Crushing and Ignoring
Feng Lie's slow, deliberate applause rang especially harshly through the deathly silent arena.
An undisguised look of mockery hung on his defiant face. His gaze swept like a blade over every face in the audience, each one frozen with shock.
"What? Scared out of your wits already?"
His voice was thick with icy ridicule.
"Where's all that zeal you had to skin him alive and swallow him whole? One piece of trash ranked eleventh goes down, and the rest of you, ranked even lower, are all cowards?"
Humiliation!
Naked humiliation!
Hong Yi and the others flushed red, their chests heaving, yet they had no way to retort.
Lei Meng's Qi and Blood stood at sixty-eight calories, placing him in the upper middle among them, yet a single finger had pierced through him, leaving him powerless to fight back. That level of strength was beyond their comprehension.
"I don't believe it!"
At last, someone could no longer endure Feng Lie's inflammatory words.
A stocky youth ranked fifteenth, who specialized in defensive arts, gritted his teeth and stepped forward.
"Instructor, I challenge him!"
He stared intently at Chen Fan on the platform, his eyes flashing with defiance and madness.
"I don't believe he can unleash attacks like that one after another! His Qi and Blood definitely can't hold out!"
That was what most of the people present thought. A move condensed to such an extreme, capable of piercing protective Qi and Blood, was bound to consume an enormous amount of energy.
"Approved."
Feng Lie's lips curled into a cruel smile.
The youth drew a deep breath, planting his feet in the ground as though they had taken root. Qi and Blood thundered through his body. A thick, earthy yellow glow instantly covered him from head to toe. Crossing his arms over his chest, he assumed a defensive posture as impregnable as a fortress.
Rock Stance!
It, too, was one of the basic stances!
Yet on the platform, Chen Fan's eyes were as still as an ancient well, without even the slightest ripple.
In the brief breath it took his opponent to assume his stance, Chen Fan's analytical ability, comparable to that of an intelligent computer, had already seen all twelve Qi and Blood nodes through which the art circulated and the three openings where he exerted force with perfect clarity.
The instant the whistle sounded, Chen Fan moved.
With the same casual gait, he took one step forward.
There was no fancy technique, no terrifying display of force, just an utterly ordinary straight punch, like a child play-fighting.
Yet that one punch contained the terrifying penetrating power refined by the Star-Transferring Blood Art: icy, domineering, and condensed to the extreme!
Bang!
Fist met palm.
The confidence on the youth's face, born of his belief that he was as secure as a fortress, froze instantly.
All he felt was an indescribably terrifying force, like an invisible spear of stars, piercing straight through the rock-solid Qi and Blood in which he took such pride. It smashed his defensive posture apart like crushing dry weeds and rotten wood, then slammed into his chest without losing momentum.
Crack!
His bones shattered in a rapid series of pops like bursting beans.
The youth's stocky body flew backward like a cannonball struck by a battering ram, faster and in a sorrier state than Lei Meng. He hurtled dozens of meters, slammed straight into a distant alloy wall with a muffled boom, then slowly slid down, unconscious.
One punch.
His defeat was even more decisive than Lei Meng's.
"Who else?"
Feng Lie's malicious voice rang out again.
"I'll go!"
Another prodigy, ranked outside the top twenty and known for his speed, refused to believe it and charged onto the platform.
He was confident that as long as he did not clash head-on with Chen Fan, his speed would make him unbeatable.
But this time, Chen Fan did not even bother waiting for him to get into position.
The instant the starting whistle sounded, his figure vanished from where he stood.
He moved second, but arrived first!
The prodigy's vision blurred, and an afterimage closed in like a ghost. A seemingly slender hand landed lightly against his chest.
Bang!
A third body went flying.
Three fights, three victories!
Every one of them in a single move!
If the first fight had brought shock and the second horror, then the third brought fear that sank into their bones!
At that moment, every voice of contempt, doubt, and jealousy in the arena vanished like smoke.
In their place came a deathly silence and gaze after gaze fixed on Chen Fan in awe, as though they were looking up at a prehistoric beast.
"A monster... He's been hiding his strength all along!"
