"When did this sand and stone...?" Everyone stared at the scene before them in shock. They had not sensed any fluctuation of spiritual power at all, yet Azure Dragon's spell had already been cast.
"You lost!" Lin Chuan said softly, stroking the orange cat.
A strand of energy radiating a faint glow flew from Wang Xing's arm and vanished into the mark on Lin Chuan's arm. At the same time, everyone saw the Floating Spirit Heavenly List projected from the dome immediately change. Wang Xing's ranking dropped from thirty-fifth to forty-third, falling eight places, while Azure Dragon's ranking rapidly rose to nine hundred and eighty-sixth, placing him directly among the top thousand mid-Nascent Soul cultivators in the Floating Spirit Domain.
According to the rules of the Floating Spirit Heavenly List, defeating someone did not mean that one could directly take their ranking. Rankings were determined by the amount of energy contained within the Floating Spirit Hall mark.
The purpose of this was obvious: to prevent cheating. Moreover, defeat could sometimes result from a single moment of carelessness. It would clearly be unfair for one loss to erase all previous successes. Thus, even though Lin Chuan had defeated Wang Xing, who had ranked thirty-fifth, his own rank would not immediately enter the top hundred.
Besides, if one truly possessed that level of strength, rising through the rankings would be easy. No one would care whether the rise was fast or slow.
At the edge of the arena, Wang Xing, who had landed amid the sand and stone, was still somewhat dazed. Everything that had just happened had been too fast—so fast that he had lost before he even had time to react!
And he knew very well that Azure Dragon had held back in that strike. Otherwise, that move alone might