208: Chapter 208: The first player to qualify is about to be born!

"Thirty percent? Brother Jiang, your heart is too black!"

Gou Fugui clutched his camera, protecting it against his chest like a mother hen protecting her chicks, arguing his case:

"Snapping such a rare, abstract, artistic masterpiece requires both physical and mental effort! Do you know how many brain cells I burned just on the composition? You can have at most twenty percent! Not a bit more!"

"Twenty-five percent! Can't go any lower!"

Jiang You gestured with his palm, "Besides, my face is in this photo. If you go any lower, I'll have to sue you for violating my portrait rights!"

The two were haggling over the split as if no one else were around, completely ignoring the elites nearby who had just experienced a collapse of their worldview.

Just then.

An incredibly heavy and cold terrifying pressure, as if it could instantly drain the surrounding air, descended without warning upon the heads of Jiang You and Gou Fugui.

"Drip."

A droplet of water, condensed from who knows where, fell onto the coffee table with a dull, strange sound.

Gou Fugui stiffened, feeling his breathing instantly become extremely difficult, as if an invisible ocean were crazily compressing his lungs from all directions!

Jiang You stopped haggling and slowly turned his head.

He saw that Xie Fuyao had appeared in front of them at some unknown moment.

This senior Chief Xie of Class A no longer had the breakdown and madness on his gentle, jade-like face.

In its place was an unprecedented, extreme calmness.

It was calm enough to make one feel terrified.

"Jiang You."

Xie Fuyao spoke. His voice wasn't loud, but combined with the faintly boiling phantom of black Weak Water Three Thousand surrounding him, it thundered against everyone's eardrums.

"I have to admit, you Class F students are indeed a group of… extremely rare lunatics."

Xie Fuyao took a deep breath. A trace of self-mockery flashed in his eyes, but it was mostly replaced by the clarity of sudden enlightenment:

"I almost fell for your trap just now."

"You used that absurd, nonsensical, bottomless performance art to forcibly drag my thinking down to your level."

"Then, you tried to confuse me with your rich experience in acting crazy."

"Attempting to shake my Daoist heart…"

Xie Fuyao took a step forward. His terrifying Peak Fourth-Order blood energy, like a tangible giant wave, made the surrounding sofas and chairs creak, forcing Gou Fugui to retreat repeatedly until he almost fell on his butt.

"I almost forgot…"

Xie Fuyao stared fixedly into Jiang You's deep blue eyes and said, word by word:

"To deal with lunatics, there's no need to understand your thought processes."

"All that's needed is… absolute crushing power!"

"Boom!"

The black water phantom behind Xie Fuyao suddenly rose, like a black dragon lurking in the abyss, opening its hideous giant maw.

"I am at Peak Fourth-Order! My Supernatural Ability is the SS-rank Weak Water Three Thousand!"

"I will step into the Grandmaster realm within a year!"

"And you, even if you had a breakthrough during the battle, you are merely at the mid-Third-Order!"

"There is an entire major realm gap between us! This isn't something you can fill with your crooked ways or some trick of reversing blood energy!"

Xie Fuyao had completely regained his confidence and arrogance as the school's number one.

That's right! What was he afraid of?

In the face of absolute power, all flashy tricks are paper tigers!

Even if Jiang You is a cheater who can see through things and absorb mana, he still has to see if his small body can contain the violent ocean of a Peak Fourth-Order!

"Jiang You."

Xie Fuyao raised his hand, pointing straight at the glaring scoreboard on the big screen.

"You are currently 6 wins and 1 loss."

"I am also exactly 6 wins and 1 loss."

"This means that whoever wins this next match will reach 7 wins and become the first person to lock in a qualifying spot in this Hundred Schools League internal selection tournament!"

Burning fighting spirit raged in Xie Fuyao's eyes:

"Don't say I'm bullying the weak, and don't play those little tricks of finding people to snipe me."

"Now, it's just you and me."

"Do you dare to enter the pods with me and press that button at the same time?"

"Today, this first qualifier deserves to be born only between you and me!"

Following Xie Fuyao's resounding declaration of war, the lounge, which had been immersed in the awkwardness brought by Lu Xingye's "performance art," instantly boiled over!

"Holy crap! Chief Xie is getting serious!"

"He's completely sobered up! This is the anchor of our Class A! We were almost led astray by Class F just now!"

"That's right! Senior Xie is at Peak Fourth-Order! Plus, his Weak Water Supernatural Ability is pervasive; he won't give you a chance to absorb it at all! Jiang You is definitely going to crash this time!"

"It's a match point! Whoever wins is the first champion of this selection tournament!"

Everyone's gaze instantly focused on Jiang You.

The air was filled with the thick scent of gunpowder.

However.

Facing this overwhelming pressure, Jiang You just leisurely put his hands back into his pockets.

He didn't show the solemn expression everyone expected; instead, he yawned with a sense of relief?

"Ah… is it finally time to get off work?"

Jiang You rubbed his sore neck. Deep in his eyes, that faint blue light and the highly compressed blood energy within his body were crazily intertwining and resonating!

Didn't he carry out that "major reverse project" inside his body that almost killed him just to dampen this guy's arrogance and go back to sleep sooner?

"Senior Xie, you said one thing that was quite right."

Jiang You looked up. On his face, which usually looked unmotivated, a defiant smile appeared that made Xie Fuyao feel inexplicably alarmed:

"I also think that wasting an entire day with you people is really a waste of my precious sleep time."

"Since it's a match point…"

Jiang You turned around and walked straight toward the nearest luxury combat pod.

"Then let's not dawdle."

"Let's log in."

Whoosh!

Seeing Jiang You accept the challenge so decisively, the entire lounge, and even the teachers and students watching through the broadcast, all gasped.

He actually accepted!

A mid-Third-Order freshman had accepted a match point challenge from a veteran Peak Fourth-Order king head-on!

"Good! You've got guts!"

Xie Fuyao snorted coldly, flicked his sleeves, turned around, and strode into the combat pod opposite.

Two top-tier virtual combat pods, like two steel beasts about to awaken, faced each other from opposite ends of the lounge.

"Click—"

Both pod doors closed simultaneously.

At this moment, whether it was Lu Xingye who was acting crazy just now, Gou Fugui who was counting money, or the experts from various classes who had been eliminated or defeated, everyone held their breath and stared fixedly at the giant holographic screen in the center of the hall.

Central Viewing Hall.

Director Ma's voice had gone hoarse from shouting, and he roared frantically into the walkie-talkie:

"Switch the footage! Turn off all those messy split-screens!"

"Full screen! High definition! Super close-up!"

"Change the background music to the most intense song in my playlist!!"

"This is the ultimate battle that determines the first qualifying spot!"

Throughout Magic City Martial Arts University, the heartbeats of tens of thousands of people seemed to achieve a strange synchronization at this moment.

"Bang!"

"Bang!"

Inside the virtual pods, Jiang You and Xie Fuyao's fingers smashed onto the red [Start Matching] button at the same time!

The system's massive data stream ran crazily in the background.

Both of their hidden scores and win rates were at the absolute top, plus their synchronization was precise to the millisecond.

There was no suspense at all!

"Ding!!!"

An extremely high-pitched system prompt resounded throughout the entire Virtual Combat Center!

On the big screen, golden light pierced the darkness like a volcanic eruption, and two lines of huge text with flame effects smashed into everyone's retinas!

[Match Point: Duel of Prodigies!]

[Red Side: Class A Senior, Xie Fuyao (6 Wins 1 Loss)]

VS

[Blue Side: Class F Freshman, Jiang You (6 Wins 1 Loss)]

The winner shall be crowned, taking the first spot!