"Ji Xuan, you're dead!!"
Mu Chen's figure stalled, then abruptly changed direction in midair. He swung the ancient, unadorned battle staff in his hand through a terrifying arc and brought it crashing down toward the Shi family's heir.
"Damn it, Mu Chen, you forced me to do this."
Retreating at the very back, Ji Xuan had never expected Mu Chen to bypass the Twin Kings of the Shi Family and Yang Hong and attack him directly. For a moment, he was caught off guard.
The darkness deep in his pupils grew ever stronger. A trace of resolve flashed through his eyes. He clenched his teeth and let out a low shout, with what seemed to be an ancient eagle's cry faintly mixed in.
Buzz, buzz. Countless strange black lines spread from his body, clawing wildly as they formed a series of long, slender, narrow tendrils of light that grabbed at the staff swinging down over his head.
Battle Will blazed in Mu Chen's eyes. As if he hadn't noticed a thing, he swung his staff down.
Demon-Subduing Staff Technique, Eighth Form: Boom!
"Stop!!"
Suddenly, a booming shout came from the depths of the void.
A towering figure, its entire body shrouded in spiritual light, abruptly emerged from space. Above its head floated a mottled ancient mirror, its surface covered in countless ancient, profound patterns.
The planar laws of this world, which forbade spiritual energy, seemed to have no effect on him.
With a casual sweep of his hand, he first separated Mu Chen and Ji Xuan just as they were about to clash.
Then he clenched his fist and struck out with an incomparably powerful torrent of spiritual energy, crushing the nearly depleted Corrosive Poison Water completely into the Earth Vein and clearing the entire battlefield.
He had the momentum to sweep across the six directions and swallow the eight wildernesses!
Time rewound to a quarter of an hour earlier.
Outside the Spiritual Road Plane, in an ancient great hall, a screen of light stretched across the room.
One mighty Great Thousand powerhouse after another stood there, staring fixedly at the figures flickering across the screen. It showed the Black Demon Forest.
Anyone who could stand inside the hall had, at the very least, reached the Three Days Realm.
Among the dozens of indistinct figures, the five at the forefront had by far the most powerful auras.
Supremes! All five were Supreme powerhouses capable of dominating an entire continent!
The Spirit Road Trial selected the elite of a new generation of Spirit Academies—the seeds of future kings.
Each of the Five Great Academies had sent a Supreme powerhouse to lead the group, hold down the fort, coordinate relations, and deal with sudden emergencies. That was already the highest level of support.
Unless it was the Academy Tournament, which determined the rankings of the Five Great Academies, or some other major celebration, the elusive leaders of the Five Great Spirit Academies rarely came out in person.
The scene had just shown Mu Chen using the Sorrowful Crisp Breeze to take everyone down.
"Turning an enemy's blade against him, concealing the truth from heaven, sowing discord, and setting up a chain of schemes..."
"This young fellow has a very devious mind. It's no wonder Ji Xuan fell into his hands."
The speaker was a burly man with his arms bare.
The black tortoise emblem embroidered on the chest of his bulging robe made his identity clear: he was a Supreme powerhouse from Wu Ling Academy.
There was no shortage of schadenfreude in the burly man's words.
Ji Xuan was the contemporary prodigy the Holy Spirit Academy—the foremost of the Five Great Academies—had obtained from a great clan in the Southern Border in exchange for a vast amount of resources. He was the so-called number one of the Spirit Road, raised up single-handedly by the academy and a strong contender for the Spirit Crown. Yet he had fallen to an obscure nobody.
It truly was a case of dying before his ambitions could come to fruition!
None of the other four Spirit Academies minded seeing their big brother make a fool of himself.
Fortunately, Wu Ling Academy already had the Twin Stars to hold down the fort, and there was hope they could summon the supreme Imperial Princess of the Luo God Clan in the Lesser Western Heaven Realm. They were no worse off than their peers.
Thinking this, the burly man felt greatly comforted.
"Hmph."
Hearing this, the white-clad man wearing a Holy Dragon Badge on his chest gave a cold snort.
To be honest, he was just as deeply dissatisfied with Ji Xuan's performance.
As a prodigy of the Ji Clan, invited to the Southern Border in person by Lord Heavenly Saint, Ji Xuan had been touted in advance as a figure of peerless wonder. And now this was all he had? This?!
The Supreme dispatched by the Ten Thousand Phoenix Spiritual Academy was a graceful young woman.
She was no old monster who had kept herself looking young. She had cultivated for only a few decades.
She had been an older senior student at the Ten Thousand Phoenix Spiritual Academy, and after graduating, had stayed on to cultivate within the academy.
Once she emerged from seclusion and entered the Supreme realm, she was promoted to an elder of the academy.
