Cruel Selection

"Hahaha!"

Teacher Wala on the viewing platform couldn't help but burst into laughter, drawing sidelong glances from the surrounding Immortal powerhouses.

Teacher Wala was usually rather aloof and reserved.

But at this moment... he was delighted, thoroughly delighted, simply unable to suppress his joy.

Teacher Wala had never imagined that the disciple he had chosen on a whim before entering the God-Demon Battlefield would turn out to be this outstanding.

At the very beginning, when he first started teaching Feng Hui, he had only hoped Feng Hui could rank within the top ten thousand in the Eastern Domain Tournament and earn the right to stay in the Eastern Domain Great World—that alone would have been good enough, not wasting the meticulous guidance he had given over such a long time.

But as he taught... he gradually noticed Feng Hui's rate of progress growing faster and faster.

By then, his expectations for Feng Hui had slowly risen.

When he discovered that Feng Hui had talent in both time and space, he spared no expense to buy him the initial volume of the Cosmic Scripture, but at that time, he only hoped Feng Hui could enter the top five hundred in the Eastern Domain Tournament and gain the qualifications for focused training and inheritance at the Dongdi Tower.

And now... Feng Hui had directly taken first place in the Law Tower rankings during the first round of the Eastern Domain Tournament!

Stable, this was completely stable now!

Although there was still a second round and the final showdown ahead, ranking first in the Law Tower in the first round meant at least a top ten finish, likely top few, and first place wasn't out of reach.

Even if the subsequent battles didn't focus primarily on law comprehension like in the Law Tower, but instead assessed comprehensive combat ability including physical level and practical performance—

Feng Hui, as a member of the Dongdi Clan's upper bloodline, already had a high life gene level, giving him an advantage in real combat.

Even if he performed poorly, his final ranking wouldn't drop too far.

No wonder Teacher Wala was this happy.

With the first round of elimination over, six hundred and forty thousand people remained.

These six hundred and forty thousand all had decent law comprehension levels; in their respective planes, they were prodigies favored by heaven.

As for Feng Hui's nine companions from Jia 312 Academy, they were all eliminated in the first round.

Their law comprehension was naturally top-tier at Jia 312 Academy, but here, it was utterly insufficient.

No wonder Teacher Wala thought that aside from Feng Hui, the other students from the academy were only here to broaden their horizons.

At least the first round of the Eastern Domain Tournament posed no danger, so coming to see the true geniuses of the Dongdi Clan and broaden their horizons couldn't hurt.

If they could strive harder afterward and gain some opportunities, they might still catch up from behind.

If the first round of the Eastern Domain Tournament was relatively gentle, with no life-threatening danger and no deaths, then the following arena battles were extremely brutal and bloody.

In fact, in Feng Hui's view, this second round of arena combat was quite similar in philosophy to the Axe Arena of the primal universe's human race.

Battle! Real and brutal battle!

Only in real and brutal battle could true powerhouses be born.

Feng Hui had already learned in the Eastern Domain Great World that the Dongdi Clan also had means similar to the virtual universe, fully capable of meeting their arena combat needs at the Cosmic Level.

Yet in this second round of arena combat, they simply didn't use them.

No matter how realistic a virtual battle was, it lacked the life-igniting power and inspiration that came from the thin line between life and death in real combat.

The Dongdi Clan's resources were limited, and they would never waste them nurturing useless people.

Thus, a breeding-ground style of cultivation was the most suitable—only those who survived in the end were the strongest geniuses.

The six hundred and forty thousand who remained after the just-concluded first round were all Dongdi Clan geniuses with ambition, striving for eternal Immortality.

Those without ability, whose law comprehension didn't pass muster, had been eliminated early in the first round.

The remaining six hundred and forty thousand geniuses would step onto the arena in pairs for duels.

After the first round of arena battles, three hundred and twenty thousand remained; after the second, one hundred and sixty thousand; after the third, eighty thousand... until after the sixth round, the top ten thousand geniuses qualified to stay in the Eastern Domain Great World were selected.

These six rounds of battle were also known as the Bloody Arena Battles, with no protection whatsoever—only by verbally conceding would one be teleported off the arena.

But in the exceptionally fierce combat, danger was extreme, and many would inevitably die; every edition saw numerous lives lost on the spot.

If the first round of the Eastern Domain Tournament—climbing the Law Tower—mainly tested participants' law comprehension, quickly filtering out geniuses, then this second round of Bloody Arena Battles was real and brutal combat, testing actual combat ability, including physical level and performance under real conditions.

Geniuses who couldn't handle bloodshed or performed poorly in real combat had no cultivation value.

Only the top thousand in the Law Tower, due to their genuinely impressive law comprehension, received special treatment—they wouldn't encounter each other in the brutal second round, preventing premature defeat against overly strong opponents.

As for the others... that depended on luck.

For a genius to smoothly grow into a powerhouse, luck was indispensable.

There was never anything one hundred percent safe in this world. Even an ordinary person on Blue Star might have a flowerpot fall from the sky while walking on the street, or encounter an earthquake at home.

Even the seemingly eternal Eastern Emperor Holy Land Universe or the Purple Moon Holy Land Universe could encounter realm beasts.

At the same time, Feng Hui felt this arrangement was somewhat similar to the second stage of the primal universe's human race Genius War finals, where the virtual universe system directly drew opponents for battle, and some people were assigned to the Doomsday Secret Realm or Heaven and Earth Secret Realm without even a chance to fight.

Such rules would naturally make many geniuses feel dissatisfied.

Even though determining the secret realm qualifications entirely through combat competitions wouldn't take much time—a simple matter that would be fairer and earn the respect of all geniuses—

The upper echelons of the Virtual Universe Company still insisted on setting such rules.

Why?

Because while these geniuses were indeed exceptionally talented, which genius wasn't proud?

Most of them were overwhelmingly arrogant, with volatile temperaments. On the path to becoming a peak powerhouse, if that arrogance wasn't chiseled away and they lacked a sense of reverence, they could easily fall and perish.

At the same time, this kind of rule forced the newly joined geniuses to recognize themselves, to forget their past glories. Within the core layer of the Virtual Universe Company, they were nothing special.

The brutal selection process of the Eastern Domain Tournament's second round carried this same intention.

To grind away the arrogance of geniuses, using bloody arena battles to make them realize their own insignificance and fragility.

After all, geniuses were not yet true powerhouses. A dead genius was no longer a genius.

In the Eastern Emperor Holy Land Universe, the universe master-level higher-ups possessed nearly eternal lifespans.

Their attitude toward geniuses was far less cautious and attentive than that of the human race in the original universe.

Because, in the face of endless time, geniuses were like leeks in a field—they would keep sprouting up, batch after batch.