Yue Wen now felt like an office worker returning to his desk after the Lunar New Year break, staring at the mess on his desk and the flood of notifications until his head spun. He first figured out why he had received so many texts and private messages—of course, it was all because of that "Yue's Cultivation Firm Challenge Preliminary."
At the time, Yue Wen had only wanted an excuse to brush off those disciples from immortal sects and cultivation families. Making some ticket money on the side had seemed like a bonus. But he had vastly underestimated the impact this competition would have.
The livestream Wangyou Media had run before, along with the points tournament for the independent cultivator bracket, had both put Yue Wen in the spotlight for a while, but neither had truly made him famous. There were simply too many cultivators in the world. When ordinary people judged who was strong and who was weak, they looked at two things: cultivation realm and social standing.
Cultivation realm was simple, of course. First realm meant weak; ninth realm meant strong.
As for who was stronger within the same realm, that depended on social standing. Disciples of major immortal sects outranked disciples of smaller sects, and disciples of smaller sects outranked independent cultivators. That hierarchy of contempt had always been crystal clear.
There had been immortal sect disciples in the livestreams Yue Wen took part in before, but there were too few of them, and the contests had involved treasure hunting and fighting demonic beasts rather than direct confrontations.
Although his performance in the independent cultivator points tournament had crushed the competition, with an absurdly dominant score, he had only reigned supreme among independent cultivators. It was like picking the tallest man from a bunch of dwarfs. At