Chapter 207.1: A True Expert in Disguise; Lu Changsheng Stuns the Crowd with Three Straight Wins! (I)
At the Battle Arena of Heavenly Sacred City.
Lu Changsheng had long since grown familiar with where it stood, having even gone inside a few times, and before long he made his way in once more.
The arena was divided into three kinds: the martial arena, the immortal arena, and the mixed arena. The distinctions were self-explanatory, the martial arena being for martial artists, the immortal arena for immortal cultivators, and the mixed arena for a blend of both.
The Battle Arena was a brutal place. Once a person stepped onto its stage, the contest decided not only victory and defeat but life and death. In other words, of the two combatants, only one was fated to walk away alive. Victory could be claimed by one means alone, and that was to slay your opponent.
Lu Changsheng went straight to the arena's organizers.
"I want to enter the Battle Arena," he said to one of the officials in charge.
"Name, cultivation level, affiliation."
"Lu Changsheng. Peak of the Dao Foundation Realm. Rogue martial artist," he answered truthfully.[1]
In terms of cultivation, he felt he was closer to the Divine Ability Realm, but strictly speaking, he had yet to advance from the Dao Foundation Realm, even if he stood at the very peak of that level.
The official in charge was also a Dao Foundation martial artist. He gave Lu Changsheng a long, searching look before saying in a low voice, "You should already understand the rules of the Battle Arena. Once you enter, you must fight at least three matches. After that, you're free to leave whenever you like. You may also keep fighting or decline as you please.
"There's a great deal of freedom in it. For every match you take part in, you receive a fixed reward of ten spirit stones, plus a tenth of that match's betting pool. If you have no objections, sign this agreement and leave your mental imprint."
The official laid it out plainly. Ten fixed spirit stones amounted to little, but a tenth of a single match's wagers was a terrifying prospect. The people of Heavenly Sacred City did not come to the arena merely to watch. They also placed bets, and how much was staked on any given match naturally depended on reputation.
For an unknown martial artist like Lu Changsheng, matched against an equally unknown opponent, a single bout might draw at most a few hundred spirit stones in wagers, leaving a cut of only a few dozen.
However, if a combatant won several matches in a row, or if a figure of great renown entered the arena, the wagers on a single match could become staggering, anywhere from a few thousand to tens of thousands of spirit stones, and in some cases even hundreds of thousands. Those, of course, were the most popular matches, the ones featuring supreme fighters.
Lu Changsheng had already made inquiries. A single drop of Heavenly Spirit Water cost roughly ten thousand spirit stones—an exorbitant price. Only here in the Battle Arena, with a bit of luck, could he amass more than ten thousand spirit stones across a few matches, or perhaps a dozen or so, and buy the Heavenly Spirit Water.
"I'll sign."
Lu Changsheng signed at once and left his mental imprint. It was only a temporary mark, one that would vanish on its own after three matches. The purpose of the mark was to keep entrants from fleeing before a fight. Anyone who deserted was immediately ruled the loser, after which the arena would send people to hunt the runaway down.
Naturally, no one wished to be hunted down by the arena, so deserters were exceedingly rare. Fighting in the arena at least offered a chance of victory, whereas being hunted by the arena meant certain death.
The official nodded. "Very good. Now that we have your signature and mental imprint, you can come back to the arena in three days, and we'll have a match arranged for you. You won't know who your opponent is until two hours before the match. Any questions?"
"No," Lu Changsheng said evenly. "I assume the arena provides rooms for its entrants to rest in?"
"Of course. You may rest within the arena right up until the match three days from now."
Lu Changsheng nodded and went straight to the room the arena had assigned him. For all three days he remained inside, observing the fighters who competed there. Perhaps his first opponent would be among them, and learning about one's competition was always beneficial.
The three days quickly passed by.
The arena arranged a martial bout for him, and two hours before it was to begin, he learned his opponent's name.
"Zhao Feng?" Lu Changsheng remarked.
It was an ordinary, unremarkable name. In his three days at the arena, Lu Changsheng had never once heard of this martial artist. More likely than not, the man was like him, entering his first bout. As a rule, first-time entrants were never pitted against renowned experts.
Lu Changsheng was unable to gather any information on Zhao Feng, not that it mattered. If he could learn nothing about his opponent, then neither could his opponent learn anything about him. It was fair both ways.
In the end, Lu Changsheng simply waited out those two hours. That waiting period was, in truth, the window in which the spectators placed their bets.
The people who came to the arena had all manner of peculiar tastes. Some liked to wager on renowned experts, while others preferred betting on unknown martial artists, relying purely on luck, like opening a blind box, a thrill all its own.
Li Guang was one such man. A supreme Dao Foundation martial artist with no hope of ever reaching the Divine Ability Realm in this life, he nonetheless came from a powerful background and possessed considerable wealth, and he loved to gamble at the arena. Furthermore, he always chose obscure, unheard-of fighters, leaving everything to chance. He relished that thrill.
That day, Li Guang spotted a bout set to begin two hours later.
"Lu Changsheng against Zhao Feng. Neither name has appeared at the arena before. They must both be newcomers. Lu Changsheng... Now that's an interesting name. I'll bet on him. The usual, one hundred spirit stones," Li Guang said.
Li Guang was a man of great means. A mere hundred spirit stones meant nothing to him, an amount he could wager without a second thought. He placed his bet on Lu Changsheng to win, for no reason other than that he found the name intriguing.
Lu Changsheng did not know Li Guang, but he was waiting on the results all the same. He wanted to see just how many spirit stones had been wagered on the match. Soon enough, the figure came in. Before a fighter took the stage, the arena always informed them of the betting total.
"Lu Changsheng, your bout has drawn a total of two hundred and ten spirit stones in bets."
Lu Changsheng now knew the wager on his match. "Two hundred and ten spirit stones? Rather modest."
His three days at the arena had not been spent in vain, and he recognized at once that the betting was unremarkable, paltry even. No doubt because neither he nor Zhao Feng had a reputation here, the match drew little attention, and consequently, few bets.
Still, a victory would earn Lu Changsheng twenty-one spirit stones, and together with the ten fixed stones, that came to thirty-one in all—not bad at all.
In Heavenly Sacred City, Lu Changsheng was at present truly penniless. He did not even have a place to stay and could only lodge for the time being at Vast Immortal Square, and even there only for a single month. With these spirit stones, at least the matter of lodging could be settled.
"It's time." Lu Changsheng nodded and stepped onto the arena.
The place was sealed off by a formation, a fearsome one of the Golden Core Realm. Even a Divine Ability Realm cultivator would struggle to break it, let alone a martial artist at the Dao Foundation Realm.
Within the arena there was only one way to win, and that was to kill your opponent.
Lu Changsheng looked at Zhao Feng. The man was likewise a Dao Foundation martial artist, his expression cold and detached, surely a supreme Dao Foundation cultivator in his own right. For anyone less to enter the arena was, more or less, to court death.
Every Dao Foundation martial artist who fought here could rightly be called an expert out in the wider world, yet for all manner of reasons, each had been driven to the arena to stake his life on a single match!
Neither man spoke as they stood there on the arena platform.
1. TL note: Lu Changsheng could be deliberately lying here. We know that he is part of the Ancient Region Heavenly Sect. ☜
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