The one to erupt as a shock wasn’t only Ranfeng—there was also Wanmo, who, even holding back his true strength, still stunned the entire body of students.
Wanmo’s specialty was the Flesh-and-Blood Construct.
These “Flesh-and-Blood Constructs,” on the surface, looked no different from living creatures.
There were war-beast forms, monster and demon forms, even human-shaped ones—the lowest were bronze-grade, most were silver-grade, and the lead demon-form Flesh-and-Blood Construct was a powerful gold-grade puppet. Compared to ordinary puppet constructs, the Flesh-and-Blood Constructs were both easier to control and stronger; the flesh sheathing them could, uncannily, draw on energy crystals and certain mysteriously arranged Heaven-realm rune patterns to enhance, amplify, and self-heal. You might say they combined in a single body the strengths of two wholly different forms of existence—living creature and battle construct.
Were it not for the fatal flaw that they still possessed no intelligence whatsoever, these Flesh-and-Blood Constructs would have been stronger than genuine war beasts outright.
Even so, the moment the Flesh-and-Blood Constructs appeared on the battlefield, the student pitted against Wanmo was instantly dumbstruck, and before every watching eye was savaged into a bloody ruin.
Jinji had originally been the hot pick for the crown, and Yue Yang—little Titan—had won a measure of recognition after taking the creativity title with his sacred-grade quill pen. But as for Ranfeng and Wanmo, apart from well-informed sorts like Young Lord Mingzhu and Chimu, the ordinary students had no idea of their true depths at all.
“Jinji’s done for!” After the first day’s fighting, students were at once debating it in the plaza.
“What? Jinji? He’s straight-up garbage—he won’t even place in the top five!” Someone was full of scorn.
“No telling whether Ranfeng’s platinum construct is stronger or Wanmo’s Flesh-and-Blood Constructs are—I really hope they run into each other sooner rather than later…” This from the spectators eager for a show.
“The platinum construct’s stronger, obviously. The grade’s right there for all to see.” One student threw out the grade-supremacy argument.
“Not necessarily. Wanmo’s Flesh-and-Blood Constructs come in great numbers, they’ve got a living body’s power of self-healing, and their grade’s nothing to sneeze at either. Many against few—it might well be a match for Ranfeng’s platinum construct. Besides, Wanmo’s opponent was far too weak to force out his trump card. Maybe Wanmo’s got even stronger Flesh-and-Blood Constructs he hasn’t brought out—who’d dare say he doesn’t?” There were students, too, who believed that numbers, past a certain point, could overwhelm quality.
“I’ve got a bit of inside word—they say Ranfeng and Wanmo are both friends of Ji Wuri… This is a top secret I dug up from an acquaintance, and there’s an eighty percent chance it’s true!” Among the students, there was never any shortage of the well-connected.
“No wonder—that’s just what I was saying! How could Ranfeng and Wanmo be this strong? Turns out they’re Ji Wuri’s friends!” A student who heard this was extraordinarily astonished.
“Going by that, then—Ji Wuri plus Ranfeng plus Wanmo—does Human Valley have anyone left to oppose them?”
“Ji Wuri alone already has no rival, all right?”
“And that Hauge with the two gold constructs—what sort of figure is he? Who’s the great backer behind him? It makes no sense. I’ve never once heard this fellow’s name, so how could he own two gold constructs? If Ranfeng hadn’t been the one facing him, that Hauge would’ve kept the lid on it entirely! And even Ranfeng spent no small effort taking him down!”
“That day of the assessment battle, I saw Hauge working a silver wolf, and I thought that was his limit. Who knew he had two gold constructs—the man’s a real monster!”
“Pity about Hauge. If he hadn’t drawn Ranfeng in the very first round, he’d have been a top-five pick at the least.”
“That’s right. With his strength, placing top three would’ve been a matter of course.”
The first bouts done—
—the students debated back and forth, trading their various views.
Judging by today’s showings in the bouts, the two “nobodies” Ranfeng and Wanmo had unquestionably stolen all the thunder. Jinji, the former favorite for the crown, was eclipsed of all his glow by the platinum construct and the Flesh-and-Blood Constructs; his Strong Magnetic Battle Construct had beaten its opponent and passed its round easily enough, but couldn’t escape the fate of being cast into the shade.
In the combat-power rankings the students hashed out, Jinji—owner of the Strong Magnetic Battle Construct, “Blood-Dripping Heaven-King”—had already dropped out of the top five.
Ranfeng and Wanmo ran out in front the whole way, and the luckless Hauge, beaten by Ranfeng, won everyone’s respect. Though his formal placing could no longer make the boards, in private everyone reckoned Hauge belonged in the top five, even the top three.
Of course, besides Hauge, a few names unfamiliar to the students had entered their sights. Qingmo, for one. This rookie, though he held only a single silver wolf, with a control technique so gorgeous it stole your breath—in a flawless combat stance without so much as a hair harmed, in a hundred-and-eight-strike combo—had one-shotted an opponent who likewise possessed a silver-grade construct. That opponent was no ordinary figure either, but an elite student favored by outsiders and instructors alike; had Jinji not possessed a gold construct, this man would have been a powerful contender for the crown.
