A Brutal Grand Competition, the Holy Son Makes His Move

As the saying went, the opening was the peak. The duel between Song Changsheng and Ji Bingxiu directly drove the atmosphere of this qualifying round to a climax.

Several major factions tacitly began adjusting their established strategies.

The original favorites for the top three were Zhao Yin, the First Prince of the Dazhen Immortal Dynasty; Ji Liangyu, the Young Clan Head of the Tianshui Ji Clan; Long An, the Beast Taming Sect Holy Son; and Ling Xiao of the Myriad Manifestations Palace.

Jiang Chengzong, the former Young Sect Master of the Hundred Cauldrons Pavilion, should originally have been included as well. Unfortunately, he had died young and failed to make it to this much-anticipated Five Academies Grand Meeting.

These individuals were the publicly acknowledged foremost Heaven's Chosen of the Five Academies. They were overwhelmingly powerful, far beyond their peers. Aside from their extraordinary talents, they also received tremendous support from their sects' resources, placing the other contestants practically in a completely different tier.

Before the Grand Competition began, nearly everyone believed that the top three of Arena A would emerge from these four. Everyone else was merely foliage to set them off.

Yet the very first battle of Arena A's qualifying round shattered that universally accepted outcome.

Song Changsheng of the Wangyue Song Clan—a Golden Core Cultivator who had seemingly sprung up from nowhere, an obscure nobody with scarcely any noteworthy achievements even during intelligence gathering—had played his trump card the moment he appeared, directly becoming the darkest dark horse of this Five Academies Grand Competition.

The elders of every faction urgently reassessed Song Changsheng's strength. The vast majority unanimously believed that he had not used his full strength in his previous match against Ji Bingxiu, and thus had a certain chance of reaching the semifinals.

However, some elders disagreed.