a sheath of hardened mana around his body. "+30% base constitution and physical defense. Daddy's little boy is scared of getting hurt?" Lian Sujin sneered, though her eyes were already pulling a small, crystalline beast core from her storage ring.
"Shut up. Your mom bought yours at the same auction house as my dad. Don't think I don't know about your Blue-tier Swift-Leopard fusion. Adds what, 50k agility? But do any of us have a direct offensivetrump?"
As if in answer, a sphere of crackling blue energy enveloped them. They turned to see Donglong Zhao had summoned it—a floating, intricate automaton of polished blue metal, humming with contained power. "A Military-Grade Arcane Automaton…?" Chen Sihai's jealousy was palpable. "That thing costs more than all of ours combined!"
"Group buff: +80% strength attribute. Secondary effect: weapon edge-honing," Donglong Zhao recited flatly, ignoring the envy. He then produced four disposable talisman cards. With a flick of his wrist, they transformed into faintly shimmering cloaks. "New from the Alchemist's Guild. One-time use. Put them on. Until we attack, we'll be ghosts. Only a Level 50 sensory specialist or the top-tier scouts in the first rank could spot us now."
Chen Sihai's face was grim. "Sujin, the moment he's in range, hit him with your strongest mental disruption. We can't give him a nanosecond to trigger the withdrawal command. Best to finish it here."
Lian Sujin nodded fiercely. "Obviously."
Donglong Zhao's brow furrowed slightly. It wasn't reluctance to kill, but a calculation of cost. Eliminating a rival in the exam was one thing. Actually murderingsomeone and making an enemy of the famously protective and unpredictable Zhou Miao was another. The Xie main and second branches wouldn't thank them for interfering in their internal strife. Was Qin Minfeng's grudge worth that? Even a potential treasure on Ox's body might not be.
But the alternative… letting someone with Ox's displayed growth potential and obvious grudge walk away… was also unacceptable. He gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. He was confident. And when he moved, it would be decisive.
They vanished, their forms dissolving into the gloomy atmosphere of the prison corridor, a perfect triangular ambush point laid.
Yao pursued, a specter of focused intent. Seeing Qin Minfeng's chosen escape route sent a ripple through her calm.
"Sis? What's wrong?"Little Locust's voice was a whisper in her mind.
"Nothing. Just a sudden, stark reminder of how unfair fate can be."
The direction Qin Minfeng fled… it led directly to the second level's hidden boss chamber marked on her mental map. Coincidence? He couldn't know. It had to be. It was the insidious pull of a protagonist's luck, the universe bending to grant him opportunities. This is why people like him are more dangerous than any pampered young master. Given time, they don't just rise; they conquer.
"I wonder how many like him exist in this world… In a way, am I not a special case too?"She shook off the metaphysical pondering. It was irrelevant. She fired a few more light blasts, intentionally missing, keeping up the chase, ensuring the observation screens locked onto their conflict.
In the Triumphal Gate colosseum, a portion of the audience's attention shifted.
"So soon? Couldn't even wait."
"After that failed ambush earlier, Ox clearly holds a grudge. He won't let it go."
"But Ox doesn't know they have a way to regroup… he's walking into a trap."
"A kid this cunning, this shrewd… I'd rank his street-smarts in the top twenty of all four thousand. Would he really charge in blindly? What if…"
The murmurs came from the seasoned observers, guild managers and intelligence agents who lived by reading between the lines.
Two such managers watched, eyes sharp. "What if," one mused, sipping a costly spirit-water, "he knowshe's being led into a trap, and he's going anyway?"
The other manager's eyes widened slightly. "Then that would mean…"
They both instinctively glanced towards the seating area of the Donglong, Lian, and Chen families.
At that moment, two figures descended the steps into the general viewing area—Lan Luoqi and his elder brother, Lan Xuanyu. The younger brother had been eliminated earlier. The elder had come, ostensibly to show face for his old academy.
