Ch. 23
Chapter 23: The Weapon Was Starting to Feel a Little Heavy
Naturally, the school leadership of Blackwater High School also noticed Li Mu.
However, Li Mu had only appeared in a rotating screen.
He remained on it for just twenty seconds before being cut away.
All of Blackwater High School’s leaders looked toward the scoreboard at the same time.
Zhang Zhiwei was ranked first.
Lu Chenfeng was ranked second.
The two of them had already killed more than a dozen monsters each.
Clearly, this was absolutely not their first time entering the Abyss.
Many children of major families and highly promising prospects had long since been exposed to Abyss monsters, openly or in secret, under the protection of experts.
Because this was Li Mu’s first time entering the Abyss, and because he had no teammates, he had been acting somewhat cautiously.
But as the slaughter continued, Li Mu felt that he could already start hitting with full force.
By the time he killed his eighth monster, his Divine Weapon Art had already been raised to 240 jin.
240 jin, plus the Thorn Staff’s own 60 jin, made exactly 300 jin.
Li Mu spun the staff in a flourish.
“It really is starting to feel a little heavy.”
Li Mu could tell that with the strength of one tiger and three oxen granted by Mountain-Bearing Art, he still had some energy left while wielding 300 jin.
But if he added any more weight beyond that, his body would not be able to withstand it.
After all, attacking was not just a matter of swinging it around casually. He still had to execute martial techniques.
Li Mu felt that, in his current physical condition, the most he could endure was using the Five Shocks of Flowing Cloud.
Still, a 300-jin weapon was already on a completely different level in terms of offensive power.
When Li Mu encountered the ninth Spiderwolf, he poured true qi into the weapon in advance and brought it crashing down with an Iron-Cleaving Form strike.
The force of it was simply devastating.
The Spiderwolf was smashed apart on the spot, and even the ground was blasted into a small crater.
[Victory! Victory Points +36]
[Current Total Victory Points: 161]
With a thud, Li Mu planted the Thorn Staff into the ground.
Then he opened the system panel.
His Victory Points were now enough for Li Mu to unlock another technique.
The only question was which one.
Among the options that cost 100 points were Alchemy Art, Blessed Field Art, Borrowed Wine Might, Heavenfall Divine Weapon, and others.
But Li Mu’s gaze settled on Immobilization Art, which required 150 points to unlock.
After all, back on Earth, what boy had never dreamed of pointing a finger and shouting, “Freeze!”
Stopping time for the Seven Fairies, and then going off to... pick peaches in the peach orchard to his heart’s content?
Li Mu had already experienced the sheer thrill of a one-hit kill through Divine Weapon Art combined with Iron-Cleaving Form.
If he could pin a monster in place, then bring down an Iron-Cleaving Form strike with a 300-jin staff,
man and horse alike would collapse.
How satisfying would that be?
With that thought, Li Mu unlocked Immobilization Art without the slightest hesitation.
[Immobilization Art: Shout “Freeze!” to lock a target enemy in place for 0.5 seconds. Consumes 10% of the user’s true qi. Cooldown time: 1 minute.]
“What the hell?!”
Li Mu’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets!
Ten percent of his true qi?
Wouldn’t that mean using it ten times would completely drain him dry?
And it even had a cooldown.
Looking further down, he saw that this was also a divine ability with a skill tree.
There were branches that increased the immobilization time, reduced true qi consumption, shortened the cooldown, increased damage dealt while the target was immobilized, and more.
No matter what, as long as it could pin the target in place with one hundred percent certainty, that was enough.
Even if it was only 0.5 seconds, at a critical moment, that was enough to turn the tide of battle.
And if he wanted to strengthen this divine ability, all he had to do was risk his life and grind Victory Points!
Move!
Straight into the red zone.
What Li Mu did not know was that after killing his seventh monster, he had already made it onto one of the eleven permanently displayed screens in the Multimedia Hall.
On the scoreboard, Li Mu: 1496 points, ranked eleventh.
At the exact moment Li Mu suddenly jumped onto the eleventh screen, the entire Blackwater High School student section and teacher section fell silent.
It was simply too jarring!
At the very beginning, when the scoring had only just started, one might perhaps rely on luck and make it into the top ten of the scoreboard by killing one or two monsters quickly.
But what time was it now? More than an hour had already passed since the battle began!
Blackwater High School. Solo combat. Rank eleventh?
