Why not single out?

The seventh Freshman Ranking List has been released, and it is time to set off for Huaqing Academy.

It is said that the rewards for this National Competition are extremely generous, though the officials have kept them mysteriously under wraps.

Gu Xiaoyue, Chu Li, and Shui Lingyu all went to Hualian Shopping Mall to prepare some supplies. It wasn't that Kyoto City lacked them, but there might be certain restrictions when participating in the National Competition.

On the day of departure, the team participating in the National Competition was led by Director Wu, traveling on an Albatross.

As for the spectator team, they were led by two class instructors, Director Ding XinYu and Liu Minyuan, traveling on two other Albatrosses.

They set off in the morning and it took six hours to reach the gate of Huaqing Academy in Kyoto City.

Ye Junhe and Lin Zhiyi were already waiting for them at the gate.

As soon as Gu Xiaoyue and Chu Li landed, Lin Zhiyi trotted up to them.

Her face was slightly flushed, and the reserve of a well-bred young lady prevented her from throwing herself into Gu Xiaoyue's arms, so she simply took her hand.

"Long time no see, Xiao Yue."

Gu Xiaoyue gripped her hand back, pulled her into her arms, and gave her a big hug.

"I missed you too!"

Ye Junhe punched Chu Li in the chest. "You're here too? Just wait until I beat you up in the arena!"

"In your dreams! I'll be the one beating you up!"

Chu Li stepped forward and hooked his arm around Ye Junhe's neck, and the two boys started wrestling around.

Gu Xiaoyue held Lin Zhiyi's hand. "Zhiyi, you're a participating team member too, right?"

Lin Zhiyi nodded. "But I'm the weakest one on the team."

Gu Xiaoyue understood; Lin Zhiyi only had Earth Tier talent, and there were likely many with Heaven Tier talent at Huaqing.

However, given the Lin family's background, raising Lin Zhiyi's combat power to the top ten in the school wouldn't be difficult.

Gu Xiaoyue had a rough idea of Ye Junhe and Lin Zhiyi's strength, but she didn't know about the others at Huaqing.

However, as the number one academy in the Dragon Kingdom, the strength of the students who could compete was certainly not to be underestimated.

The dormitories prepared by Huaqing Academy for participating students were double rooms.

Gu Xiaoyue shared a room with Zhuang Yanxin, Chu Li with Fang Xiaoyu, and Sun Jian with Zhao Huaiyao.

The dormitories for the spectator students were six-person rooms.

The first day was for arranging the accommodation for students from various academies. The next morning was for drawing lots to arrange the matches, and the arena battles would officially begin in the afternoon and evening.

There were a total of 123 academies participating in the National Competition.

The top five academies would not meet in the preliminary rounds.

Huaqing, Chongbei, West River, Xiangzhong, and Nanya would first draw for the five groups. Once that was decided, the other academies would draw which group they belonged to.

Chu Li went to draw lots as the captain and drew Group C.

Chongbei was in Group A, Xiangzhong in Group B, Huaqing in Group D, and West River in Group E.

Afterward, the captains who drew into Group A and Group D all had long faces.

"Meeting Huaqing in the preliminary rounds means we're definitely going to get beaten up badly!"

"Aren't we worse off being in the same group as Chongbei? Those people in Chongbei are monsters!"

When all the drawing was finished, Groups A, B, and D each had 25 teams, while Groups C and E had 24 teams.

The rules were: 2 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, and 0 points for a loss.

The two teams with the highest scores in each group could advance to the finals, and only team members who reached the finals could participate in the individual competition.

In other words, unless someone was super strong and could carry the entire team, they couldn't participate in the individual competition no matter how strong they were.

With five arenas hosting matches simultaneously and each academy having one match per day, the preliminary rounds alone would take 24 days.

The information of the participating contestants had already been uploaded to the Huaqing National Competition organizing committee a week ago, so they just needed to wait for notification and then participate in the arena battles.

After the morning's drawing of lots and the grouping on the brain, the schedule was released at noon.

It was unclear if Gu Xiaoyue's team was lucky or if the other teams were just unlucky.

