411 Desperation
If Qin Huai was correct, the old men from Wuji Mountain and the Thousand Divination Tower were the heads of the old lunatics. He had killed seven or eight of those lunatics already. Along with Xiang Mingfeng and others, they were mostly wiped out.
The next step was to devise a way to carry out the seemingly impossible plan, and this thought made Qin Huai’s skin crawl. Even with his ancient azure illusion scripture cultivated to the peak of the bone pattern realm, he had no idea or confidence in how to execute this task.
“Let’s take it one step at a time,” he decided. He had no plans to meet with Xiang Mingfeng for now, as neither party had come up with a feasible way to conquer the bronze realm. “Unless something unexpected happens, we should run into each other in a level-one array.”
Once all the old lunatics were taken care of, the remaining opponents were a group of young future kings.
After a few major battles, Qin Huai had grown more proficient at eliminating his opponents. He cleared eighty percent of them within a few hours. Then, he found a quiet mountain to sit and activate the divine power book of a thousand creations to convert his experience points, awaiting the end of the battle.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
There was a faint sound in his heart, similar to metal being hammered. The conversion from the blood heart technique to the four-directional tiger-wolf technique and others occurred in the same sequence…
After countless hours, Qin Huai had converted all the experience points gained from the three individuals. He pushed the blood heart technique, the four-directional tiger-wolf technique, and the poison king technique to the peak of the bone pattern realm. His skin grew tougher, and a very faint black light ran through his veins.
Qin Huai held out his hand and forced a drop of blood to seep out from his finger onto the grass.
Hiss…
Immediately, his blood pierced through the fresh grass, causing it to wither and decay around the hole. His blood even created a small hole in the ground.
“Now that the poison king technique has reached its peak, my blood has become a deadly poison,” he observed. Even a small drop of his blood could probably kill a martial artist who was just at the great blood refinement Realm.
Next, he summoned the divine qi within his dantian again. The divine qi flowed freely in his dantian in sync with his heartbeat. Unlike Liu Laicheng who had struggled to absorb it, Qin Huai was able to absorb the divine qi effortlessly and without any suffering.
As Qin Huai looked at the horizon, he noticed it was already nightfall. This great slaughter was still not over.
“It appears that Xiang Mingfeng and the rest have already started their persuasive efforts,” Qin Huai noted with a certain amount of skepticism regarding their naive plan.
The complexity of human nature and the presence of people like Yang Tianhan, who were experts at concealing their true intentions, made it hard for him to believe in the plan’s success. Yang Tianhan and others like him probably had hidden motives beyond simply escaping the bronze realm — they were likely drawn by the immense power the bronze realm offered and wanted to take it for themselves.
Qin Huai speculated that there were many more like Yang Tianhan. Especially after Xiang Mingfeng publicly revealed that it was possible to leave the bronze realm, those who had already perished might be filled with an unrealistic hope.
Being famous geniuses from Qingzhou, they were likely to risk everything once they found a potential way out. Qin Huai decided not to join this frenzy. He stayed put and focused on cultivating the clasping vitality and defending one technique, which he had not practiced in a while.
…
Meanwhile, on another part of the battlefield, the crowd stirred. Xiang Mingfeng, She Wanshan, Fang Huo, and other future kings from the five great sects were gathered around a small depression, surrounded by hundreds of Qingzhou prodigies.
“Now, I hope that everyone can work together to escape the bronze realm!” Xiang Mingfeng declared, revealing everything.
The crowd immediately became a chaos of voices. A middle-aged man with a beard retorted indignantly, “So, we have wasted decades of our youth trapped in the bronze realm, all for others’ benefit?”
“But we have found a way to break free now, right?” someone else interjected.
“Why can’t we have a fair competition?”
“Yes, why not? It’s fine to let the strongest person get that spot in the end.”
Everyone was talking at once. Those words ignited discussions of a fair competition, where the strongest one would earn the privilege to leave.
“Fair competition? A tournament?” Xiang Mingfeng contemplated. “This method is feasible. Does anyone agree?”
While the idea of a competition was acceptable, there were concerns about how to conduct it, especially since everyone was scattered across different levels of arrays.
“That’s easy,” Fang Huo declared. “In the battle, we decide who goes to the tournament. Then, we send them directly to the level-five array or the level-one array to determine the victor.”
But the crowd was still worried. “What if someone doesn’t accept the result after the fight?”
“What about those with bad character? Why don’t we team up to eliminate them first?”
A flurry of voices erupted, with various names being suggested for elimination, exposing the depths of their resentment and thirst for revenge. The suggestions flew so fast that Xiang Mingfeng and the others could not pinpoint who was making them.
“Heh, I can name a few individuals who are nothing but trouble. I propose we deal with them first,” a voice chimed in.
“Wang Tuo from the Wind Hawk sect has done enough harm. He must pay the price!” came another declaration.
And then a chilling accusation rang out, “Old Man Liu from the White Cloud sect is another one who deserves to be killed. His continuous bullying led my junior sister to end her life after two months of torment!”
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