strictlysupreme Chapter 6: A Glimpse of the Preliminary Selection
Chapter 6: A Glimpse of the Preliminary Selection
When Ling Chen woke up, it was already bright outside the window.
He sat up abruptly, his mind still throbbing with the lingering pain from the terrifying flood of information from the previous night.
"Awake?" Elder Mo's voice rang out, tinged with a hint of helplessness. "You're really lucky, kid. Someone else would have exploded and died long ago if they had absorbed something like the Chaos Origin Pearl."
Ling Chen looked down at his palm. The black iron bead had turned to dust, leaving only a faint trace of gray.
"How long did I absorb it?"
"All night long. But the gains were considerable—look at your dantian for yourself."
Ling Chen followed the instructions and looked inside his body, then gasped in shock.
Within his dantian, the second seal of the Myriad Dao Returning to Nothingness Diagram had developed a noticeable crack. Although it wasn't completely broken, the purity of the spiritual energy emanating from it was a whole level higher than before.
His cultivation level quietly rose to the Great Perfection of the Body Tempering Realm.
He's just one step away from reaching the Qi Gathering Realm.
"There's something even more important," Elder Mo's tone turned serious. "The aura of the Chaos Origin Pearl spread out last night. Although I tried my best to conceal it for you, quite a few people probably sensed it. Especially that girl from the Central Continent Immortal Sect; she must have already pinpointed its general direction."
Ling Chen's heart sank.
"She came to our door?"
"Not for now. But you'd better improve your strength as soon as possible. With your current abilities, you can't even last one move against her."
Ling Chen remained silent, then slowly nodded.
He woke up Ling Xue, who was still fast asleep, and after a quick tidy-up, they headed to the Dao Discussion Square.
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The preliminary selection for the sect's selection was held in the martial arts arena in the center of the Dao Discussion Square.
Hundreds of applicants were divided into ten groups of fifty people each, competing simultaneously. The rules were simple—a free-for-all within the groups, with the last ten remaining advancing to the next round.
Melee.
What does this mean?
This means that from the moment you step onto the fighting stage, your opponent is everyone.
No one will engage in a fair one-on-one contest with you. Sect selections have never been about choosing a spouse through martial arts; this is the first time the dog-eat-dog world of cultivation has revealed its fangs to these young cultivators.
Ling Chen was assigned to Group C.
This group lacks any experts at the Qi Gathering Realm; the highest-ranking among them are only three at the peak of the Body Tempering Realm. However, under the rules of chaotic battles, the so-called "strongest" often becomes the target of everyone's attacks.
Sure enough, as soon as the referee announced the start, the fifty people quickly split into several small groups.
The three cultivators at the peak of Body Tempering naturally stood together, forming the strongest small group. The other high-level Body Tempering cultivators also formed their own groups, leaving only a few low- to mid-level Body Tempering cultivators standing alone in a corner.
Ling Chen was one of them.
He stood alone at the edge of the training ground, neither joining any group nor attacking anyone.
"Is that guy an idiot? Standing there waiting to die?"
"Peak of Body Tempering? No, why is his aura so weak... He must have used some kind of concealment technique."
"Never mind that, let's deal with the weak ones first, then slowly take care of the group."
Several advanced Body Tempering cultivators exchanged glances and simultaneously pounced on Ling Chen.
Their strategy was simple—eliminate the lone ones first, then concentrate their forces on dealing with the three groups at the peak of Body Tempering.
Ling Chen looked at the four people rushing towards him with a calm expression.
Within the vision of the Eye of Truth, the trajectory of the four people's spiritual energy circulation was clearly visible. The one on the left had an unstable lower body, the one on the right had a noticeable sluggishness in the circulation of spiritual energy at the Zhongwan acupoint, and although the two in the middle were fast, their coordination was clumsy, and their attack routes even interfered with each other.
He simply turned slightly to the side, took half a step to the left, and tripped with his right foot.
The cultivator at the very front felt a blur before his eyes, and suddenly his foot was tripped by something. He lost his balance and collided head-on with the second person behind him.
The two rolled around in a heap, and before they could even react to what was happening, they each received a chop to the back of the neck.
She fainted without any warning.
The remaining two stopped in their tracks, their faces showing surprise.
"This guy is not simple..."
"Attack together!"
The two attacked from the left and right. The fist on the left was wrapped in pale golden spiritual energy, while the one on the right had five fingers forming claws with cyan wind blades at the tips.
Ling Chen moved.
Instant Shadow Step.