As a newly ascended Supreme, her spiritual cultivation and seniority were nowhere near as deep as those of the elders present. So she only smiled with pursed lips, not readily offering her opinion.
The scene changed rapidly, soon reaching the moment Qiu Beihai struck first and seized the mysterious porcelain bottle that was suspected to contain the antidote—only to accidentally unleash the extremely dangerous Corrosive Poison Water.
Not only did he die a gruesome death, he also took more than a hundred members of the alliance down with him.
"Corrosive Poison Water taken from the Dark River? Wasn't he afraid of its backlash?"
"Heh. That kid's methods are vicious."
Inside the hall, ordinary elders of the Heavenly Passage Realm could be heard murmuring to one another.
The five Supreme powerhouses frowned slightly, but said nothing.
The Spirit Road Trial had always been cruel, harsh, and bloody.
In fact, it had never had any specific rules.
Survive the endless slaughter by whatever means necessary, and live until the end—that was how you won.
Mu Chen's methods were bloody, to be sure, but they weren't out of bounds.
But as events continued to unfold, someone soon couldn't sit still.
Just as Ji Xuan had said earlier, most of the followers he had gathered, as well as the several groups of hired hands he had won over with pure self-interest, had already been designated by the Five Great Academies.
Level 5 and Level 6 Spirit Bodies were everywhere. There was no shortage of powerful figures at the Quasi-King level, and talented individuals abounded.
There were even several peak kings with Level 8 Spirit Bodies.
These human geniuses had been designated in advance by the Five Great Academies, nurtured with massive resources, and then sent to the Spiritual Road Plane to further hone themselves. Now they had all been slaughtered.
It was as if the Five Great Academies' enormous investments had brought them no return at all. They'd lost everything.
No one liked doing business only to lose every last copper of their capital.
Qiu Beihai, selected by Azure Heaven Spiritual Academy, was dead. Flower King, favored by the Ten Thousand Phoenix Spiritual Academy, was dead. King Chen, recruited by Wu Ling Academy, was dead as well.
Even Northern Heavens Spiritual Academy, the weakest of the Five Great Academies, had lost a king seed it had selected in advance. Mu Chen had shattered his skull with a single blow of his staff.
As for Level 7 Quasi-Kings, more than twenty had been killed or wounded.
"Could we stop this battle?"
The Holy Spirit Academy, which had suffered the heaviest losses, was the first to lose its composure.
More than half of Ji Xuan's followers had been elite students designated in advance by the Holy Spirit Academy.
They had wanted those prospective students to build rapport and cultivate an understanding with the future Holy Son. Who could have expected them to suffer such an undeserved calamity?
"Why stop it?"
"The Spirit Road Selection is a battle of raising gu, cruel and merciless, with each side relying on its own methods. I can't think of a single reason we must stop this battle."
The speaker was a slender figure in white robes.
He had a head of white hair, yet showed no signs of age. His skin was fair, and his face was as handsome as an ordinary young man's. He was always smiling.
He looked exceptionally kind.
Zhu Tian, Heavenly Seat Elder of Northern Heavens Spiritual Academy, a First Grade Supreme.
As a super Spirit Academy that had risen in recent years, Northern Heavens had seized its chance when a former member was weakened, turning the tables against the odds and officially entering the ranks of the Five Great Academies.
But that had also angered the foremost of the Five Great Academies, the Holy Spirit Academy.
The ambitious Holy Spirit Academy had planned to prop up an advanced Spirit Academy friendly to it, gradually seize the right to speak, and ultimately control the Five Great Academies.
Unexpectedly, Northern Heavens had cut in halfway and snatched the fruits of victory.
Thus, in all matters concerning the Five Great Academies, the Holy Spirit Academy had always openly and secretly suppressed Northern Heavens, the weakest among them. Of course, the latter hadn't taken it lying down.
As Heavenly Seat Elder of Northern Heavens, Zhu Tian was bound to oppose whatever the Holy Spirit Academy supported.
"Old Zhu Tian, this venerable one doesn't want to waste words with you. You—"
"Scoundrel, how dare you!!"
The white-clad man had just been about to fly into a rage when he happened to glimpse Mu Chen suddenly ambushing Ji Xuan. His eyes nearly split with fury, and a surging wave of spiritual energy burst forth, sweeping through the entire great hall.
With a thunderous boom, the Holy Spirit Academy's Supreme, unable to hold back any longer, immediately made his move.
No matter how useless Ji Xuan was, he was still a Holy Son-level figure chosen by the academy. He absolutely could not be allowed to come to harm!
P.S. This morning I found out that the New Year's red-envelope event had expired. My poor 20 or 30 Qidian coins a day, all earned for free!
The reading-side follows have passed a thousand, but the Qidian-side collection is still struggling at five hundred. I clearly launched on Qidian first. What a disaster. The trial run will probably fail.
Before you continue