"Thud—!"
The world spun around him, and Yi An finally crashed to the ground, then rolled several more meters in a miserable tumble before his back struck something and brought him to a stop.
Lying face-down, he stared at the ground inches from his eyes, his nostrils filled with the dusty, earthy stench unique to dirt.
His muddled thoughts struggled to reconnect, but before he could fully grasp what had happened, a cry rang out above him. Then another heavy object slammed into his back, making the agony in his abdomen even worse.
That extra "heavy blow" cleared his head considerably, and he finally realized what had just happened.
"I—I got blasted off the ring, and I hit someone?"
Hearing the furious curse from the person he had struck—"Are you sick in the head?!"—Yi An wanted nothing more than to bury his face in a crack in the ground, terrified that someone he knew might recognize him.
"That bastard—" he cursed wildly in his heart. "With strength like that, why isn't he a seeded contestant? Instead, he comes to the preliminaries to fry small fish—what a damn piece of shit!"
On the ring, the referee blinked hard, making sure his eyes had not deceived him.
As a veteran of Yunhai's local education circle, he recognized Yi An and knew that he was a fairly capable student among those below the seeded contestants.
When he had seen Yi An provoke his opponent just now, the referee had already steeled himself, prepared to protect Chen Mochuan at any moment in case he came out on the losing end.
Yet the outcome had completely defied his expectations. The "victim" had been Yi An—and he had lost so cleanly and thoroughly. In a single move, he had been blasted off the ring, turned into