378: Chapter 378 Darkness Falls Over the Martial Arts World of Great Xia

President Xia Yun looked down at the faces full of hope below, gritted his molars, closed his eyes, and shouted the second half of his sentence.

"But... there will be no rematch as everyone wanted!"

"According to the final verification by the Organizing Committee, the winner of the second round of the melee is changed to—Magic City Martial Arts University!"

Boom!

As soon as President Xia Yun finished speaking, the tsunami-like cheers in the square were cut off abruptly, like a duck whose neck had been instantly snapped by an invisible giant hand.

Dead silence.

A silence so chilling it made one's scalp tingle, so absolute that one could even hear cold sweat dripping onto the floor tiles.

The ecstasy on the faces of the thousands of contestants and instructors from various schools hadn't even had time to fade before it completely stiffened, cracked, and then shattered.

"Beep, beep, beep..."

"Accidentally intruding into the celestial home, urging me to lay down the sand in my hand..."

A sudden, loud mobile phone ringtone echoed leisurely across the pin-drop silent square.

In the crowd, a male student from a second-tier academy looked completely dazed.

He lowered his head like a rusty puppet, not even bothering to look at the caller ID on his phone screen, and pressed the hang-up button out of muscle memory.

He slowly raised his head, looked at the gloomy sky, then at President Xia Yun on the high platform, and pulled a smile that looked worse than crying.

"What's going on..."

A contestant beside him swallowed hard, his voice trembling: "Why does it feel like the sky suddenly went dark?"

"Oh..." the boy replied numbly, "So it turns out the Great Xia Martial Arts World has gone dark."

These two muttered sentences were like the final fuse igniting a gunpowder barrel.

After a brief dead silence, the entire National Martial Arts Competition Center square completely exploded!

"Geneva! Refund! Refund the ticket money!!!"

"Corruption! This is blatant corruption!"

"Not even going to pretend anymore, huh? Last round, ruling Magic City Martial Arts University as the winner could barely be excused as exploiting loopholes in the rules, but this round you're just forcing the championship onto them? Where is the Organizing Committee's shame!"

"Just how much did Magic City Martial Arts University pay you? You've thrown away the face of the Great Xia Martial Arts World to the ends of the earth!"

Public anger was boiling!

All the prodigies who had been robbed by the Faceless Man until they were left in only their underpants had already been holding in their grievances to the limit.

Now, hearing such an outrageous verdict, their Dao hearts shattered on the spot, and they completely descended into frenzied, impotent rage.

"I don't accept this!!!"

A roar like a thunderclap on flat ground exploded!

The war machine of the Northern Border Military Academy, Zhao Zhenlei, ripped off his tactical vest, his knotted muscles bulging, and veins jumping crazily on his neck like earthworms.

With red eyes, he pointed at President Xia Yun on the high platform and roared violently:

"Are you, the Organizing Committee, treating us like fools?"

"Yesterday, when dozens of us were stripped bare inside, that bunch from Magic City Martial Arts University were all thrown out too!"

"Why rule them as the champions? Our Northern Border Military Academy is the first to refuse!"

With Zhao Zhenlei taking the lead, other captains from prestigious schools also stood up one after another, all filled with righteous indignation, looking as if they would smash the venue if they didn't get an explanation today.

"Crack!"

A teeth-grinding sound of metal twisting suddenly rang out in the crowd.

The stainless steel railing next to where Qin Zhuo was standing had actually been squeezed by her into five bright red finger marks.

Blinding, pure golden Divine Phoenix Fire uncontrollably overflowed from between her fingers, burning the surrounding air until it twisted, scaring the nearby contestants from smaller academies into scrambling back three meters.

This peerless prodigy of Imperial Capital University had her beautiful face tightly tensed, her molars clenching with a rattling sound, her chest heaving violently, and the sparks in her eyes were almost spitting onto the back of the person in front of her.

Thinking of that dead profiteer who spewed filth and called her a "roasted chicken"!

Thinking of Jiang You's dead fish eyes that always looked like he hadn't woken up!