“Am I seeing things? That’s Li Mu, right?”
“That’s right!!”
“Li Mu is fighting alone too??”
“Doesn’t it look like there are only three people in the whole field fighting solo?”
“Who cares about that? Blackwater is amazing! Boss Li Mu, charge!!”
“Charge!!”
Boom!
The Blackwater High School student section erupted in an uproar. Their thunderous shouts made the glass of the Multimedia Hall hum and tremble.
The students of Blackwater High School had accepted the reality of being mocked by the other schools, but that did not mean they had no pride.
On the contrary, they wanted to rise above the rest more than anyone!
Li Mu had only reached eleventh place.
But reaching the top eleven at this point in time, and doing it while fighting alone, meant there was absolutely no fluke involved.
At that moment, Li Mu was the ray of hope for Blackwater High School!
On the second floor of the hall, among the group of school leaders, Zhang Teng, the principal of Soaring Dragon Martial Academy, had been standing there the whole time with his arms folded.
He was in a very bad mood today. Soaring Dragon Martial Academy had sent more than a hundred and seventy students into the Abyss, yet not a single one of them had managed to get onto the giant screens so far.
Only five or six had barely squeezed into the top hundred.
A whole row of bigwigs from the Ministry of Education and the Resources Department sat in front, and he did not even dare go up to speak to them.
Meanwhile, the principals of the schools whose students had made the rankings were chatting and laughing merrily with those big shots, and he envied them greatly.
Up on the second floor, ranked students were the source of confidence for the school leaders.
Then someone reminded him, “Hm? Li Mu made it into the top eleven? Old Zhang, that Li Mu is from your school, isn’t he?”
“Hm? Where?”
Zhang Teng immediately began searching in delight, and very quickly found Li Mu on the eleventh screen.
At once, his face broke into a broad grin.
“Ahahaha, that’s right! This is that Li Mu from our school, the one who had his talent swapped out a few days ago.”
“Now then, just because he lost his S-grade talent doesn’t mean that’s the end of it. We discovered his aptitude in other areas and can still train him into a success!”
As he spoke, Zhang Teng looked around at the other principals with unconcealed pride.
He failed to notice at all that the vice principal beside him was already covered in cold sweat.
One principal asked with a smile, “Oh my, Old Zhang, you really do know how to teach. But... has Li Mu put on the wrong school uniform?”
The moment he said that, everyone around them chuckled quietly.
Zhang Teng froze, then looked carefully at the screen, and his brows immediately drew together.
Li Mu was wearing a cape, so he had not paid attention to the uniform just now.
But looking closely now, Li Mu was clearly wearing the uniform of Blackwater High School!
“What is going on? Why is Li Mu wearing Blackwater High School’s uniform? And... wait!”
Zhang Teng looked toward the scoreboard, at the school name suffix after Li Mu’s name.
Since the school name was relatively long and space was limited, the text was a little small.
But it very clearly read: Blackwater High School.
Even if the scoreboard made a mistake, the uniform could not possibly be wrong.
If both of those matched, then it meant Li Mu was indeed fighting under Blackwater High School’s name.
“This... what is going on?”
Zhang Teng’s old face instantly turned ashen as he looked toward Yin Changming, the principal of Blackwater High School, in front.
At that moment, Yin Changming frowned deeply.
His eyes were filled with a silent question: Why are you looking at me?
Didn’t you know Li Mu transferred schools?
“Well now, Old Yin, doesn’t this mean you’ve got yourself a pretty good student after all?”
“As long as he can hold onto a top ten position and show his face a little more in front of the leaders, you won’t need to beg anyone for anything today!”
Section Chief Xue nudged Yin Changming with his hand and said it with a meaningful grin.
At this point, they were merely surprised, not yet shocked.
After all, Li Mu had only just entered the top eleven. The martial artist teams in the top ten were no pushovers. Every single one of them was dazzling.
Still, many people had indeed begun focusing their attention on Li Mu.
Because among all these screens, Li Mu was the third person fighting alone.
The top two solo fighters made sense to everyone, since they both had S-grade talents.
But Li Mu was publicly known to have been switched to an F-grade talent, and he too was fighting alone!
How exactly had he killed all those monsters before this?
Everyone was fixated on that question.
And in one corner of the first floor of the hall, the members of the Li Family wore extremely ugly expressions, all of them frowning deeply...