Lan Xuanyu moved with easy grace, exchanging pleasantries with former teachers, a picture of established, well-connected success. His eyes, however, flicked to the large screens just as the chase played out.
Lan Luoqi smirked. "Looks like you won't need to dirty your hands. No need to use a dragon-slaying sword to kill a chicken."
Lan Xuanyu's expression was serene, but his eyes were chips of ice. "On the contrary. When I tested into West Jin, I was merely second-tier. If he's already at that level now… his future trajectory is unacceptable. He must be pruned early."
As the words left his lips, the figure of light on the screen blurred, its speed increasing exponentially.
Qin Minfeng threw himself into a desperate roll. A lance of solidified light speared the space where his heart had been a fraction of a second earlier.
Flash!Yao materialized twenty meters away, fingers already dancing, gathering blinding radiance.
He felt the lock-on, a targeting pressure on his soul. He was the bait. But she was the hook, and he had led her into the jaws of the trap.
Now!
With synchronized precision, three figures erupted from invisibility. Chen Sihai, Lian Sujin, Donglong Zhao. Their auras exploded, power levels surging by at least 50%, enhanced further by synergistic formation glyphs that flared beneath their feet. Pets manifested—a shimmering defensive tortoise for Chen, a sleek, electric-blue panther that merged with Lian Sujin, granting her a speedster's grace. Donglong Zhao's automaton pulsed, and he became the eye of the storm.
The attack was a masterstroke of simplicity and speed. No grand, telegraphed technique. From Donglong Zhao's outstretched hand, a single, jagged bolt of violet-white lightning lanced out. It wasn't the diffuse, spectacular lightning of a storm, but a concentrated line of pure annihilation, moving faster than thought.
It was fast.
But Yao had been waiting.
In the microseconds before crossing the ambush threshold, Little Locust had completed fusion. Her agility, already formidable, doubled. Combined with her dual ocular abilities activating at full bore, her perception became god-like. She saw the mana gathering in their cores, the neural impulses firing to trigger muscles, the flow of energy through their artifacts. She saw the instantof their collective commitment to the attack.
Her body moved before the lightning finished coalescing. She didn't just dodge; she blinked, her form fragmenting into afterimages as she employed a basic cloaking technique. She avoided the kill-zone of their combined strike by a hair's breadth, and in the same motion…
The four attackers, and everyone watching on the screens, were blinded by a wave of color.
Green.
A vibrant, pulsating, impossibly pure verdant light erupted from the center of the ambush circle. It emanated from the figure they had mocked as the 'Duck King of Jingyang', the eighteen-removed Xie cousin. It washed over him, even his hair seeming to glow with an emerald halo. For a split second, it was almost absurd, comical.
Then the pressurehit.
A tidal wave of dense, potent elemental energy, magnitudes beyond what should have been possible, crashed outwards.
In the stands, dozens of people shot to their feet, chairs scraping back in unison. Gasps cut through the murmur of the crowd.
Lan Luoqi's face went sheet-white. He looked at his brother, who for the first time wore an expression of pure, uncomprehending shock.
Was it an illusion? A trick of the light? Some strange innate trait?Some minds, seeking any explanation, even whimsically connected it to his betrothal to the famously… experiencedFu Langhao. Appropriately green,a cruel part of them thought.
But Vice-Principal Zhang Ruo, watching calmly, knew better. He had seen few students like this. Not necessarily in raw power, but in the sheer, stubborn defiance of circumstance. The hand she was dealt was terrible—poor aptitudes, lacking background. Yet she had played it, relentlessly acquiring the vast resources her disadvantages demanded, and had forceda rise. This was the result.
On the screen, Qin Minfeng and Donglong Zhao, seasoned and sharp, reacted first despite their shock. Qin Minfeng's hands, which had been weaving a complex sigil during his flight, slammed together. Useless metal trinkets and tools flew from his storage ring. The very metal of the nearby cell doors began to sweat, then melt, flowing towards him. It encased his back, forming great, jagged metallic wings, then sheathed his arms and torso in a living armor. A long spear coalesced in his hands, and a dark, sinuous lizard-summon merged with it, venom sheening the tip. His power level spiked, nearly matching Donglong Zhao's unleashed aura.