Thinking of that humiliating night when she had brought a knife to his door in the middle of the night, only to be inexplicably dragged into a game of "hide-and-seek" in the hotel men's restroom!

Qin Zhuo felt all the blood in her body rushing to her crown!

"That bunch of cowards from Magic City Martial Arts University didn't even dare to show up today, yet they're pulling this shady operation behind our backs to steal the championship?"

Qin Zhuo clenched her fists, her nails digging deep into her palms, "Do they have no shame at all!"

Amidst the chaos, the Nanhai top student Chu Tiankuo frowned deeply.

He turned his head to look at Helan Que, who was standing not far away and had remained silent from beginning to end.

"Old He! What are you standing there for? Why aren't you speaking up!"

Chu Tiankuo grabbed Helan Que's arm, his face full of anger: "The Organizing Committee has blatantly stripped your Kuangsha Academy of the second-round championship and forcibly handed it to Magic City Martial Arts University in front of the whole world! Can you really tolerate this humiliation of them shitting on your head?"

However, facing Chu Tiankuo's questioning, Helan Que, as the person involved, had an uncertain expression, but his tightly closed lips were as if glued shut with superglue; he couldn't squeeze out a single word.

Not only him, but the entire Kuangsha Academy team now looked like frostbitten eggplants, heads lowered, clenching their teeth and remaining silent.

Others might not know the inside story, but they, Kuangsha Academy, were the first to experience this despair.

It was just yesterday at dawn.

In the Kuangsha Academy's hotel, everyone was popping champagne and eating top-tier monster meat, celebrating this hard-won victory in advance.

As a result, an internal direct line call from the Organizing Committee came through, like a basin of liquid nitrogen at minus fifty degrees, instantly freezing the atmosphere of the entire hotel to the freezing point.

The Organizing Committee had no choice.

If they didn't notify them in advance to let the people from Kuangsha Academy prepare mentally, and instead announced the change of verdict on the spot today, these crazy wolves from the great desert might have caused who knows what kind of chaos to overturn the arena.

But even with the prior notification, the consequences were still disastrous.

After hearing the explanation on the other end of the phone, the principal of Kuangsha Academy rolled his eyes, his blood pressure skyrocketed, and he fainted stiffly, immediately being rushed to the hospital by ambulance for half a night of emergency treatment.

Early this morning, the old principal pulled out his IV drip and rushed straight to the Organizing Committee's top-secret conference room to argue.

And the result?

After seeing the ironclad surveillance footage produced by the Organizing Committee, the old principal seemed to have aged ten years in an instant, walking out with a gray, dejected face and a stumbling gait.

At this moment, Helan Que, listening to Chu Tiankuo's urging by his ear, only felt his throat turn bitter.

He ignored the commotion around him, and the figure of that man uncontrollably appeared in his mind.

That man wearing spongebob pajamas, whose eyes always looked like he hadn't woken up, and who hadn't even used half a skill after two rounds of melee—Jiang You!

"A monster... truly a monster!"

Helan Que's back was instantly soaked with cold sweat, and his fingers trembled slightly uncontrollably.

In the first round, he slept soundly in a cave, using Bai Lan's hand to burn the whole field to a crisp, winning the championship without shedding a drop of blood.

In the second round, he got dead drunk at the start and was thrown out of the arena, yet in the end, the biggest winner was still Magic City Martial Arts University!

If you were to say that Magic City Martial Arts University's victory in the second round had nothing to do with Jiang You, he wouldn't believe it for a second!

Having not personally made a move even once in two rounds, yet every time he could make the development of events strangely tilt in favor of Magic City Martial Arts University!

This level of calculation, this terrifying, far-sighted scheming, just made one unable to even conjure the thought of resisting!

Just as the protests off-stage were rising wave after wave, and it looked like it was about to evolve into a collective riot.

"Boom!"

On the high platform, President Xia Yun suddenly stepped forward.

The terrifying pressure of a Tier 6 Grandmaster, like a tangible tsunami, crashed down onto the square!

The entire competition center instantly quieted down. Those students who were shouting the loudest were forced back again and again by this pressure, their chests heaving with turbulent blood, unable to shout another word.