Forty-Seven Against Seven—How Could This Game Be Lost? Tang San's Chill, Yu Xiaogang's Theory Collapses

Sky Abyss Academy's "campus" was an abandoned pawnshop at the southern corner of Abyss City.

It had two courtyards, and the front hall's counter had been torn apart for firewood.

The rear warehouse had barely been partitioned into seven leaking dormitories.

Yan Wuji had melted sheet metal with his soul power and welded it onto the roof, barely keeping out the cold night dew.

Su Chen did not care about any of that.

He sat before the only intact table in the front hall.

Spread across it was a thick stack of documents, a compilation of public information purchased from an Abyss City intelligence firm for one hundred and twenty gold soul coins.

The tournament format was clear.

The preliminaries would be round-robin matches within each division, with the top two advancing.

The elimination stage would be single-elimination among the final sixteen, until a champion was decided.

The format of team battles could be negotiated. If no agreement was reached, it would default to a seven-versus-seven full-team melee.

Su Chen tapped the words "full-team melee" with his fingertip.

Seven against seven.

And then there were his... "soldiers."

Without dwelling on it, he turned to the roster of participating teams.

He swept past names like Heaven Dou Royal Academy and Gale Academy, until his gaze settled precisely on one line.

Shrek Academy.

Roster:

Tang San, level forty, Blue Silver Grass.

Dai Mubai, level forty-two, White Tiger.

Oscar, level forty, sausage.

Su Chen's gaze lingered on the name "Tang San" for a full three breaths.

The public information listed only Blue Silver Grass, with no mention of the Haotian Hammer.

But Su Chen knew.

This information had not come from the intelligence firm.

It came from his own deductions.

On that night in the Star Dou Great Forest, he had sensed the lingering residue of soul power permeating the woods with perfect clarity.

Amid the aura of Blue Silver Grass was another utterly different, incomparably domineering fluctuation of artifact-type soul power.

A Blue Silver Grass soul master bore traces of a second offensive martial soul.

There was only one answer.

"Twin martial souls."

Su Chen murmured those words. There was not the slightest trace of wariness in his voice, only the pure interest of a chess player before placing a piece.

Chu Yao approached with a bowl of hot porridge and glanced at the documents on the table.

"How long have you been staring at them?"

"Two hours."

"Reached a conclusion?"

Su Chen turned that page over, revealing a formation diagram he had drawn himself beneath it.

Seven circles were marked with different colors and arrows, with dense, tiny notes written beside them.

Chu Yao leaned closer, one brow lifting slightly.

"You've figured out all their positioning habits?"

"Dai Mubai charges ahead, Zhu Zhuqing flanks, and Ning Rongrong stays in the rear to provide buffs. Tang San stands in the center as the absolute core of the web, controlling vision and switching between offense and defense at any moment." Su Chen tapped the circle representing Tang San. "This man is Shrek's metronome. His Blue Silver Grass can turn an ordinary focused attack into a killing blow."

"Then how do we break it?"

Su Chen did not answer at once.

He picked up the porridge and took a sip, the warm rice broth sliding down his throat.

"Have you ever played chess?"

Chu Yao froze. "What kind of chess?"

"Any kind." Su Chen set down the bowl. "There is only one core principle in chess."

"When your pieces hold an absolute numerical advantage—"

"You don't need any ingenious tricks."

"You only need to make no mistakes with every move."

He gathered up the documents, closed them, and rose to his feet.

"They are an elite team with seamless coordination and mature tactics. Every person is like a precision component."

"But we are not a team."

Su Chen pushed open the door.

In the courtyard, Jiang Tieyi was doing one-handed push-ups. Sweat soaked his back, while his right arm, freed from its bandages, was undergoing restorative stretches.

Ye Linglong sat cross-legged atop the wall with her eyes closed, though it was impossible to tell whether she was meditating or listening to the night wind.

Mo Qianye's presence, as always, was concealed in some shadow no one was watching.

