The puppet academy, southern hall.
Zhonghua piloted the Silver Maple City-marked “Sword Dancer,” holding the doorway single-handedly against all comers — one man at the pass, ten thousand unable to break through. Countless puppet beasts surged in like a tide, but the Sword Dancer stood unshakeable as a reef. Before a powerful gold-tier construct, no quantity of bronze-tier puppet beasts amounted to much, and under the consciousness-guided command of a formidable figure like Zhonghua, they were left with nothing to do but be slaughtered. Sword-light layered upon sword-light, flashing like lightning, while the Sword Dancer Zhonghua piloted loomed like a great mountain, guarding the southern hall’s gate. Any puppet beast that drew near was dismembered by sword-light that cut iron like mud.
In an instant, sparks sprayed in showers, and the puppet beasts that lunged forward had their limbs severed and bodies split apart, their wreckage flung scattering across the sky.
With Zhonghua’s overwhelming defense, the students of the southern hall broke into thunderous cheers. They drove their own constructs forward to lend a hand, each pulling out clever moves of their own. The puppet beasts attacking the southern hall might be as numerous as the tide, but their assault crashed against Zhonghua’s defense — a wall of bronze and iron — and was forced to stall, unable to advance an inch.
The western hall. At this moment Jinji was piloting his “Crimson Heaven-King” with smug satisfaction. Possessing a gold-tier magnetic construct, he felt no need to use the magnetic ability against these cannon-fodder puppet beasts — a single pair of massive arms was enough to sweep them away like rotted weeds.
“Penniless mercenaries — why aren’t you swaggering now?” Even amid the fighting, Jinji didn’t forget to jeer coldly at Qingmo, Hauge, and the others.
“How foul — so you fart through your mouth!” As if Hauge would endure it. He fired back at once.
“Want to bet I wipe you out right now?” Jinji’s voice turned eerily cold.
“With a great enemy before us, let’s not turn on one another. Perhaps you’ve heard of me — I’m Yangquan of Flame Sun City. If you’re willing, I’ll hold the doorway and create a relatively safe combat environment for all you junior students. Whatever grudges and grievances any of us have outside, here we must unite and fight with one heart, or it’s all too easy to be wiped out entirely.” Behind Yangping, a man of imposing appearance stepped forward from the crowd, his voice like a great bell. This man was Yangping’s elder brother, Young Lord Yangquan.
To be ranked alongside Chimu, Mingzhu, and Chigui as one of the Light Alliance’s Four Young Lords, Yangquan was naturally no simple figure. What he’d brought to the battle this time was a gold-tier construct, “Flame Spitter” — no weaker in either grade or combat power than Jinji’s magnetic construct.
Before mounting up to pilot the Flame Spitter into battle, beyond stopping Jinji’s move to attack his own side, Yangquan also swept a glance over Qingmo and Hauge — a glance that, deep down, held a trace of disdain for their mercenary garb, though his words were humble enough. “Tempering oneself on the battlefield is a necessity for every student’s growth. I’ve merely walked a little ahead of you all and accumulated a bit of experience. If you don’t mind, you’re welcome to come up and fight at my side — we can learn from one another and progress together.”
Jinji snorted. “As if they’re worthy?”
But because of Yangquan’s standing, this wasn’t someone he could afford to offend for now, so he kept his voice as low as possible, barely audible to the few people right beside him.
Qingmo conducted himself with a lower profile. Until a crucial moment, he wouldn’t use his gold-tier construct even though he had one — instead bringing out that first bronze-tier construct he’d bought back when he’d spent every last Shard Crystal of his savings. The students around Jinji all sneered inwardly without cease — that someone would dare challenge Young Master Jinji with this battered construct, barely a step above an unranked blank, was truly courting death.
Hauge had fewer such reservations. When there was something good to use, he naturally used it. Still, however impulsive he got, he wouldn’t disrupt Yue Yang’s assessment plan. Charging up to join the fight, Hauge didn’t bring out the gold-tier construct early, instead piloting a silver-tier steel giant wolf. At the sight of this silver wolf, though Jinji still showed contempt, even Yangquan was slightly moved. It wasn’t a gold-tier construct, but its combat power was already very close — and judging by Hauge’s technique in piloting it, he was a top-tier expert as well, not to be taken lightly.