Donglong Zhao himself was a figure of crackling, controlled fury, the air around him ionizing.
They moved to attack, to overwhelm with sheer, coordinated force.
They were too slow.
In the span of a heartbeat, before their combined strike could fully manifest, the world around them became a cage of searing, precise death. Countless filaments of solidified light, thinner than hair, sharper than monomolecular blades, erupted from every surface, every shadow, every angle. It was a sphere of utter penetration.
An ancient, brutal execution device came to mind: the iron maiden. A sarcophagus lined with inward-facing spikes. This was that, multiplied by a thousand, rendered in pure, annihilating light.
Boom! Crack! Zing!
The sounds were deafening—their own attacks meeting the light-spears, sparks flying like miniature supernovae. This was the first second.
Simultaneously, two screams, short and wet, cut off abruptly.
Chen Sihai hadn't even had time to fully activate his defensive artifact. The light-filaments found the gaps, piercing through leather, cloth, and nascent mana-shields with contemptuous ease. He was a pincushion in an instant.
Lian Sujin, clutching her most precious defensive treasure, never got the chance to use it. Primal, bowel-loosening terror overrode all thought. I'll die. I'll really die!The thought screamed through her mind a microsecond before a filament of light aimed with surgical precision for her frontal lobe. Her body, driven by survival instinct older than reason, chose withdrawaljust as the phantom pain of penetration flared.
Qin Minfeng and Donglong Zhao had no attention to spare for their comrades. Their own world had shrunk to survival. Their attacks, potent but limited in coverage, were useless against the omnidirectional barrage. They poured everything into defense and evasion. Their reactions were superb, their control impeccable. For two, three seconds, they held, a frantic dance of dodging and blocking under a storm of luminous needles.
Then, the mana around them… vanished.
Oh, hell!The realization was a bucket of ice water. They were sealed inside a sphere that was not just a cage of light, but an elemental vacuum. She hadn't just attacked; she had used the initial outburst of power to consumeall ambient mana in the enclosed space. No external elements to draw upon. They were trapped fish in a draining bowl.
"The only way out is potions, and those take precious seconds to metabolize…" a grey-haired observer in the stands murmured, his voice carrying a note of clinical admiration. "They're out of time."
Inside the cage, time was a luxury they didn't have. The cage itself was contracting, the web of light drawing inward, shrinking their world from a plaza to a closet.
At the same moment, a blinding whiteness filled Qin Minfeng's vision. Mental Disruption! Sustained!
She's going for the kill!
Even through the psychic fog, his will screamed. Molten metal flowed, forming a helmet, reinforcing his chest plate. He felt impacts—sharp, piercing pains—followed by bizarre, hollow missesas his tenacious consciousness fought off the worst of the stun.
On the outside, Yao's brow furrowed slightly. So many resists.The protagonist's plot armor was annoyingly thick. A second of clarity was all he needed.
Two seconds after the cage formed, it flickered, its radiance dimming as Yao's formidable mana reserves finally dipped critically. The lightning-wreathed figure of Donglong Zhao saw his chance. With a roar that was equal parts fury and terror, he detonated a reserve of energy. The cage shattered in a shower of fading light.
A bloody, tattered figure—Donglong Zhao—shot out of the dissipating storm astride his mechanical automaton, phasing through the nearest wall in a panic-stricken escape. He clutched a healing potion, his hands trembling so badly the liquid sloshed over the rim. The fear on his face was naked, primal.
In the Donglong family section, a collective intake of breath was followed by a sigh of relief as they recognized their scion.