His figure left an afterimage in place, and the next second he appeared behind the cultivator on the left. He struck the man in the back with a palm, his spiritual energy surging, sending him flying off the martial arts stage.
The cultivator on the right suddenly narrowed his pupils, and the wind blades turned, grabbing towards Ling Chen's face.
Without turning his head, Ling Chen hooked his right arm behind his back, precisely seizing the pulse point on the other's wrist, and his spiritual power surged.
"Well--"
The cultivator let out a miserable groan, his entire arm instantly going numb and weak, the wind blade vanishing without a trace. Then, he was struck in the abdomen by a knee strike, his body curling into a shrimp-like shape before Ling Chen casually tossed him off the stage.
From the moment the four men charged at us until they were all dealt with, it took no more than ten breaths.
The changes that occurred within those ten breaths were enough to attract everyone's attention.
"This guy... is he really at the Body Tempering Realm?"
"He took on four opponents single-handedly, without even breaking a sweat."
"There's something wrong with his movement technique. It's too fast, not at all like the speed one would expect from a Body Tempering Realm cultivator."
The battle on the stage continued, but no one dared to approach the corner where Ling Chen was now.
The three strongest groups at the peak of Body Tempering finally defeated their last opponent, leaving only thirteen people on the stage.
According to the rules, only ten can remain.
The three peak Body Tempering cultivators exchanged glances, their gazes simultaneously turning to Ling Chen in the corner.
"Brother, you're quite the fighter." The leading Body Tempering Peak cultivator grinned, but his smile carried an undisguised threat. "But you know the rules. All three of us must advance, so I'll trouble you—"
"Get down yourself."
Ling Chen remained silent.
He stood still, without even assuming a starting stance.
Anger flashed in the eyes of the three men. The leader sneered, "He won't listen to reason, so he'll have to suffer the consequences. Brothers, let's take care of him first."
Three figures rushed at the same time.
With his peak Body Tempering power fully unleashed, his fist energy, palm wind, and leg shadows intertwined to form an impenetrable attack net.
A gasp of surprise rippled through the audience.
Three peak Body Tempering cultivators against one—it's an absolute crushing defeat.
Ling Chen took a deep breath.
The all-seeing eye is fully open.
What others saw as an impenetrable attack network, he saw as full of flaws.
With a series of swift movements, he weaved between the three, each dodge perfectly timed. Fists grazed his ears, palm strikes brushed against his clothes, and leg shadows swept past his feet, always just a hair's breadth away.
Some people in the audience had already stood up, their mouths agape in disbelief.
"They dodged them all?"
"Is...is this even human?"
The three peak Body Tempering cultivators grew increasingly alarmed as the fight progressed. They felt that each move was just a hair's breadth away from hitting their target, but that "hair's breadth" seemed to be separated by an insurmountable chasm.
"Don't engage him in close combat, use area attacks!" The leading cultivator shouted, and the three of them changed their moves at the same time, instantly expanding the range of their spiritual energy to completely seal off Ling Chen's evasive space.
At the very moment of changing tactics.
Ling Chen moved.
It's not about dodging, it's about attacking.
He mastered the Shadow Step to its limit, and his figure appeared before the leading cultivator like a ghost. He unleashed a palm strike, the wind from which was fierce.
The cultivator instinctively blocked, only to find that the palm strike was just a feint.
The real attack came from behind him.
Ling Chen's right foot had already swept across the second cultivator's knee. The man's legs buckled, and he knelt on one knee. Immediately afterward, an elbow strike to the back of his neck knocked him unconscious.
"one!"
A look of terror flashed in the eyes of the remaining two. But a fatal gap had appeared in their coordination.
Ling Chen gave them no chance to make amends. In a flash, he appeared behind the second man, grabbed his shoulders with both hands, and yanked him away.
The man hurtled towards the third person like a cannonball.
The two collided and rolled to the edge of the training platform.
Ling Chen slowly walked up to them.
"Should you go down yourselves, or should I escort you down?"
His voice was calm and undisturbed.
The two peak Body Tempering cultivators exchanged a glance, their eyes filled with resentment, but they could only grit their teeth and admit defeat: "We'll go on our own."
They jumped off the training platform and disappeared into the crowd.
The entire Group C training ground fell into a brief silence.
Then, a deafening cheer erupted from the audience.
"Group C! Ling Chen! Eliminated seven people by himself! Staying in Taiwan!"
By the time the referee's voice rang out, Ling Chen had already stepped off the martial arts stage.
He did not celebrate.
Because he knew that the preliminary selection was just the threshold.
The real battle begins with the second round of selections.
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