A top-tier expert who could own a silver wolf with merely mercenary status?
A giant of a man he had no memory of — apparently a newcomer too.
A mercenary with a silver-tier construct? And a newcomer at that?
Yangquan suddenly felt a wave of teeth-gritting unease. This wasn’t simple. This giant, crude in appearance and reckless in manner, was absolutely not simple.
Ren Tiange, the Silver-Eyed Great Sage, and the others kept an even lower profile, hiding behind the crowd, piloting either blank constructs bought for cover or bronze-tier constructs. On the southern hall’s battlefield, no one noticed anything unusual about them at all.
In truth, those keeping a low profile and fighting quietly in the western hall weren’t only them — there were several others. Had Yue Yang been there to look, he would certainly have recognized two of them: the Hall of Fire Master Ranfeng and the Hall of Darkness Master Wanmo of the Central Divine Hall. Mingzhu’s intelligence had already confirmed it with full certainty: Ranfeng and Wanmo had been scheming for a long time, having respectively brought out gold-tier “Raging Flame Constructs” and “Flesh-and-Blood Constructs,” making them the strongest contenders for this round’s Assessment championship.
Compared to the eastern hall where Yue Yang and Mingzhu had originally been, the southern hall where Zhonghua was, and the western hall holding Qingmo, Hauge, Ren Tiange, the Silver-Eyed Great Sage, Ranfeng, Wanmo, Yangquan, and Jinji, the northern hall — with no expert defending it — was something of a tragedy.
Tide-like puppet beasts assaulted the northern hall’s gate. The students inside, whether first-time newcomers or veteran seniors, were unable to withstand this iron torrent and were forced to retreat step by step. Those who retreated a beat too slow saw their constructs swallowed by the steel flood — blood spraying, bodies severed from heads, limbs flung through the air — buried in an instant beneath the puppet beasts’ tidal assault.
The northern hall wasn’t entirely without experts. The Ghost King Phantom, the Flayer King Blood Shave, and the Skeleton King Golden Bones were all inside — but they watched with faint, ambiguous smiles, utterly unmoved by the deaths around them. None of them had ever been good people; every one was thoroughly, evilly inclined. Were it not that they’d been forced into cooperation with Yue Yang, they’d probably already have set off down the same rebel-army road as the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord. Any order, code, or law in this world was so much nonsense to them. Had they not found cooperating with Yue Yang the easier path, they wouldn’t have bothered coming to Heaven Plain Mountain’s Ancient Pavilion Terrace at all, let alone some Assessment evaluation. By Phantom and Blood Shave’s reckoning, it didn’t matter how many students died — the point was how to get one over on Ji Wuri or Zhonghua here.
Their earlier setback in Demon Valley had left Phantom, Blood Shave, and Golden Bones gnashing their teeth. That kid Titan was too monstrous; competing with him was a lost cause from the start. So be it — they’d let that go. But a “great grudge” like the ones against Ji Wuri and Zhonghua had to be repaid somehow, and if possible, that fellow the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord shouldn’t be allowed an easy time of it either.
“Help…” The students in the northern hall, scared out of their wits by the iron torrent before them, fled in all directions.
“There’s nothing we can do.” Phantom and the others looked on without seeing, letting the puppet beasts butcher the students.
“Light of Vengeance!”
At the most critical moment, suddenly, inside the eastern hall, a shadow concealed within drifted out from the darkness. From head to foot, he radiated a brilliance comparable to a god’s. Anyone who laid eyes on him felt an inexplicable urge to bow in worship, as though even one extra glance at his face were an unforgivable blasphemy.
Appearing alongside him was an exquisite construct fifteen meters tall, golden in color and supremely imposing. On its back, a pair of silver wings were mounted along the spine. Though these couldn’t grant the construct itself flight, they could greatly aid its leaping and gliding ability — and they made it look exceptionally sacred and solemn.
Before the godlike man had even leapt up onto the exquisite construct that bore an eighty-percent likeness to its master, a student had already shouted out, unable to contain his excitement: “The Vengeful Prince — it’s the Vengeful Prince, Ji Wuri!”
