Jiang Zhencang was green with envy.
How did that saying go again? Ah, right—starting out meant taking flight.
If that had happened, perhaps the Sacred Land would have grown more than twice as strong as it was now. And he himself might already have reached the middle stage of the Void Ascension Realm. With a bit of luck, he might even have suppressed the Yin Sha Sect by now!
Unfortunately, there were no "ifs" in any of it!
In truth, it was precisely because Jiang Zhencang's family had been weak, because his start had been difficult and he had needed to struggle for everything himself, leaving him exhausted, that he hoped his disciple Yingxuan could have a higher starting point.
In the spectator stands.
For a time, every big shot harbored their own thoughts.
Within the Trial Grounds, the candidates' trials continued to advance.
As Wang Lici and Wang Yingxuan used battle to nurture battle, expanding like a rolling snowball, the other candidates also found methods suited to themselves and entered their own stages of development.
For instance, Luwei displayed astonishing talent for cultivation. After several failures, she finally nurtured cold-resistant plant seeds, as well as several kinds of seeds for defense and combat, and had already begun pushing outward.
Meanwhile, the future Empress Luoqiu ventured out alone, specifically seeking out bandit chieftains for one-on-one duels and sparring matches, then inundating them with her ideals.
Before long, relying on the imperial aura she was exceptionally skilled at wielding, she cowed several bandit organizations into submission, making them bow beneath her as their empress. Her forces rapidly spread and swelled.
There was no helping it. Her imperial bearing was simply too genuine—she looked even more like the reincarnation of an emperor than Emperor Longchang.
When those bandit leaders submitted to her,