Chapter 34: End of the selection

'Pretending to be a pig to eat a tiger?' I smirked.

'Or a pig with cheat skill?' I thought. I mean he was nothing much before he used that skill.

The [Evil God transformation], when he used it his power skyrocketed and Jin Fen was able to finish Dai Bao in a single move and secure a seat for himself.

So when he was in the Resha he had his lucky encounter and found this technique which let him gain a temporary power-up. Well, all I can say is about its first form that he showed in this fight so there might be other forms in this technique that have different effects.

In my memories (or you can say Li Huang's) I didn't see any sign of this technique, and without reading it I can not see the level of this martial arts with [Peeping eye of heaven], because the peeping eye of heaven is an analyzing tool so I can't say for sure, but from what i saw from the fight, I can say that it is at least an earth grade martial art.

The martial arts in this world have five major grades; lower, middle, upper, earth, and heaven. Each of them has ranks of 1 to 9. Obviously, the higher the grade and rank, the better the martial art is.

For example, my sword art, [Eclipse Devourer Sword Art] is a 9th rank earth-grade martial art. Keep that in mind that this is one of the main and best martial arts in the sect, and the heavenly sword sect is one of the seven holy lands so it shows the level of martial arts in the world.

For a kingdom's royal family having an upper-grade martial art is a must so that they can govern the land, but usually they don't have higher techniques, why? Because the higher powers would snatch it away one way or another. It is on a level that if they have found an earth grade technique they would present it to a holy land for some favors rather than keeping it and facing the problem that comes with it.

So Jin Fen having a technique that is an earth-grade technique is really shocking and if people know about it he would be 'persuaded' to part with it…

But detecting an earth-grade technique just from its first form is not easy and if I didn't have the peeping eye of the heaven in my arsenal, I would be also in dark about it. The easiest way to find out that a technique is on which level is to read its manual, as easy as that.

Well, the problem here is that neither Jin Fen would willingly give the manual away nor the elders stoop so low to ask a junior to give out his martial art manual.

So I think for some time no one would figure out that he has such a method. Lucky him, I guess…

But there is something that shouldn't be left aside. If he had this technique from the start why in the seven hells he didn't use it from the start? Wouldn't that be a better 'slapping the young master' episode?

I have thought about it deep… as deep as you can in ten minutes but that's not important. I think there are two possibilities for this.

First, he is a masochist so he endured this beating because it was enjoyable for him or something? But this is not very plausible. True, most of the MCs in Chinese novels have masochistic tendencies in training but they would fight with all they got and are too prideful to let themselves get beaten to the mud.

Their family might have left them and they have no backing but they are somehow still prideful and won't let an opponent trample on them so this possibility couldn't be further from the truth.

So it has to be something beyond that. Something that needs him to stall for time…

You might say that this method probably needs some time to be charged or whatever you want to call it, so he had to face the beatings as he had no other options other than waiting.

But this just shows that your IQ is lower than 70. For the technique to activate you need the chant so it can not be that he was waiting for the technique to 'charge' because he chanted the chant right before using it.

So it only leaves us with one obvious reason. He had to be beaten for the technique.

What I have come up with is that this technique probably needs you to either get beaten so much that a certain level of internal and external injuries was sustained, or you need to have a certain level of blood loss for it to activate.

Both are possible, but from what I saw none of them can be 'the one' with certainty. So I have to keep them both in mind. In case that I fought with him, I can put this theory to the test.

The fight analytics are done and now I can think about the other thing that came up after the fight.

The sneaky glances of Jin Fen toward Lai Xinyue and him shouting 'STOP' at that time couldn't be a coincidence. The fact that he is looking out for her, if you can even call it that, shows that there is a story behind it.

What I can be sure of is that Lai Xinyue has nothing to do with it. So what I think is that she resembles someone to Jin Fen and so he has this attraction toward her. If you look at it this way, his reaction to my spar with Lai Xinyue would make sense.

The fact that he unconsciously moved to 'save' her and shouted STOP shows that he was not in the best state in terms of his mental state at that time.

I have to check this to be sure about it. This might come in handy in the future.

I couldn't help but grin at the prospect of using this to my advantage.

As I was using my paranoia to solve some questions that popped into my mind the selection continued.

Dai Bao who had lost his seat and was injured, used some pills and came back to take a seat for himself after half an hour.

Unfortunately for him, he can't challenge for his seat as the rules don't allow it. According to the rules, if you lose a seat, you have lost it forever so you have to challenge other seats.

This rule is to stop disciples from forming enmities between each other by forbidding them from challenging their lost seats. Well, from the looks that Dai Bao is giving Jin Fen I don't think that it worked, at least this time…

On the other hand, his pride as a 'young master' wouldn't let him to send one of his lackeys to beat Jin Fen. well, i think he doesn't want to lose face by doing so...

Dai Bao went and challenged another disciple and won easily this time. I think if he didn't underestimate Jin Fen the result would be in his favor last time too.

Anyway, he won and soon after the selection was finished and all of the 98 seats were selected and we had to go to the [Eternal Wail Chasm] tomorrow.

Dai Bao, Jin Fen, and Lai Xinyue kept their seats and went to the final round.

The competition there would be something to look forward to. The other powerhouses in the continent are there too so you can say that this is the biggest gathering of the young generation…