At dawn, when the first ray of sunlight lit up the east, a strange sight already filled the streets of Mingdu.
Soldiers clad in full plate armor stood in two columns, stretching outward from the entrance of the Mingyue Hotel.
At a glance, there was actually no end in sight.
The passage formed by more than twenty thousand soldiers was under complete lockdown. Civilians were required to stay at least thirty meters away and forbidden to approach.
An intangible air of deadly severity had settled over the streets.
Everyone from Shrek had packed up early that morning and headed for the competition venue, rubbing their hands in anticipation.
Under the protection of the soldiers' tight formations, the 167 competing teams set off out of Mingdu.
Altogether, they numbered nearly two thousand.
The competition venue lay in the eastern outskirts of Mingdu and could be seen in the distance as soon as they emerged from the city's buildings.
By now, this open expanse was already a sea of people. The soldiers responsible for maintaining order alone numbered at least thirty thousand.
On the northern side of the competition grounds stood a raised platform that could accommodate roughly a thousand people.
Even more curiously, there seemed to be a ring-shaped groove around the competition grounds, from which a transparent curtain of light, tinged with pale yellow, rose high into the sky.
The light curtain hugging the Competition Platform alone showed how this tournament differed from the last. At the very least, knocking an opponent off the stage would no longer count as a victory. They would have to defeat their opponents outright.
Chen Ping could not say whether this light curtain preventing falls had been designed specifically to target Xu Sanshi. In any case, when Xu Sanshi saw it from a distance,