A moment later, the withdrawal glyphs deposited Lian Sujin and Chen Sihai onto the safe platform of the colosseum floor. They didn't walk off. They collapsed, bodies a mess of weeping, non-fatal puncture wounds. The psychological trauma, however, was severe. The memory of being turned into living sieves was visceral. Lian Sujin, seeing her family, broke into hysterical sobs, demanding vengeance, her pretty face twisted with venom. Chen Sihai was only marginally more composed, his demands for retribution just as vehement.
The Lian and Chen families seethed with collective, impotent rage. "A Green-Bloodfrom a backwater branch… how dare he!" a Chen elder spat.
"He must pay!" a Lian aunt hissed.
Then, a younger voice, laced with bewildered awe, cut through the anger. "But… Uncle… he isa Green-Blood. At eighteen."
The rage hit a wall, dissipating into stunned silence.
Green-Blood. Verdant Vitality. The second major qualitative leap in a mana-user's life, where one's life force and mana synergize, turning one's very blood into a potent catalyst. It wasn't just about power; it was about potential, about breaking into a realm most mages never glimpsed. In the last eighteen generations combined, neither the Chen nor Lian families had produced a single eighteen-year-old Green-Blood.
"The… the Xie blood, I suppose. Even a distant branch shares the lineage," someone muttered, the words dripping with an acid jealousy that completely overwrote their earlier contempt.
"A man without principles is a hypocrite, and a hypocrite can justify anything," Fu Qiang remarked airily to his sister, watching the shift in crowd sentiment with distaste.
Langhao didn't look at him, her gaze fixed ahead. "So you, who previously couldn't be bothered, are now buying him clothes and shoes online?" Her tone was flat, cold, and carried a dangerous edge. He had, in fact, just used her account to fill a digital cart with over a hundred menswear items, including jewelry.
"He's my future brother-in-law! It's normal for a brother to be nice!" Fu Qiang protested, feigning hurt.
"Using my account. On my card."
"…I was just fostering harmony between you two! He… he responds to gentle treatment! I'm not stingy!"
Their bickering was a quiet island in a sea of shock and recrimination.
The third figure materialized on the platform.
Qin Minfeng.
A collective, horrified silence fell over the section. His injuries were… grotesque. While his head and vital organs were spared, the rest of his body was a shredded ruin. Certain areas seemed to have received particularattention.
He wasn't dead. His last-second protections had saved his life. Healers swarmed him, but his eyes were glued to the main screen, which showed the lone victor standing amidst the carnage.
Eliminated. In the first thirty minutes of the Nationals. By him.The humiliation was a physical weight, crushing his chest. The sounds of the crowd—the gasps, the exclamations of awe directed at 'Ox'—were salt in his wounds.
The fallout was immediate.
"Qin Minfeng!" A Lian elder, his face purple with rage, was the first to break. "Why didn't you warn us he was this strong? You led my daughter into a trap for your petty vendetta! You've ruined her future!"
The warmth, the approval was gone, replaced by naked disgust. The Chen family was even worse; their loss of face was absolute.
Even with Lian Sujin weakly defending him, their words were knives. Qin Minfeng writhed in pain and shame, arguing through gritted teeth, repeating his perfect, unimpeachable earlier warnings. But logic meant nothing in the face of catastrophic failure.
In his agony, his eyes met those of Yao on the screen. Calm, assessing, utterly in control. And in that moment, a horrible, clarifying understanding dawned.
"It was a setup!" he rasped, his voice breaking. "She planned it! She let me go on purpose! She wanted me to lead her to them! We all underestimated her, and she used that! Her goal from the start was to take us all out in one move! Don't you see?!"
And so what if it was?The unspoken question hung in the air.
In the Guild observers' section, a scholarly young man with glasses adjusted his spectacles, a small smile playing on his lips. "If she'd just taken out Qin Minfeng alone, the other two hotheads and their families would have sought revenge. If she'd taken out all four at once, the result would be the same. The optimal strategy was to make Qin Minfeng—the outsider, the one whose private grudge started this—the linchpin of the disaster. His 'miscalculation', his 'poor judgment' in leading the enemy to them… it neatly transfers all blame and wrath onto him. The allied families discard him."
