Chapter 159: The Arena

Ning spent the rest of the day just roaming around the city. But the novelty of the city had worn off by the 2nd day so he just went back to his hotel and started cultivating. 

He took out a spirit stone and held it in his hand. 'Sigh, I spent nearly all of my gold in the auction today. If I had bid anymore, I would've had to resort to using these Spirit stones to buy the spear,' he thought. 

He could use the spirit stones for speeding up his cultivation, so he really didn't want to use any of it. Fortunately, the auction hadn't come to that. 

So, he started cultivating and used a spirit stone to speed up the Qi gathering process. His Sea of Qi was filling much faster and it wouldn't be long before he could break through to the next realm. 

So, he took it slow and cultivated for the entire night. 

The next day he woke up. Today was the day of the competition. To be honest, he was very much looking forward to it. The last few months, he had been training different techniques very diligently and he couldn't wait to test them out in real battle. 

He walked out of the room to go meet up with the sect leaders. Yelca and Gion were both outside their rooms with a bunch of other disciples. 

"Sect Leader, do we leave now?" Ning asked. 

"Yes, the tournament should begin in around 2 hours. We should start going there soon. Let's wait for the other disciples to come," Gion said. 

They waited for a few more minutes as Ning decided to ask a few questions. Gion answered what he could about the competition, but according to him, the competition differed a little each time. 

However, one thing he did confirm was that the competition was separated into two parts. The first one was a normal competition where people did stuff to earn a chance to get into the 2nd competition. 

The 2nd competition was where the true fun of the competition, the 1v1 fight took place. Ning nodded after learning all of this and couldn't wait for the tournament to really begin before he could really find out what he was supposed to do in them.

Soon the other disciples came outside and everyone started walking out of the hotel. 

The downward slope to the center of the town was filled with hundreds of people walking there. Even though it was 8 am in the morning, everyone seemed to be overly hyped for the competition. 

"Are the nonparticipants allowed in?" Ning asked along the way, shooting the question to anyone that would answer it. 

"Uhh… yes but they don't have to," Yelca said. 

"They don't have to?" Ning asked with a confused face.

"Outside the walls of the arena, the Hub island shows the inner happenings of the secret realm to everyone. So regardless of whether one enters or not, they can see the entire show from outside," Yelca said. 

"Actually, entering the arena costs 100 coins per day. So the audience actually prefers watching from outside," Gion added. 

"Oh, but you guys get to go it right?" Ning asked. 

"Yeah, there is a maximum limit of 10 extra people per island, but we get to go in," Yelca said. 

"Maximum limit? So if others come with them, they can't enter?" Ning asked with surprise. 

"They can, but the island would have to pay in their stead. There are a total of 200 islands participating in this competition. If they allowed everyone to enter for free, the arena would be filled by the participating sects alone. So there is a maximum limit on it," Gion said. 

Ning nodded in understanding and didn't ask any further questions.

Soon they reached the arena at the center of the city. There were hoards of people staying around the arena, but thankfully, the tournament holders had made an open area for the incoming participants to walk through.

Ning looked around and was truly shocked at how many people were participating. '15 people from 200 different islands… 3000 people,' he thought in shock. 

He hadn't bothered to calculate until now, but now that he did, he couldn't fathom the number. 3000 didn't sound a lot, especially when considering the size and population of the planet. But when Ning saw the numbers he was shocked. 

These wasn't the real numbers either as they were scattered throughout the 4 sides of the arena, trying to get in, but just seeing the hundreds of different colored robes, all with high cultivation bases made Ning realize how big this world was. 

He was sure that even without the crowd trying to watch the competition, the outside of the arena would be full of just the people trying to get in. 

It took them 15 minutes to finally reach the gate and show their paper slips to get in.

As soon as he got in, Ning was once again surprised, this time by what was inside the arena. 

The Arena was a large stone slab in the middle of the field, surrounded by stadium-like seats that could house tens of thousands of people. 

Yelca and Gion took their group and walked to an area full of stone seats and sat there. "Let's just wait for the tournament to start," Gion said. 

Ning looked around the stadium and saw it slowly fill up. But until now, it was only the participants. There was not a single audience member that had come in yet. 

He then looked at the middle of the stadium where lied a single stone stage and searched for something. He looked around for a few minutes, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't find any clue about it. 

Not wanting to search anymore, he decided to simply ask the sect leader. 

"Where is the secret realm?" he asked, catching the attention of the two sect leaders who suddenly had mysterious smiles on their faces. 

"If it were so easily found, it wouldn't be a secret now, would it?"