Yet before an obscure nobody named Qingmo, he was as weak as an infant.
He lost without a shred of temper left in him.
In the whole course of the fight he hadn’t even a chance to struggle, let alone to resist or counterattack.
The students who’d watched Qingmo’s bout affirmed one thing without the slightest hesitation: if Jinji, gold construct and all, went to war with Qingmo, Qingmo’s flawless control technique would beat the crap right out of him—so there was no way on earth Jinji could rank top three. Those who hadn’t watched the bout held some reservations.
They felt that, after all, what Qingmo used was a silver-grade war-wolf.
The gulf between silver-grade and gold-grade was no trifling thing; control technique might not necessarily close it.
Of course, they also knew what tier of goods Jinji’s true strength really was. For Jinji to beat Qingmo would be, at best, a Pyrrhic victory—and if things went badly, if Qingmo’s gorgeous combo landed clean, losing wasn’t out of the question either!
“Jinji ought to win. The gap between silver-grade and gold-grade is just too big!” Most of the students believed the grade barrier couldn’t be surmounted.
“Right—well, why don’t you look at Hauge? He had two gold constructs and fought Ranfeng’s one platinum construct, and didn’t he still end up losing? You think Hauge’s control technique isn’t impressive? I’ll tell you this—drop Hauge into last session, and apart from a certain win for Ji Wuri, would Zhonghua and Captain Cook dare claim, hand on heart, that they’d take Hauge down a hundred times out of a hundred? A Hauge that formidable still couldn’t defy the heavens—so Qingmo against Jinji is honestly the underdog matchup. So long as Jinji doesn’t go numb and careless and throw out a boneheaded move, Qingmo’s got no chance at all!” Someone seized the moment to offer combat evidence.
“What a load of muddled comparisons—that’s not it at all. You say Hauge fighting Ranfeng couldn’t defy the heavens; that’s because Ranfeng is himself a figure of that same monstrous tier—next to Hauge, in no way inferior, which is precisely why he could pin Hauge down and beat him! What is Jinji, exactly? Can he even measure up to Ranfeng?” But there was no lack of rebuttal either.
“Well put—Jinji isn’t Ranfeng, and Qingmo isn’t Hauge. Qingmo’s control technique can absolutely defy the heavens. As I see it, even Ji Wuri’s handling that day wasn’t half so gorgeous!” A minority of the students who’d watched Qingmo’s first bout had become fans.
“Aren’t you laying it on a bit thick? Qingmo, surpass Ji Wuri?” Still, the doubters remained the majority.
“He can’t surpass him—but I’ll wager Qingmo’s not far off at all!”
“Let’s make a bet, everyone. I say he doesn’t make top three. Anyone who dares claim he’ll definitely make top three, step right up—I don’t buy this hocus-pocus. A single silver wolf, and he defies the heavens?”
“Speaking of this ‘silver wolf,’ something just came to me. It seems several contestants are using them—like Tiange, whose control technique is also quite outstanding, and that fellow Silver-Eyes of the extraordinary bearing; he uses a silver wolf too. Their silver wolves look exactly alike—could there be some connection to Qingmo? Could they all come from the same place? A power that produces these silver-wolf puppet war-beasts—I don’t seem to have heard of it before. Could it be some newly risen faction? What’s that you say? Several other contestants are using silver wolves too?” Someone had spotted the discrepancy.
“Phantom, Blood Shave, Golden Bones, and several other contestants are all using silver wolves—and the models are identical,” a student added.
“I think I’ve seen this kind of silver wolf in Silver Maple City, come to think of it.” Another spoke up in confirmation.
“Now that you mention it, it’s starting to ring a bell—Silver Maple City really does turn out this kind of silver wolf in quantity. I once saw a dozen-odd mercenaries go howling past riding these silver wolves, and it struck me as extraordinarily impressive at the time.” In the crowd there were no few students who’d been to Silver Maple City.
“Mercenaries have them too? That can’t be. Since when could mercenaries get their hands on silver constructs?” Someone doubted it at once.
“Now that you say it—Hauge, Tiange, Silver-Eyes, all of them are mercenaries by identity!” Someone produced the evidence.
“And that Qingmo too…” Someone else added.
“Hm?” The students instantly caught the problem.
“There’s an unbelievable bit of inside word—I don’t know whether I ought to say it. I have a female relative who works as a receptionist at the Puppet Guild, and she says that once, chatting with Dusk Young Lord, the Dusk Young Lord let slip a secret without meaning to. He said the gold constructs on him were all made for him by that monstrous genius little Titan, the one who invented the sacred-grade quill pen—and said that little Titan, just like a god, could point a finger and conjure gold constructs straight out of the ground! It was so absurd I didn’t take it to heart when I heard it. But thinking back on it now—if that little Titan could invent and create a ‘sacred-grade quill pen,’ then inventing and creating a gold construct really isn’t such an impossible thing!” Someone had let out a piece of inside word to drive people mad.
