"Hahaha!"
Teacher Wala couldn't help laughing out loud from the Observation Stand, drawing curious looks from the Immortal Experts around him.
Teacher Wala was usually rather aloof.
But at this moment... he was happy, extremely happy. He simply couldn't hold back his laughter.
Teacher Wala had never imagined that the successor he'd chosen on a whim just before entering the God-Demon Battlefield could be so outstanding.
When he had first started teaching Feng Hui, he'd thought that if Feng Hui could make it into the top ten thousand at the Eastern Domain Tournament and earn the right to stay in the Eastern Domain Great World, that would be good enough. It would make all the time he'd spent carefully teaching him worthwhile.
But as he continued teaching him... he gradually realized that Feng Hui was improving faster and faster.
By then, his hopes for Feng Hui had already begun to rise.
When he discovered Feng Hui's talent for cultivating both space and time, he spared no expense to help him buy the introductory volume of the Cosmic Scripture. Even then, all he'd hoped was that Feng Hui could make the top five hundred at the Eastern Domain Tournament and earn the right to receive focused training and enter Dongdi Tower to inherit its teachings.
But now... Feng Hui had taken first place in the Law Tower rankings in the first round of the Eastern Domain Tournament!
It was settled. This was as good as settled!
Although there was still a second round and a final showdown to come, anyone who ranked first in the Law Tower in the first round would at least make the top ten, and would likely place among the top few. First place wasn't out of reach, either.
Even if the later fights, unlike the Law Tower, didn't mainly test one's Law Comprehension, but instead assessed overall combat ability, including one's physical level and performance in actual battle...
As a member of the Dongdi Clan's upper bloodline, Feng Hui already had a high Life Gene Level, giving him an advantage in real combat.
Even if he didn't perform well, his final ranking wouldn't drop by much.
No wonder Teacher Wala was so happy.
The first round of eliminations had ended. There were still 640,000 who had passed.
All 640,000 had a solid grasp of the laws. In their respective planes, each was a favored child of heaven.
All nine of Feng Hui's companions from Jia 312 Academy had been eliminated in the first round.
Their Law Comprehension was top-tier at Jia 312 Academy, of course, but here, it simply wasn't enough.
No wonder Teacher Wala had thought that the other students from the academy, apart from Feng Hui, would only be coming to broaden their horizons.
After all, the first-round test of the Eastern Domain Tournament wasn't dangerous. Nobody would die, so there was no harm in coming to see the Dongdi Clan's true prodigies and broaden their perspective.
At least they'd opened their eyes to the world. If they worked hard afterward and came across a few opportunities, they might yet catch up and surpass those who were ahead of them.
If the first round of the Eastern Domain Tournament was relatively gentle, with no danger to life and no deaths, then the arena matches to come would be brutal and bloody.
In Feng Hui's eyes, the second-round arena matches were also somewhat similar in principle to the Axe Arena of the Original Universe Human Race.
Battle! Real, brutal battle!
Only through real, brutal battle could true powerhouses emerge.
Feng Hui had already learned in the Eastern Domain Great World that the Dongdi Clan had methods similar to the Virtual Universe, which would easily have met the needs of Cosmic Level contestants fighting in the arena.
But they chose not to use them for the second-round arena matches.
No matter how realistic virtual combat was, it lacked the life and spirit that erupted in a real fight when one stood at death's door.
The Dongdi Clan's resources were limited. They would never waste them training the useless.
That was why a method of cultivation like raising Gu was the most suitable. The strongest prodigies were those who survived to the end.
Among the 640,000 who remained after the first round of eliminations, all were Dongdi Clan prodigies with the ambition to pursue eternal immortality.
Those who lacked ability or didn't meet the standard for Law Comprehension had been eliminated in the first round.
The remaining 640,000 prodigies would take the arena in pairs and fight.
After the first match, 320,000 would remain; after the second, 160,000; after the third, 80,000... until, after the sixth match, the top ten thousand prodigies who could stay in the Eastern Domain Great World had been selected.
These six rounds of matches were also known as the Bloody Arena Battles. There were no safeguards at all; only those who verbally surrendered would be teleported out of the arena.
But the fights were exceptionally fierce and perilous, and many would inevitably die. Every tournament saw plenty of people lose their lives on the spot.
The first round of the Eastern Domain Tournament, the trial of the Law Tower, had mainly tested the contestants' Law Comprehension and quickly filtered out the prodigies.
The second round, the Bloody Arena Battles, was real, brutal combat. It tested their actual combat ability, including their physical level and how well they performed in real fights.
A prodigy who couldn't handle the sight of blood or perform well in real combat had no value as someone worth cultivating.
The top thousand in the Law Tower rankings were the only ones given special consideration. Since their Law Comprehension was truly impressive, they wouldn't be matched against one another in the brutal second round, so they wouldn't fail and be cut down too early by an overwhelmingly powerful opponent.
As for everyone else... that was up to luck.
Luck was essential if a prodigy wanted to grow into a powerhouse without a hitch.
There was no such thing as anything being one hundred percent safe. Even an ordinary person on Blue Star could be walking down the street when a flowerpot fell from the sky, or be struck by an earthquake at home.
Even the seemingly eternal Eastern Emperor Holy Land Universe and Purple Moon Holy Land Universe could encounter a World Beast.
At the same time, Feng Hui felt that these arrangements were somewhat like the second stage of the final round of the Original Universe Human Race's Genius War. Back then, the Virtual Universe System had drawn contestants at random to fight. Some people had been assigned to the Doomsday Secret Realm or the Heaven and Earth Secret Realm without ever getting a chance to battle.
Naturally, many prodigies had been unhappy with those rules.
It wouldn't have taken long to settle who qualified for which secret realm through matches. That would have been easy, fairer, and would have satisfied all the prodigies.
Yet the higher-ups of the Virtual Universe Company had still set those rules.
Why?
Because these prodigies were indeed immensely talented, but prodigies were always proud.
Most of them were arrogant and ill-tempered. On the path to the summit, if their pride wasn't tempered and they didn't develop a sense of reverence, they could easily fall and die.
These rules also helped newly recruited prodigies see themselves clearly and forget the glory of their past. In the Core Layer of the Virtual Universe Company, they were nothing special.
The brutal selection of the Eastern Domain Tournament's second round served the same purpose.
It tempered the prodigies' pride and used bloody arena fights to make them recognize their own smallness and fragility.
A prodigy wasn't yet a true powerhouse. A dead prodigy was no longer a prodigy.
In the Eastern Emperor Holy Land Universe, the high-level figures at the Universe Master level had nearly eternal lifespans.
Compared to the Human Race in the Prime Universe, they were far less cautious and attentive in how they treated prodigies.
After all, in the face of endless time, prodigies were like chives in a field, sprouting in one wave after another.
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