Among the top 30 ranked teams in the country, only the 16th-ranked Jiangchuan Academy and the 24th-ranked Yuanquan Academy were in Group C.

Gu Xiaoyue's team was scheduled to fight the 96th-ranked Xingyang Academy at 4:00 PM.

Huaqing was to fight the 101st-ranked Chijiang Academy at 5:00 PM.

Gu Xiaoyue shook her head; the gap in strength was too large, making it uninteresting to watch.

Besides, they would definitely hide their true strength, and so would she.

It wasn't that she looked down on them, but until they reached the top 30 in the country, she didn't even need to summon her pet beasts; Chu Li alone would probably be enough.

On the first day of competition, the top five academies almost all encountered teams with a huge disparity in strength.

The opponents simply surrendered; it was better to fight against teams with similar strength.

For five days in a row, whenever Chu Li was in the arena and summoned the Teng Snake and the Lihuo Red-Eyed Beast, the opponents surrendered immediately.

These 10 points were earned way too easily!

However, over these past few days, Gu Xiaoyue had also been keeping an eye on the matches of other academies, and it was said that Yuanquan Academy had impressive strength this year.

Their captain, Jiang Yi, was a dark horse in this year's National Competition, and he had easily won against the 16th-ranked Jiangchuan Academy.

Looking at it this way, it seemed that Nanya and Yuanquan would be the ones to advance to the finals from Group C.

The showdown between these two academies was conveniently scheduled for the last day of the preliminary rounds.

As for the other groups, the top 30 academies were distributed quite evenly, making them more exciting.

As for Huaqing, it was just as Gu Xiaoyue had expected; they hadn't used any of their combat-oriented pet beasts.

Others might not know, but at the very least, Ye Junhe's Feilian and Lin Zhiyi's Thunder-Patterned Winged Tiger had not appeared.

They could only wait patiently for the preliminary rounds to end; the finals were the real main event.

Gu Xiaoyue had been coasting for over twenty days, and in the meantime, she had helped Hualian Shopping Mall with two promotions—they had released new pet beast snacks.

She couldn't help herself and bought 500 more bags!

It was no wonder Immortal Tier pet beasts were hard to deal with; after reaching maturity, their increased intelligence meant they developed their own emotions.

For the past few days, Xiao Jiu had been causing quite a ruckus in the Yu Beast Space, and Gu Xiaoyue had been giving it extra meals every day.

The reason was simply that it was Gu Xiaoyue's second pet beast, but she didn't use it in battle, didn't prioritize it when she had rare treasures, and even gave the water-attribute necklace she received for her birthday to Xiao Lan.

Although she fed Xiao Jiu plenty of lanzhi grass and qiu mu grass, she hadn't used any han jiang grass, so Xiao Jiu's current level was only at the mid-stage of the first maturity tier.

Naturally, it wasn't having any of it, and lately, it would just whine and cry in the Yu Beast Space whenever it was bored.

In the end, Gu Xiaoyue had to promise it that if there was a good fight in the last match, she would let Xiao Jiu participate.

Finally, the big battle on the last day arrived. Chu Li led the team onto the arena to face Yuanquan Academy—Jiang Yi's team.

The referee asked if both sides were ready to begin, but Jiang Yi signaled for the referee to wait a moment.

"I have a proposal," Jiang Yi said to Chu Li. "Today is the last day of the preliminary rounds, and the finals officially begin tomorrow. To avoid tiring out our team members too much, why don't we just have a one-on-one?"

Chu Li raised an eyebrow. His team had basically been coasting the whole time and hadn't really fought much.

Jiang Yi's claim about being considerate of the team members' stamina was likely just an excuse, but if it were a one-on-one, Chu Li possessed the strength to win for sure.

"No problem, let's have a one-on-one!"

Chu Li agreed immediately.

"Wait, I didn't say I wanted to have a one-on-one with you."

Jiang Yi raised his hand, his gaze landing on Gu Xiaoyue, who was daydreaming to the side. "I want to have a one-on-one with her!"