Beacon Smoke

"No matter what hidden cards you have, now that I'm this close, with my vitality, I'll smash you to pieces!!"

Seeing that he was already less than thirty meters from Tang Jian, Gu Du's eyes lit up with wild joy. With a furious roar, he directly activated the Green Hat Card in his card device!

Hulk's Hat!

In an instant, a green hat appeared and settled over Gu Du's head. An immense force began acting upon his body.

This energy did not directly flood into his body and forcibly enhance him, but Gu Du still felt intense pain rapidly filling his body, along with an incomparably powerful sensation of strength.

"Argh—!"

Gu Du opened his mouth in a roar. His towering body suddenly grew three inches taller, the muscles all over his body swelling sharply, and his palms becoming as swollen as cattail fans.

But at that moment.

A pungent-smelling cloud suddenly rushed toward him from across the field, like a patch of black shadow.

"What is that?"

Gu Du was startled. Having remained on guard against Tang Jian the entire time, he quickly lunged to the left to dodge.

However, with a splat!

The black shadow scattered like rainwater, splashing across the ground and drenching Gu Du from head to toe.

"Sticky oil?" Gu Du's face twitched as he looked at the black sticky oil covering his body.

This was the hidden card he had been guarding against?

Just a Sticky Oil Card?

Gu Du sneered and looked at Tang Jian, now less than twenty meters away. "This is your trump card?"

"That's right! Burn your face off!"

Tang Jian smiled and snapped his fingers. A fireball rapidly condensed at his fingertips, spinning and growing larger.

Gu Du's eyes suddenly narrowed, his pupils contracting.

"Shit!!"

"Watch out!!!"

Hu Lingli's scream came from behind him.

With an angry roar, Gu Du's leg muscles contracted sharply, and his body pounced toward Tang Jian like a giant black gorilla.

The fireball shot toward him.

Gu Du's body flashed aside. His old back nearly snapped as he barely evaded it.

Boom!

The fireball struck the ground and immediately came into contact with the sticky oil. Like adding fuel to the flames, it erupted into a ferocious blaze that surged upward and rapidly wrapped around Gu Du like a line of fire.

"Arghhh—!"

Gu Du let out a shrill scream. In an instant, he turned into a human torch, thick black smoke billowing from his entire body as he desperately and unwillingly charged toward Tang Jian.

But Tang Jian had anticipated this already and quickly moved aside.

"Stop!"

Hu Lingli shouted, her card device flashing. A small tornado formed in front of her, whirling up sand and dust as it rapidly curved toward Tang Jian.

"Idiot!" Tang Jian scoffed. He moved like a nimble fish in water, dodging before the small tornado could sweep toward him in its curved path.

The tornado moved quickly, but a small tornado was not a real tornado. It was merely a small column of wind.

Its path was curved.

As long as one was far enough away and predicted it in advance, it could be easily avoided. For Tang Jian, it posed no real difficulty at all.

However, Gu Du, now a human torch, was not nearly as fortunate. The small tornado swept across him in a curved path.

The wind immediately fed the flames, causing the fire to burn even more fiercely.

Small Tornado + Attached Flames = Beacon Smoke!

At that moment, Hu Lingli was practically helping an outsider attack her own teammate. The small tornado had been easily dodged by Tang Jian, yet it intensified the flames on Gu Du's body.

Seeing the raging fire burning across Gu Du's body, Hu Lingli's pretty face went deathly pale, and her legs turned weak.

Gu Du let out a miserable scream. His movement speed plummeted, and he collapsed to the ground. Soon, his body faded away and vanished.

Points +4.

Tang Jian's ranking on the leaderboard suddenly shot upward. He directly surpassed Wu Chun, whose points had just reached 10, and became first on the leaderboard.

"Did that bastard activate some kind of ultimate? Why was he so vicious today?"

Inside a mound beneath a high slope in the wilderness, Yang Mao had buried himself completely in the dirt, exposing only his eyes. He screamed inwardly as he stared in disbelief at Tang Jian, who had shot to first place on the leaderboard.

