First Battle
"This thing called the subway is so convenient!"
Ning Rongrong and the others emerged from the subway entrance. Even counting the time they had spent waiting, it had taken them only ten minutes to get here from the Mingdu Grand Hotel. By carriage, it would have taken at least half an hour; Mingdu was simply too big, and the roads were crowded with vehicles.
After leaving the subway, Shui Yue'er exclaimed again, "Wow, what's that?"
A massive building stood before them. From a distance, it looked like a giant black-iron bowl overturned on the ground. Built entirely from rare metals, it was inlaid with densely packed Soul Tool formation circuits, and several enormous Soul Tool light screens stood outside.
Information scrolled continuously across the screens: Soul Fighting point rankings, matchups, and betting odds. The entrance was packed with people. Even though the arena was on the outskirts of the city, there were no fewer than a hundred thousand people here by the looks of it.
Shui Bing'er, Shui Yue'er, and the others were merely shocked and curious, but Hu Liena and Ning Rongrong looked grave. Ning Rongrong was the young miss of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, needless to say, and Hu Liena was a genius of Spirit Hall who was held in high regard by Bibi Dong. Naturally, they knew the current state of the Douluo Alliance's strength.
Heaven Dou and the Star Luo Empire combined had fewer than a hundred thousand Soul Masters, yet the Mingdu Soul Fighting Arena alone had more than ten thousand. Although most were still low-level Soul Masters, this was just Mingdu. The Sun Moon Empire had three major cities, as well as scattered smaller ones.
Ning Rongrong looked at Xu De, her eyes full of indecision. Before she had come, her father had told her to do her best to investigate the Sun Moon Empire's strength. If the gap was too great, it wasn't out of the question for the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect to seek refuge with the Sun Moon Empire.
Xu De and the others naturally didn't have to push through the noisy crowd. The Mingdu Soul Fighting Arena had the Sun Moon Imperial Family behind it, so it naturally had a passage reserved for the imperial family.
Xu De had put his mask back on. Alas, he had only just said he wouldn't need to wear one anymore, and now he had slapped his own face.
Led by an attendant, the group soon entered the arena. Their eyes were immediately drawn to the enormous main stage in the center. It was over a hundred meters in diameter, with walls ten meters thick and a transparent defensive barrier enveloping its exterior.
Countless smaller stages surrounded it, almost all of them in use. The stands were nearly full, and cheers mingled with angry shouts and curses throughout the venue. But sonic barriers confined the noise to the stages and stands, keeping it from disturbing anyone else.
Light screens of various sizes hung around the venue, showing footage from some of the more exciting matches that had attracted larger audiences.
The group split up in twos and threes to watch the matches around the arena. The more they watched, the more alarmed they became. Although most of the fights were terribly boring, the fighters' Soul Power was too high. Soul Masters of the same age were generally three or four levels higher than those on Douluo Continent.
Hu Liena, however, noticed a weakness among the Soul Masters of Sun Moon Continent. In the unrestricted division, the winners generally prevailed by crushing their opponents with superior Soul Tool equipment. In the restricted division, they relied on Soul Power to win.
She had watched fifty or sixty stages without seeing a single instance of the weak defeating the strong. Their fighting skills were truly poor, and they lacked the blood and mettle to fight to the death.
Before they had spent much time looking around, the staff had finished registering all their identity information. Each of them received a badge-shaped Soul Tool. It stored their personal information, and its holder could freely change their nickname or form a team of two, three, or even seven to ten people.
Xu De quickly formed a team. He and Xiao Wu used the aliases Xu Wushuang and Da Wu. They had come here plenty of times over the years, and both already had Purple Sapphire Soul Fighting Medals. Without new identities, they couldn't even team up with the others. The Mingdu Soul Fighting Arena's anti-smurfing measures were quite good.
"Hey, Xu De, what should our team be called?" Ning Rongrong excitedly sent Xu De a friend request and a team request. Zhu Zhuqing, Hu Liena, and the others then sent friend requests as well.
"How about Wushuang Rongrong?"
No sooner had Xu De spoken than the women beside him stared at him with strange expressions. Was that a name a person could come up with? And that edgy name, Mingdu Seven Monsters-surely he hadn't come up with that too!
Ning Rongrong shook her head like a rattle drum. "No, no, that name sounds awful!"
"How about Team Xu Ning?"
"Would it kill you not to pick characters out of our names?"
As the two continued to agonize over their team name, Zhu Zhuqing suddenly cut in. "Why don't you call yourselves the Purple Glazed Twin Stars? Xu De has the Purple Brilliant Heaven Destroying Dragon, and Rongrong has the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda."
"Great idea, Zhuqing! You and I were thinking the same thing." Xu De's eyes lit up. That was a good name. Who said big breasts meant no brains? Hers were bigger than Ning Rongrong's, and she was smarter too.
The corner of Zhu Zhuqing's mouth twitched, but she maintained her cool, aloof expression. "Is that so? What a coincidence."
With the name settled, they could move on to their Soul Fighting matches. Xu De and Ning Rongrong's match wasn't much of a problem. He mainly wanted to test the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda's amplification effect. If he could lose a match like this, he would take Yu Xiaogang as his master!
With their privileges, everyone's matches were quickly arranged. Huo Wu's individual match came first. Her opponent was a bald middle-aged man, a level 44 Battle Soul Master with a wolf-type Beast Martial Soul.
"Hahaha, I didn't expect my luck to be this good! I actually ran into a little girl who just became a Soul Ancestor."
The bald Soul Master chuckled, feeling very fortunate. He was a typical Soul Master who just coasted through life. Soul Ancestor was already the end of his cultivation path. Though he wasn't particularly strong, it was enough for him to get by in Mingdu without wandering from place to place like Gangzi.
Huo Wu's face turned cold. Once the two stepped onto the stage, the barrier rose. A barrier around a small stage like this could withstand attacks at roughly the Soul King level.
"Third Soul Skill-Repelling Fire Ring! Fourth Soul Skill-Huo Wu's Radiant Sun!"
Perhaps angered by the bald man's words, Huo Wu unleashed her big move right from the start. The bald Soul Master's expression changed as her Soul Rings appeared beneath her feet: two yellow and two purple, the optimal configuration.
The bald man, meanwhile, didn't have a single Thousand-Year Soul Ring beneath his feet. They were all hundred-year Yellow Soul Rings. This was another common weakness among Soul Masters of Sun Moon Continent: the local Soul Beasts were scarce, and the overall quality of Soul Rings was low.
A dazzling ring of fire burst out beneath Huo Wu's feet and spread across the entire stage. Flames then gathered between her hands, condensing into a huge ball of white fire above her head that shot straight toward the bald Soul Master.
With a bang, the bald Soul Master lay on the stage, his face blackened. However, because he was wearing the arena's specially made clothing, his outfit was largely undamaged.
"That was way too easy." Ning Rongrong and Hu Liena couldn't help exclaiming at the same time. Although Huo Wu's Soul Rings were high-quality, her opponent was a level 44 Soul Master. Yet he hadn't been able to resist at all. His combat experience was far too poor.
As the women discussed the match, another announcement rang out in their section.
"Next match: Purple Glazed Twin Stars versus White Tiger Twins!"