Every contestant who had made it into the top sixteen was an outstanding pick of their time, most of them extraordinary. Their chances of becoming Advanced Source Martialists, or even Top-Tier Source Martialists, in the future were immense.
Take Yang Hong and Wu Luo, for example. If not for Li Yuan's brilliance overshadowing them, they would have been more than capable of staging a legendary "battle between twin stars" among Kunlun Martial University's first-year freshmen.
Yet without question, even among the top sixteen, there were those who shone especially brightly. Dantai Feng stood alone at the very top, and the first top-sixteen-to-top-eight match had proven exactly that.
As for Li Yuan, Garava, Yu Ming, and Guan Ying, the four of them were publicly recognized as the strongest contenders for the top four.
This could be seen from their total scores in the second round. Every one of them had scored over ninety points.
But most spectators had never expected that Li Yuan and Garava would meet so early, in merely the top-sixteen-to-top-eight round.
"What's going on?"
"With their strength, shouldn't they have met at least in the top-eight-to-top-four round? Yet they ran into each other in the first match of the fourth round. Is someone being targeted?"
"The organizer is Xia Country."
"Could Garava be the one they're targeting?" Hundreds of thousands of spectators in the stands immediately erupted into discussion. Most of them had not paid attention to the schedule in advance.
Or rather, even if the 136 elite students who had reached the third round knew their own "schedules," they would not leak them.
..."Garava!"
"Defeat that Xia Country man!"
"Li Yuan!!" Wave after wave of mountain-shaking, sea-roaring cries rose from the vast spectator stands. Whether they were Xia Country spectators or Tianzhu Country spectators, both sides cheered