On the other side of Fu Mountain Square.
In the area where the Blazing Sun Peak disciples had gathered.
Xu Ziqiang stood amid the crowd, his brows tightly furrowed and his expression heavy, even showing a trace of dismay he could hardly conceal.
Amid the clamor of the crowd, his gaze swept over the fellow disciples around him with their steady auras, and his heart felt weighed down.
The competition at the Fu Mountain Grand Competition was going to be far fiercer than he and Gao Yang had anticipated.
Or rather, neither of them had expected Blazing Sun Peak to be hiding so many experts they had scarcely ever heard of.
A few days earlier, he and Gao Yang had put their heads together and reckoned that, with their strength at the peak of the internal energy realm, they might not stand at the very top among the young disciples of the Main Peak and the Seven Branches, but they could at least carve out a place for themselves.
They had estimated that the entire sect probably had only around fifteen qi-devouring realm experts under thirty.
And below those dozen or so people, he and Gao Yang were the strongest of the internal energy realm disciples.
With that strength, they could practically count on reaching the top twenty of the Fu Mountain Grand Competition and securing places among those the sect would cultivate with special attention.
Yet only after coming to Fu Mountain Square today and seeing the disciples gathered from every branch did Xu Ziqiang realize how naive he and Gao Yang had been.
After asking around, Xu Ziqiang was utterly dumbfounded.
Every branch actually had so many young disciples who had broken through to the qi-devouring realm before thirty. Their auras were as deep as still pools and