"His Qi and Blood is definitely more than fifty-seven calories! He's so composed, so effortless... Fuck, he hasn't even been trying!"
Without realizing it, Hong Yi had clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white. He stared at the calm figure on the platform, his heart pounding.
In Chen Fan's three fights, he had seen the same thing each time—crushing dominance!
Absolute, unreasonable dominance in strength!
Faced with that overwhelming silence, Chen Fan finally turned around on the platform.
His gaze swept calmly over the crowd below.
Those deep eyes passed over the students ranked seventh, sixth, fifth... all the way to the one ranked third.
Everyone his gaze passed over felt their heart tighten and instinctively tensed, only to feel humiliated the next second.
Chen Fan's gaze had not lingered on any of them, as though they were no different from the ordinary students he had sent flying with a single move.
At last, his gaze fell on Hong Yi, ranked second.
Boom!
The Qi and Blood within Hong Yi erupted at that moment. A fighting spirit as blazing as a volcanic eruption soared into the sky, and every muscle in his body entered its perfect fighting state, ready to meet this fated challenge!
But then...
Chen Fan's gaze lingered on him for less than half a second.
Then it simply... skipped right past him!
Before the utterly stunned eyes of everyone present, Chen Fan raised his hand. The finger that had just shattered Lei Meng's ribs pointed past Hong Yi, whose fighting spirit was surging, toward the girl who had been sitting cross-legged in the farthest corner all along, a long sword in her arms, her bearing as cold and distant as the moon, seemingly cut off from the entire world.
Qin Wuyue.
"I challenge you."
Those calm words, devoid of the slightest emotion, detonated in everyone's mind like a ten-kiloton nuclear bomb!
He was challenging the person in first place!
Time seemed to pause at that moment.
The soaring fighting spirit on Hong Yi's face froze, leaving him looking utterly ridiculous.
A second later, that frozen expression shattered piece by piece, turning deathly pale.
Immediately afterward, a sickly flush surged from his neck to his cheeks, turning his entire face the color of pig liver!
Ignored!
He had been ignored completely!
In his eyes, Chen Fan skipping over him to challenge first place was, in itself, a declaration of his defeat!
It was harder for him to accept than any crushing defeat in battle!
"Ah!!!"
A beastly roar, suppressed to its utmost limit, burst from deep in Hong Yi's throat. An aura mingled with fury, humiliation, and madness swept uncontrollably from him, making several nearby students stagger back half a step.
Impotent rage!
But no one paid him any attention.
At that moment, everyone's attention was fixed on those two.
Amid the uproar, roaring like a mountain and surging like a sea...
The girl everyone looked up to, Qin Wuyue, finally opened her eyes, slowly.
What cold, distant eyes they were.
They were like the bright moonlight above the nine heavens, yet also like a deep, frigid pool beneath ten-thousand-year-old black ice, untouched by the slightest trace of mortal life.
She stood up.
Hum...
The seemingly ancient, unadorned long sword in her arms gave a joyful little hum, as though it were alive.
She said nothing more and did not even glance at Hong Yi, who looked like a madman beside her. She merely gave Chen Fan a slight, cool nod.
"Agreed."
The single word rang clear as a jade bead falling onto a plate.
Then, moving with light, graceful steps, she made her way onto the central platform, the largest and most symbolic of them all, the Main Arena.
As her foot came down...
Boom!!!
A terrifying surge of Qi and Blood, far surpassing Hong Yi's, vast as a tsunami and boundless as a great river, erupted from her seemingly delicate body!
The air throughout the arena seemed to be sucked away at that moment, turning thick and heavy!
The massive comprehensive testing system in the center of the arena suddenly blazed with light. Streams of data flashed wildly, until finally, a crimson number appeared clearly on the screen, enough to make everyone's breath catch!
[Qi and Blood: 75.2 calories]!
Sharp intakes of breath rose one after another throughout the arena.
This... this was the true strength of the Prodigy Class's number one!
Faced with that terrifying figure, enough to crush everything in its path, everyone was certain that Chen Fan, the dark horse, had finally kicked a real iron plate, and that his arrogant challenge would end in a crushing defeat.