Ji Wuri, piloting the Vengeful Prince, leapt up in coolly striking fashion, streaking at extreme speed across dozens of meters of space within the hall. At some unknown moment, a sword had already appeared in his grip. The “Vengeance Light Sword,” powered by an Endless Energy Divine Stone, swept gently — and the dozens of puppet beasts the Tall Tower War Wolf Mige had been struggling to handle were all cut down in an instant beneath its blade. Under Mige’s gaze of fervent worship, the Vengeful Prince that Ji Wuri piloted charged out the eastern hall’s gate, landed on the steps, raised its hand overhead, and brought it down hard in a heavy cleaving stroke. The whole of heaven and earth was instantly plunged into a blaze of dazzling radiance.
When everyone’s eyes recovered their sight, they discovered to their shock that across the several-hundred-meter straight-line distance from the eastern hall to the northern hall, every puppet beast had been swept clean. Through the tide-like sea of puppets, a terrifying sword-scar had been carved with absolute clarity. Within that scar, whether bronze-tier puppet beasts, silver-tier, or even gold-tier, all had been reduced to scrap copper and rotted iron, becoming debris that paved the ground.
“A god — truly the man nearest to the divine!” Mige the Tall Tower War Wolf murmured, dazed, and behind him many students had already collapsed to their knees in fright.
“My knights — where are you?” Ji Wuri, piloting the Vengeful Prince, gave a debonair wave of the hand.
“Your Highness, we have all answered the summons!” Ten men flew out from the four great halls — east, south, west, north — racing over, ignoring the puppet-beast tide not far around them, and dropped to a respectful kneel before the Vengeful Prince that Ji Wuri piloted.
“Follow me.” Ji Wuri waved his hand, and ten knight-form gold-tier constructs flew out from his storage ring, landing before the ten men.
“Yes!” All ten mounted up, piloting the knight-form constructs, following close behind Ji Wuri’s Vengeful Prince as they charged toward the northern hall to rescue the students there, who were dying and dwindling without cease. Some students in the northern hall, struggling bitterly to hold on, saw Ji Wuri leading his ten knights charging recklessly through, and were instantly so moved their eyes brimmed with hot tears. Even the cowards fleeing for their lives, seeing rescue at hand, immediately felt hope surge anew and turned back to fight the puppet beasts to the bitter end.
“…No comparison. The gap is just too vast. I worked ten years and don’t even have a single gold-tier construct, while he’s been here only a few months, and not only built the Vengeful Prince but has ten loyal knights, every knight piloting a gold-tier construct of his own…” Mige the Tall Tower War Wolf slumped weakly onto the steps. For him, Ji Wuri’s entrance wasn’t merely a shock — it dealt him a deep, crushing blow. His earlier heart full of fighting blood had turned to cold sweat before absolute strength; thinking it over now, there was nothing but blow upon blow.
Zhonghua, who’d been displaying his might in the southern hall, watched this scene and couldn’t help giving a vexed snort. Against Ji Wuri’s dazzling entrance, all his earlier effort had come to nothing. Now not only the students of the eastern, western, and northern halls, but even the students in the southern hall who’d been fervently worshipping him, couldn’t help cheering and rooting for Ji Wuri’s stunning arrival — while ignoring the Zhonghua before them who’d just annihilated puppet beasts by the thousand.
“Open fire!” Zhonghua, enraged, released his two gold-tier Jet Beasts, had them charge their energy, and blasted two shots into the puppet tide outside, hoping to claw back the round. The Jet Beasts were tremendously powerful — they’d held their own in single combat against Captain Cook’s Ocean Warrior, and combined, the energy they unleashed was naturally fearsome. The whole of heaven and earth dimmed. A thunderous explosion, deafening to the ear. Two hundred meters before the southern hall’s steps, two passages were cleared as well, the puppet beasts inside all but wiped out. Apart from one damaged gold-tier puppet beast and a few half-ruined silver-tier puppet beasts, every bronze-tier puppet beast was reduced to molten iron, annihilated beneath the Jet Beasts’ energy cannon.