"Notify everyone," Su Chen said. His voice was not loud, yet it reached every person's ears clearly. "Starting today, sparring practice will last six hours each day."

The bowl in Chu Yao's hands nearly slipped from her grasp. "Six hours?!"

"The preliminaries are two months away."

"Two months is enough."

Chu Yao pressed on, "Enough for what?"

Su Chen turned back to look at her, his expression as calm as if he were stating a fact.

"Enough for them to understand one principle."

"Seven people can never beat forty-seven."

A thousand miles away.

In the imperial capital of the Heaven Dou Empire, at Shrek Academy's temporary residence.

The air in the training room was dry and stifling.

Tang San sat cross-legged, the soul power of the Xuantian Technique circulating slowly through his body.

The door opened.

Yu Xiaogang walked in.

His steps were half a beat quicker than usual, and he held a letter in his hand.

Tang San opened his eyes.

He rarely saw his teacher reveal such faint urgency.

"Little San." Yu Xiaogang sat opposite him and spread the letter on the floor. "I asked an acquaintance in the Heaven Dou Intelligence Bureau to investigate that new academy."

"Sky Abyss?"

"You noticed it?"

"When I looked through the roster last night," Tang San answered. "Seven people, no leading teacher, registered in Abyss City. Those details together are highly unusual."

Yu Xiaogang nodded, his expression grave. "More unusual than you think."

He unfolded the letter. It contained a summary of an expedited reply from a clerk at the Abyss City Administrative Office.

"Seven students, all Four-Ring Soul Ancestors."

"All their Spirit Ring configurations are Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Rings."

"The oldest is fourteen. The youngest is twelve."

The training room fell silent enough for a needle to be heard dropping.

Tang San said nothing.

The Blue Silver Grass coiled around his fingertips trembled soundlessly, the edges of its leaves gleaming sharply.

Every member had Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Rings.

His own first Spirit Ring had only been a hundred-year level. Even with the Ice-Fire Yin Yang Well and the compensation provided by his external spirit bone, the gap in the Spirit Rings' inherent quality remained an objective fact that could not be erased.

And they had seven people, twenty-eight pitch-black Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Rings.

"The leader is Su Chen," Yu Xiaogang continued. "There is very little information on him. No family, no teacher—he seemed to have appeared out of nowhere on the continent. The only thing that can be confirmed is his martial soul."

"A summoning type."

"What type of summon?" Tang San asked.

"Unknown." Yu Xiaogang shook his head. "The description from Abyss City contained only five words—'never seen before.'"

He removed his glasses and carefully wiped the lenses.

When he put them back on, the gaze behind them held a gravity unlike anything before.

"Little San, I have studied martial soul theory for thirty years and handled no fewer than a hundred summoning-type martial souls. Yet not a single one could support a thirteen-year-old boy in obtaining four Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Rings."

Yu Xiaogang lowered his voice.

"Unless this martial soul itself belongs to a... taboo beyond the current theoretical framework."

Tang San remained silent. After a moment, he raised his head.

"Are we in the same division as them?"

Yu Xiaogang said nothing. He merely turned the letter over.

On the back was the elimination bracket.

Sky Abyss Academy and Shrek Academy were both in the western division.

If both sides advanced from the preliminaries, they would meet as early as the quarterfinals.

Tang San's gaze nailed itself to the bracket.

After a long while, he stood and walked toward the training room door.

"Where are you going?" Yu Xiaogang asked.

"Extra training."

The door closed behind him.

Yu Xiaogang sat alone in the empty training room, his fingertips unconsciously rubbing the rough edge of the letter.

Twenty-eight Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Rings.

Seven youths between twelve and fourteen.

A summoning-type martial soul never seen before.

Everything his thirty years of martial soul theory told him pointed to one thing.

Behind these figures hid an entirely new rule, one capable of overturning common sense.

And once that rule surfaced, what it would rewrite would not merely be the landscape of this elite tournament.

It would be the entire continent's definition of the words "soul master."