"But Donglong Zhao escaped," a square-jawed colleague beside him pointed out. "A mistake? Leaving a threat like that alive is dangerous. His cousin is with the Li family…"
The scholar shook his head, taking a sip from a bottle of coffee. "Donglong Zhao's escape was her most elegant move."
"Wait… you mean she lethim go? On purpose?"
"Look," the scholar said, his eyes glinting like fractured amber. "You and most people won't see it, but Donglong Zhao and his family will. That Qin Minfeng kid is clever, for a street rat. But he's not thisclever. This 'Ox' understands the rules."
The rules were unspoken but ironclad. She could have killed Donglong Zhao. She didn't. She made it clear her quarrel was with Qin Minfeng, not the Donglong family. She even allowed the escape to look difficult, preserving face for the young master. It was a message, delivered with surgical precision.
"Then why not spare the other two?"
"Because the other two are spoiled, brainless brats. They wouldn't recognize a gracious exit if it bit them. They'd only nurse the grudge. They were raised to be liabilities." His tone was dismissive. "So she removed them. She isn't afraid of the Lian or Chen families. But the Donglongs… that's a different calculus. She likely believes that if the Donglongs stay neutral, the other two will eventually back down. It's a game of influence Qin Minfeng only half-understands. He knows how to use a woman, but not how to wield the rules themselves."
And so, Qin Minfeng lay there, broken and bleeding, the object of universal scorn, while his rival stood tall on the screen.
"Did… did that even count as a round?" someone in the crowd asked, dazed.
"I suppose? Though their attacks never actually landed on him."
"Eleven seconds. Tops."
"Four of them, together a match for a low-tier first-ranker… couldn't last eleven seconds against him."
The implication hung heavy in the air. Ox was now, unequivocally, first-tier material.
A ripple of genuine disturbance went through even the lofty Orange-Blood sections. The unspoken truth was stark: while the first tier wasn't exclusivelytheir domain, all their scions were expected to reside there. The idea that a 'mongrel' from a trash planet, reclaimed by a minor Xie branch less than two months ago, could operate on the same level as their painstakingly groomed heirs… it rankled.
An elder from the Xie main branch spoke, his voice a dry rasp that silenced the murmurs around him. "Composure. If Zhou Miao brought him back, it wasn't just for a vote. She saw the raw material. With enough investment and the right… guidance… such growth is not impossible."
It was a logical salve, but the sting remained. Still, there was solace. The gaps within the first tier were vast.
"His weakness is apparent," another Xie member observed coolly. "He favors overwhelming, high-cost bursts. His stamina must be a critical flaw. But if he can guarantee elimination with one strike, the flaw becomes irrelevant."
The flaw was indeed apparent. On screen, Yao stood alone in the wrecked corridor, breathing heavily. She drained a mana-restoration potion in one go, the strain evident on her face. Then, moving with urgent purpose, she dashed to a seemingly blank section of wall in an adjacent passage and produced the puzzle fragment.
The observation screen tracking her flickered and died as she moved out of the 'combat zone'. But Yao felt a pressing urgency. The others with the puzzle… they'll be finishing soon. They'll see the first hidden chamber is open. They'll know someone beat them to it. That someone will have a target on their back.
Hurry.
On the first level, in a now-empty chamber that had once held a hidden horror, a youth in a pristine white shirt stood calmly. He looked at the open, empty cell, then turned. His eyes were a chilling, emotionless scarlet.
Even figures like 'Cloud Baby' would feel a prickle of fear at his presence.
He took a step, and his body seemed to dissolve into a breeze, reappearing at the entrance to the second level. A premonition, cold and certain, settled in his mind. The one who solved the puzzle first… is likely attempting the second chamber.
Descend. Intercept. Kill. Claim both treasures.
His fingers traced a subtle sigil in the air. A wisp of intangible energy, attuned to the faintest residual traces of unique mana, detached and snaked down the corridor. It had a scent now. It arrowed unerringly in Yao's direction.