Chapter 172 - 171: The Void Ascension Battlefield (2)
"Nominees of the Peerless God Tournament," Elder Xuanji began. His voice was amplified without any visible effort, the sound carrying easily to the farthest edges of the gathered crowd, echoing off the mountain peaks. "Hear the rules of the Void Ascension Battlefield, and hear them once. I will not repeat myself for those too distracted to listen the first time."
A ripple of tension moved through the crowd. No one dared to breathe too loudly. Elder Xuanji continued, completely unbothered by the heavy atmosphere.
"The Battlefield you are about to enter is a pocket realm forged by Emperor Tianxu’s own might. It is sealed entirely from the outer world for thirty days’ time. However, due to the temporal dilation of the arrays, scarcely a single day will pass outside before you are returned to this court."
Elder Xuanji raised a hand, his long sleeves fluttering.
Above the floating dais, a massive formation-light illustration bloomed into existence. It showed a schematic of a harsh, shifting landscape with hundreds of small, scattered figures.
"Within the Battlefield, you will each be assigned a Dao Token, which will mark your standing," Elder Xuanji explained, and the light-figures in the illustration suddenly glowed, a faint golden token hovering above each of them. "Your task in the crucible is incredibly simple: accumulate as many tokens as you can before the thirty days expire and the Battlefield closes."
The Adjudicator lowered his hand, his sharp eyes sweeping the crowd.
"Tokens are won exclusively through combat. Defeat another nominee, render them completely unconscious, or force them to yield, and the realm will automatically transfer their accumulated tokens to you. The tactics, and the brutality of how you accomplish this defeat is left entirely to you."
The Upper Division delegations smirked. This was their domain. Absolute combat.
"However," Elder Xuanji continued, his voice dropping into a register that commanded absolute silence. This was where the stakes were explicitly clarified. "When the thirty days conclude, all nominees will be ranked strictly by the total number of tokens they hold. The highest-ranked individual among you, after the two preliminary rounds for your respective province, will earn the right to be seeded into the official bracket of the Peerless God Tournament as a Participating General."
He paused, letting the weight of the prize settle.
"For Upper Division nominees, this total determines the strength of the opponents you will face in the main bracket. The higher your rank, the more favorable your seeding."
Elder Xuanji’s gaze shifted. It swept deliberately and pointedly across the crowd, passing over the haughty faces of the Chu and Ye provinces, before settling briefly on the eastern flank. He did not single out Lin Yuan by name, but the implication was as subtle as an avalanche.
"For those of you competing under the Ascension Clause," Elder Xuanji declared, "failure to finish within the top five will cost you your right to compete in the Upper Division once the tournament’s main bracket begins."
The words landed with immense weight.
For Lin Yuan, this was not simply a matter of surviving the battlefield or showing everyone what he was capable of. If he failed to actively secure a place within the overall Top Five, then the entire political gamble Zhao Province had placed on him would collapse.
And with it, his chance to obtain the help of a Void Refinement Emperor to remove Qingyue’s Soul Transformation restriction would be slim.
There was no room for failure.
"Prepare yourselves," Elder Xuanji commanded as he stepped back from the edge of the dais. His voice echoed across the Grand Court. "The Dao favors only the absolute."
The moment his words fell, the massive array beneath the hundreds of nominees suddenly ignited, and the millions of spatial runes erupted with blinding white light, that instantly and completely erased the shadows of the Grand Court.
The sensory immersion was absolute. The roar of the mountain wind was instantly silenced, replaced by a high-pitched, vibrating hum that rattled the Lin Yuan’s teeth. The immense crowd of nominees dissolved from view one section at a time, swallowed whole by the rising columns of spatial light.
Lin Yuan did not close his eyes, nor did he resist the pull. He allowed his Qi to harmonize with the spatial shift. The world around him fractured into a show of meaningless colors and impossible shapes. His physical body felt weightless, adrift in a terrifying current.
And then, his vision went entirely white.
CRACK!
Gravity slammed back into existence with a terrifying force.
Lin Yuan opened his eyes, the blinding white light fading instantly.
He was standing entirely alone.
The surrounding of the Celestial Summit was gone. He stood upon a jagged cliff composed of dark, blood-red spirit-stone. Beneath him stretched a vast, desolate canyon of fractured earth and withered trees. Above him, the sky was not blue, but a massive dome the color of dull silver, offering no sun and casting no shadows. The ambient spiritual Qi in the air was dense, but it felt wild, violent, and utterly untamed.
There was no other nominee visible anywhere in sight. The teleportation array had scattered them completely randomly across the vast pocket realm.
Lin Yuan looked down at his chest.
Hovering just an inch above his collarbone, visible only to himself and anyone utilizing their divine sense, was a faint, pale Dao Token. It pulsed with a slow, steady rhythm, anchoring him to the Void Ascension Battlefield.
He was isolated in a hostile realm, surrounded by hundreds of the most dangerous, arrogant, and bloodthirsty prodigies the Central continent had to offer. Many of them viewed him as a walking joke, an easy target to farm for tokens.
Lin Yuan stood at the edge of the jagged cliff, the silver light reflecting in his deep purple eyes.
He took a slow, deep breath, orienting himself to the violent flow of the realm’ s Qi, and allowed a cold expression to spread across his face.
The Tournament had begun!
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A/N: Thanks for reading!!