76: Chapter 76 Helplessness and Acceptance

The remaining top-five contestants were all shrewd individuals who instantly saw through the stakes involved and felt relieved one after another.

Anyway, the rewards for anything past the top three were all the same, so what was the point of struggling and pointlessly consuming their familiars?

In the subsequent duels, the remaining contestants conceded cleanly and without exception; not a single person stepped onto the stage to fight to the death again.

The grand and sensational top-ten-to-top-three ultimate selection finally came to a close with everyone yielding and concluding gracefully, allowing the four top prodigies to securely lock in their spots for the final showdown.

The atmosphere of the entire arena gradually shifted from its previous bustling liveliness to quiet solemnity.

Everyone was looking forward to the ultimate peak duel, but on the stage, Lin Ye's expression did not show a shred of ease; instead, it grew increasingly solemn, and the calm composure in his eyes faded, replaced by a thick layer of caution and pressure.

Outsiders only saw the glory of him achieving godhood in a single battle and having no one dare oppose him; only he himself knew that the upcoming decisive battle would be the true purgatory of this tournament.

Bai Ruoxue, Xiao Qingwu, and Zhou Mingzhi!

These three peerless prodigies, enough to suppress all their peers in Quanzhou, were like three towering mountains stretching across his path, blocking his final road to charging for first place in Quanzhou and seizing Jinghun Hall.

Bai Ruoxue grasped an SSS-grade divine talent with a pure bloodline and heaven-defying pressure, serving as the ceiling with the deepest foundation in this tournament.

Xiao Qingwu possessed matchless movement techniques, unpredictable offense and defense, and excelled at making comebacks from desperate situations with no obvious shortcomings.

Zhou Mingzhi's Undead Legion was undying and indestructible with an unsolvable endurance, and his grappling and protracted combat ability was peerless throughout the arena.

Every single one of them was stronger, more entangling, and more unsolvable than Ye Feng from yesterday.

Having lost a large portion of his familiars in the previous bloody battle, if he wanted to reach the peak against the current, every step of his path ahead would be fraught with thorns and immense danger.

Just when the entire arena thought the tournament would directly lock in the top three and start the ultimate peak battle, the chief referee of the arena stepped onto the stage once again, his voice echoing across the entire venue to officially announce a temporary tournament adjustment.

"For this top-ten-to-top-three selection, all the remaining six-strong contestants took the initiative to yield. Not a single one of the four contestants was defeated and eliminated, and the points of the four top prodigies are completely tied with no ranking gap."

"Combining online broadcast public opinion and the viewing rights of the on-site audience, the tournament organizing committee and the military supervision group have jointly ruled to temporarily adjust the tournament format!"

"The originally stringent top-ten-to-top-three rules are being exceptionally modified!"

"This tournament is changed to top-ten-to-top-four! Lin Ye, Bai Ruoxue, Xiao Qingwu, and Zhou Mingzhi will all advance together to the final ultimate ranking battle!"

As soon as the news came out, the entire arena was in an uproar, but then everyone felt entirely relieved.

Everyone understood the helplessness of the organizing committee. Today, the arena was packed with seats filled; all one hundred thousand spectators had purchased tickets to watch the match, and hundreds of thousands of people across the entire internet were watching the synchronized broadcast. If the entire top-ten-to-top-three selection had zero battles, directly finalized the top three, and lacked any match competitions from beginning to end, it would inevitably provoke strong dissatisfaction from the audience and throw public opinion into chaos, which could be called the biggest accident of this provincial league.

Not only was the tournament format modified, but the tournament rewards were also simultaneously re-graded, completely abolishing the previous old rule of "unified rewards for the bottom seven."

From tenth place to fourth place, independent gradient rewards were set for each ranking. Even if there was only a difference of a single ranking, resources, points, and academy special admission privileges would have clear fault-line gaps, thoroughly balancing tournament fairness and the audience's viewing experience.

Because of this, the remaining six contestants who stopped at the top four, even if they knew they had no fate with the peak and could not compete for the top three, still had to take the stage to complete their matches and decide their respective final rankings.

The six prodigies looked at each other, and their eyes were filled with helplessness and composure.