After luckily killing two opponents, he discovered that he had entered the top thirty on the leaderboard. He then began looking for a place to hide, burying himself in the earth to wait for the assessment to end.

During this time, he had kept watching Tang Jian. He felt jealous, confused, and somewhat unable to believe it.

His old buddy was actually this strong?

At this moment, Liu Kun, who was carefully moving through the forest on the other side of the wilderness, also found it unbelievable. His expression held unwillingness, complicated emotions, and a trace of dejection.

Originally, he had wanted to completely surpass Tang Jian in today's assessment, achieve a good result, and prove his title as the number one student of Class Twelve, Senior Year Three.

Yet Tang Jian had practically erupted with cosmic energy today. He ranked first on the leaderboard with an astonishing 11 points, eight points ahead of him.

Was this guy some kind of battle royale king?

Was he really this good at killing people in the wilderness?

Gao Yang, who had already been eliminated, now crouched in a corner, utterly speechless.

He had finally realized that Class Twenty-Three, Senior Year Two had far too many talents.

He had once prided himself on being the class's eternal number two, living year after year in Liu Kun's shadow and unable to rise above it.

But looking at things now, Liu Kun was clearly only a minor boss on the surface. The true big boss was Tang Jian, who had been playing the pig to eat the tiger all along.

No wonder Instructor Sun Yiying thought so highly of Tang Jian. It showed that experience truly mattered—she had long seen that Tang Jian was no ordinary person.

"Teacher Sun, you really are impressive. I never expected the strongest student in your class not to be Liu Kun, but this student named Tang Jian. Tsk, tsk. He must be the ace you trained, right?"

Vice Principal Zhou Dongbo looked at Tang Jian, who ranked first on the leaderboard. His face was full of satisfaction and delight as he praised Sun Yiying.

As expected of a top student from Jinghua University. With the college entrance exams approaching, she had still brought the school such a huge surprise.

At this moment, many other teachers were also quite impressed, though some voiced doubts.

Jiang Zhendong, the teacher of Class One, shook his head. "This student clearly does not have enough vitality. Although his combat talent is indeed outstanding, the most important things for a card master are vitality and card energy. Still, Teacher Sun is certainly impressive to have taught such a student."

Wu Yu, the teacher of Class Two, echoed him. "That's right. There was still an element of luck in this student's first-round assessment. At the very least, if he had encountered Wang Ba from our class, he probably would not have had the chance to reach first place on the leaderboard."

A cold gleam flashed through Sun Yiying's eyes. "What? Classes One and Two enjoy so many resources, and now one student from my Class Twelve has pushed you beneath him. You can't accept losing?

So what if your vitality is higher? Does having a few extra points of vitality make you all that impressive?

Jiang Zhendong, your vitality is at least ten points higher than mine. How about we have a spar?"

Jiang Zhendong's face immediately twitched. He hurriedly gave an awkward laugh. "Teacher Sun, you must be joking. You're an outstanding graduate of Jinghua University, and everyone can see your talent. There's no need for us to spar."

"Then shut up." Sun Yiying snorted.

Jiang Zhendong's face turned the color of pig liver.

Wu Yu laughed wildly inside when he saw this, but he did not dare make another sound. The other teachers watched the scene with smiles, cracked a few jokes, and did not continue discussing it.

Everyone understood that while vitality was important, some people were simply born to be warriors among card masters.

As long as the difference in vitality was not too outrageous, those with astonishing combat talent and Combination Card Sets could pull off the classic feat of defeating the strong while weak.

Sun Yiying, as a student of Jinghua University, was precisely a model example of this type.

Now, it seemed that among the students she had trained, there was another formidable figure of the same kind.

Tang Jian's use of combination card techniques was still rather immature, and the card techniques he combined were simple.

Yet in this assessment, aside from Wu Chun, he was the second person to display the might of combination card techniques. His grasp of combat timing was even more mature and seasoned than Wu Chun's.