But regrettably, however striking the spectacle, it still couldn’t overturn the prestige of the heaven-supporting sword stroke Ji Wuri’s Vengeful Prince had unleashed. That stroke had been simply too astonishing, too earth-shaking, so that even Zhonghua’s twin-Jet-Beast salvo now seemed pale by comparison. In the southern hall, a small number of Zhonghua’s fans cheered and leapt for joy at it, but more people were still lost in that earlier sword stroke, unable to come back to themselves.
Compared to Ji Wuri, Zhonghua — outstanding as he was — still fell far short of mention in the same breath. Watching this, Zhonghua felt a wave of bitterness in his heart. He’d thought building a second Jet Beast already counted as fast work, never imagining that in such a short span Ji Wuri had somehow gained ten knight constructs, all gold-tier and above, every one of them no weaker than a Jet Beast.
This was Ji Wuri’s strength. This, too, was the distance he himself could not surpass.
Having rescued the northern hall’s students, Ji Wuri didn’t play it conservative the way Zhonghua had, holding before a single hall’s gate. He led his ten knights straight into the puppet-beast tide, breaking through with unstoppable momentum, charging toward the nearest puppet factory.
“Ji Wuri!”
“Ji Wuri!”
“Ji Wuri…”
At first no one knew who’d shouted Ji Wuri’s name. But as that one cry rang out, students immediately joined in, more and more of them, until it became a torrent — nearly every student chanting in unison, cheering Ji Wuri on. Hot-blooded young men like Mige the Tall Tower War Wolf, or fame-hungry types like Jinji, charged out of the puppet halls one after another, striking into the puppet-beast tide in an all-out counterattack.
Among them, the fastest and strongest was Zhonghua, piloting the Sword Dancer and commanding two Jet Beasts. Zhonghua absolutely wasn’t trying to lend Ji Wuri a hand — he simply couldn’t bear for Ji Wuri to steal all the limelight, to steal the hearts of every student alone. Beyond that, Young Lord Yangquan, piloting the Flame Spitter, followed close behind.
“Idiots.” Hauge, Qingmo, and the others didn’t charge out like the hot-headed students.
“A lot of people are going to die in this battle.” Ren Tiange frowned. He felt that with this lure of Ji Wuri’s, plenty of hot-headed, under-powered students would perish — charging out was easy, but coming back was hard. Now that two or three hundred had charged out, it’d be lucky if even a tenth of them made it back.
“If not for this, how would Ji Wuri rescue anyone? How would he win hearts?” The Silver-Eyed Great Sage shook his head slightly. He could see clearly enough that Ji Wuri was doing all this deliberately. Ji Wuri leading people to strike at a puppet factory — success or failure — would win him every heart. And if, on the return trip, he rescued a few more students with potential, elites like Yangquan and Mige the Tall Tower War Wolf, then he could very easily gather another batch of “elite knights.” Even if Yangquan and Mige didn’t join those knights, they’d remember the life-saving grace and forge an iron alliance with Ji Wuri. So however many students died, it didn’t matter at all to Ji Wuri. What mattered was that the more brutal the battle, the better positioned Ji Wuri was to bestow his favors.
In this great battle where blood sprayed in showers, two shadows sat atop a puppet factory, gnawing roasted corn. Eating with great relish — exactly like spectators at a grand theater watching a show.
The shadow on the left elbowed the shadow on the right. “Look, how impressive. Couldn’t you learn a thing or two from that?”
The shadow on the right was utterly unbothered. “Quiet — watch the show. You think a puppet factory like this is so easy to attack? Heh heh, the elites’ real show is still to come. Even Ji Wuri, that chicken, will find that going after a puppet factory means biting off more than he can chew… Say, why don’t we make a bet?”
“Bet on what?” The shadow on the left grew wary — this kid proposing a bet was never a good sign.
“If you lose, you let me throw one punch.”
“Where?”
“Your face.”
“You’d dare punch my face?”
“Then where do you want me to punch? Your chest? Hm — I wouldn’t have guessed it, you’re so thin, yet you have pecs!”
“You’re absolutely courting death. It’s been a while since I deepened your impression with the golden hammer, hasn’t your skin been itching? Don’t you run!”
(End of Chapter)