They understood things with absolute clarity; the combat power fault line in this tournament was far too obvious. The top four prodigies were already in a tier of their own, crushing everyone else remaining. No matter how the subsequent ranking battles were fought, they could not change the established layout.

To fight desperately and fiercely to the death—winning would merely mean getting a tier of negligible resource rewards, while losing would mean pointlessly consuming their familiar foundations, leaving behind hidden dangers in their divine kingdoms, and possibly even getting injured to affect subsequent academy assessments. It simply meant the gains did not outweigh the losses.

Since they had to fight and could not forfeit, everyone tacitly chose to slack off, perfunctorily muddled through the matches from beginning to end, and wrapped things up sloppily.

The subsequent several ranking battles could be called the gentlest and most perfunctory matches of this tournament.

After the six contestants took the stage, they all symbolically opened their divine kingdoms, summoned a small number of familiars, and casually released a few rounds of basic skills. Their moves were orderly and the scene was stable, yet there was not a shred of murderous aura or any posture of fighting desperately to the death.

Everyone tacitly held back their strength: no heavy injuries, no fighting for their lives, and no consumption of core foundations. They went back and forth just to go through the motions, simply finishing the tournament process and barely completing the match mission.

The audience also understood everyone's tacit understanding; no one complained that it was dragging down or lagging, and instead they were very understanding.

Having experienced the purgatory match of Lin Ye fighting Ye Feng to the death previously, ordinary prodigies' rankings were already dim and lackluster to begin with. Coupled with the fact that everyone knew the disparity in combat power was vast, there was no need to fight to the bitter end. Muddling through to wrap things up was already the best ending.

As these few harmless and perfunctory matches came to an end, the final rankings of the six contestants were successively finalized, and the gradient rewards were distributed one by one. The entire tournament successfully stabilized public opinion without stirring up the slightest ripple.

At this point, the ultimate top four of this Nantan Prefecture League were completely settled.

Lin Ye, Bai Ruoxue, Xiao Qingwu, and Zhou Mingzhi, the four top young prodigies in Quanzhou, stood at the pinnacle of the arena, quietly awaiting the final ranking showdown.

The audience seats below were buzzing with voices, and countless burning gazes focused intently. Everyone was looking forward to this peak melee that encompassed the ceiling of Quanzhou.

Only Lin Ye felt no boiling excitement in his heart, leaving only a heavy solemnity.

Outsiders only saw the glory of him squeezing into the top four and having hope of reaching the summit; only he himself was clear about his own shortcomings and the perils of the road ahead.

That night, the arena was on break, and the entire city shed the hustle and bustle of the daytime, returning to tranquility.

Everyone else was resting and adjusting their breathing, observing opponents' tactics, and polishing familiar cooperation. Only Lin Ye sat alone in his residence, his mind completely sinking into his own baleful Qi divine kingdom to set about repairing the heavy wounds left behind by this battle.

Inside the divine kingdom, charred bones and remnant corpses littered the ground—they were the bodies of the familiars who had fallen in the previous bloody battle. If he were to abandon them just like that, it would mean pointlessly consuming a large portion of his foundation, something Lin Ye would never be reconciled with.

With a thought in his mind, he urged the baleful Qi filling the sky to sweep across the entire divine kingdom, gathering all the remnant corpses of the fallen familiars such as the Shahun Hounds, Soul-Devouring Owls, Plague Seed Mosquitoes, and Demonic Blood Pythons, condensing and pooling them together to refine, squeeze, and smelt them with his natal baleful Qi.

Wisps of crimson origin, muscle and bone energy, and bloodline essence were stripped away layer by layer, removing all necrotic impurities, and ultimately condensing into round, pure, and blood-qi-rich flesh-and-blood energy clusters that floated between the heaven and earth of the divine kingdom.

Afterward, Lin Ye ordered all surviving familiars to swallow the flesh-and-blood energy clusters as a whole, close up in secluded cultivation on the spot to recuperate, repair their injuries, and temper their physical bodies.

Meanwhile, his greatest trump card was the unique time-flow discrepancy of his divine kingdom.

Only two days and two nights had passed in the outside world, but within his divine kingdom territory, a full two months of long time had elapsed.

Two months of recuperation and repair, energy nourishment, and bloodline tempering produced effects that could be called heaven-defying.