“Gold constructs can be developed, but there’s absolutely no way to just wave a hand and conjure them from the ground!”
“If he could, why didn’t little Titan bring them out during the assessment?”
“Little Titan went straight into the puppet-beast horde from the start… Maybe he did bring them out and use them, but we just didn’t see!”
“What? No way? Little Titan went into the puppet-beast horde from the start? How did he get back out alive? That sky-blotting, earth-covering tide of puppet-beasts—just thinking about it makes you shiver!”
“I heard it from Zhanyi, the Black Mountain Hawk—with his astonishing eyesight, he once glimpsed, from far off, little Titan and Young Lord Mingzhu sitting atop a puppet factory watching the battle, with a churning, surging tide of puppet-beasts below—and not a single puppet-beast attacked the two of them, as if they were invisible men! I’d had a few quibbles about him taking the crown, but Zhanyi suspects that little Titan hasn’t even shown his true strength. If he brought all of it to bear, he’d likely be no less than Ji Wuri!”
“…Impossible! What kind of joke is that? Having one man like Ji Wuri in the world is already terrifying enough. You think peerless geniuses are cabbages hawked all up and down the street?”
“Whether he’s a peerless genius—no need to wonder, he definitely is! The only question now is whether Dusk Young Lord was bragging. If he wasn’t laying it on too thick, then there’s at least a fifty percent chance that Hauge, Qingmo, Tiange, Silver-Eyes—this whole batch of newcomers—are all together with little Titan. Which is to say, their constructs were very likely supplied by little Titan. You might not know this, but little Titan is the master of Star Diamond Castle in Silver Maple City—a baron who could inherit rank and domain the moment he was born. With strength and wealth that deep, kitting his companions out with silver wolves is honestly no problem at all! Especially given that he himself is a genius master of puppet-crafting, it’s all the more possible!”
“Ah, let me put in my two cents as well. I watched little Titan’s bout—likewise a silver wolf, likewise passed his round easily.”
“The silver wolf—it couldn’t be their standard-issue construct, could it?”
“I’ve got reason now to suspect that the silver wolf isn’t a standard-issue construct at all, but rather—like Hauge—two great gold constructs. You may not have noticed, but in the early part of Ranfeng and Hauge’s fight, Hauge was using a silver wolf too. It was only after that silver wolf got destroyed by Ranfeng’s platinum construct that the two great gold constructs came out later… And it was precisely because of their fierce clash that the rest of you came rushing over at word of it to watch that superbly magnificent, drawn-out battle. I watched the whole thing, start to finish, without missing a beat—and I’ll wager that what Hauge used at the start was a silver wolf too!”
“You mean to say—using a silver wolf is just a disguise for them, and every one of them actually has two gold constructs?”
“Unbelievable as it is, I really do harbor that suspicion in my heart!”
“Impossible!”
“I’m dizzy—two gold constructs each? You think little Titan’s a god? Unless he can pull gold constructs straight out of the ground like yanking radishes, no digging pits or watering required, there’s no way!”
“If Dusk Young Lord wasn’t bragging, then…”
“This is getting more and more far-fetched. Impossible is impossible—two gold constructs for every newcomer? Even Ji Wuri isn’t that lavish, all right!”
“None of us knows what the real truth is right now, so let’s just wait for the results. Three days at most and they’ll be out anyway. Whether Human Valley is about to gain another peerless genius like Ji Wuri, or gain a con man—three days from now, it’ll all be plain as day!”
The students debated heatedly, arguing till they were red in the face and neck, none able to convince another.
In the end, they had no choice but to helplessly, quietly await the bouts to come.
The very Yue Yang at the center of their debate had by now returned to the Grimoire World, and was working out countermeasures together with Fengxian, Princess Qianqian, Yue Yu, Luohua, and Inan.
Ji Wuri alone was headache enough.
And now, on top of him, an evil god about to return to Human Valley and lay waste to heaven and earth—it was truly a torment!
If, on the construct front, one could still develop the Flying Battle Construct to counter it, then what of the evil god? Who could restrain, and by what method, a creature whose divine power was enough to destroy the whole of Human Valley? And most fatal of all, Ji Wuri and the others, to seize greater advantages for themselves, had actually chosen to cooperate with the evil god. It seemed the day the nine Sealing Pillars were destroyed was not far off; the evil god’s return had been drastically hastened, so fast there was hardly even time to prepare…
“If we’re to deal with the evil god, then we’ll have to build a god—one that can stand against it as an equal!” Princess Qianqian suddenly came out with a line that left everyone dumbstruck.
“Build a god?” Yue Yang broke into a heavy sweat. A god could be built too?
“That’s right. I have a method—I don’t know whether it can be put into practice, but if it can, then there’s hope yet for this Human Valley battle!” Princess Qianqian mused a moment, seeming to marshal her words, preparing to deliver some earth-shattering theory.
(End of Chapter)