Chapter Ninety-Two: Is Being Strong Also a Mistake?

Yunjingzi had claimed that opening a betting pool was a way of doing her fellow disciples a favor, since they were destined to be weeded out anyway. What the real story was, only she herself knew.

Still, she was quite generous. Every Pure Yang Observatory disciple she laid a trap for received a share after the arena phase ended, so no one suspected her motives and were quite happy to let her set the odds through their bouts.

Yunjingzi was fair to everyone and gave all her fellow disciples a chance, but when it came to Zhou Qian, she had only lost money.

Zhou Qian, feeling a little embarrassed, asked Yunjingzi to give him another chance. She agreed, but in the following match she lost an even larger sum.

Zhou Qian had indeed abandoned his eerie, uncanny methods and switched to cleaving opponents with a flying vessel, but his swordplay was truly lacking. He had tangled with his opponent for a long while without winning, and just as he tried to resort to his old methods, his foe seized the opening and broke through his defenses with a sword at close range.

Losing that match had serious consequences. Too many people had been tricked by Yunjingzi into placing bets, and she could no longer afford the payouts. This directly drove her into a frenzy, and once again she challenged the other sects’ contenders.

She needed to get some blood back into her veins.

The people from the other sects, however, were the ones suffering. More than thirty experts were consecutively kicked out of the ruins battlefield by her, and this truly stirred up a huge wave of enmity toward the Pure Yang Observatory.

The rules of the ruins battlefield seemed clear at first glance, but in truth there was a hidden ceiling designed to eliminate unstable factors in the selection process.

When Yunjingzi’s points reached one million, she triggered the hidden mechanism. The Heaven’s Choice gave her two options: either take the reward and go to the finish line to wait for the third stage of selection to begin, or endure a single six-nine lightning tribulation.

Yunjingzi immediately flew into a rage, pointing at the sky and cursing the Heaven’s Choice for being unfair. Being strong was a crime now, was it?

Then she decisively chose to go to the finish line and wait.

She told herself this was not cowardice, but that she wanted to meet the Wang Li whom the Pure Yang Observatory disciples had praised into something near myth.

Her wish was granted. She smoothly met the bewildered Wang Li and, besides him, Jiang Yue glaring at her in anger.

The three of them faced each other, and the atmosphere grew awkward.

In truth, they all knew one another.

Yunjingzi had met Wang Li long ago, and had even bragged in front of him more than once.

Wang Li had known of Yunjingzi for quite some time, but had never paid her much attention before, so the two of them could hardly be called familiar.

As for Jiang Yue, she was actually very close to Yunjingzi, but at the moment she was angry with her and did not want to speak.

Strangers are not awkward when they first meet; it is those who are neither close nor distant that feel uncomfortable.

Besides, Wang Li was no longer the little Taoist boy who could be stirred to boiling blood just by hearing someone boast. He had to maintain the bearing of a senior, but Yunjingzi was strong enough that he felt a little guilty; the less he said, the less chance he had to make a mistake, and he did not want to show any weakness.

Yunjingzi was awkward too.

Remembering all the boasting she had done before this “great senior” Wang Li, her face turned red.

But she immediately thought that at the time Wang Li had not yet been taken over, and that the Wang Li standing before her now probably did not remember the boasting she had done before. So she broke the silence.

“This disciple, Hua Ning, pays respects to Steward Wang.”

Hua Ning was her birth name; she did not dare to use her Daoist title in front of Wang Li.

Wang Li forced himself to remain calm. Rather than answering immediately, he first manifested Yunjingzi’s image within the simulated combat scene and fought against it.

He needed to gauge this prodigy’s strength before deciding how to interact with her.

Yunjingzi was at the sixth level of the Spirit Transformation Realm, while Wang Li had only just reached the first level. With no experience fighting Spirit Transformation experts, he naturally was no match for her.

Yet for some reason, Wang Li was only suppressed with ease in the first few exchanges. As he adjusted to Yunjingzi’s fighting style, however, he could fight her to a standstill when using the Soul Suppression Art.

Wang Li was puzzled, and Elder Sheng immediately stepped in to explain. “This little girl must have had someone tamper with her soul, leaving it only at the level of a Nascent Soul cultivator. Your mental attacks at the Spirit Transformation level naturally strike straight at her weak point.”

“But the reason you can fight her to a draw isn’t that. It’s because after you entered the Spirit Transformation Realm, part of the Primordial Chaos Body’s potential was awakened. The amount of heavenly primordial energy stored in your body is far greater than hers, enough to make up for the gap between your realms.”

Wang Li frowned in confusion. “That doesn’t make sense. She’s also in the Spirit Transformation Realm and can absorb heavenly primordial energy too. She’s a cultivation genius; there’s no way she’d be this weak.”

“Weak? Kid, do you have some misunderstanding about Spirit Transformation cultivators?” Elder Sheng said. “For a sixth-level Spirit Transformation cultivator to be as strong as she is already the limit. She may even be stronger than that little girl Chu Xuan. You still think she’s weak?”

“Then why can I, a mere newcomer to the Spirit Transformation Realm, fight her to a draw?”

Wang Li was still puzzled.

Elder Sheng said irritably, “Do you think every Spirit Transformation cultivator can absorb heavenly primordial energy as casually as you can?”

“As I said before, heavenly primordial energy is a very advanced form of power. For ordinary Spirit Transformation cultivators, absorbing it is not easy. They cannot directly perceive the laws of the world, so they have to convert spiritual energy into heavenly primordial energy, and the efficiency is extremely low. After entering the Spirit Transformation Realm, this little girl’s accumulated absorption of heavenly primordial energy may not even equal what you absorb in a single day. She also cannot unleash the full might that heavenly primordial energy should have. In battle, the foundation is still one’s own spiritual power. You are pretty mediocre, and your actual combat experience is even worse than that of an ordinary Spirit Transformation cultivator, but your energy output is very strong, enough to make up for the gap in experience and strength.”

Wang Li said, “So my ability to absorb large amounts of heavenly primordial energy is because of my physique?”

Elder Sheng nodded in confirmation.

Wang Li was delighted. “Can I understand that as me being invincible among those of the same realm?”

Elder Sheng said helplessly, “I don’t want to admit it, but yes, that’s not wrong.”

After saying that, he hurriedly added, “But that only gives you an advantage against Spirit Transformation cultivators. It won’t work against those Tribulation Transcendence experts who can already communicate with the laws of the world. You need to have some self-awareness.”

“Understood! I won’t get cocky.”

Since he could hold his own against Yunjingzi, he naturally should still play the part of a senior.

He turned back to the huge boulder where he usually sat for cultivation and slowly said, “If you leave the ruins battlefield, what are those disciples supposed to do?”

Yunjingzi had been wondering why Wang Li was ignoring her, thinking perhaps he felt as awkward as she did. Who would have thought that instead of asking why she had come here, he would start by holding her accountable? She instantly panicked.

Within the ruins battlefield, she was the Pure Yang Observatory’s main face. The other fellow disciples were truly not very reliable, and she had also drawn too much enmity. Without her there, the people from the other sects would have far fewer scruples. They might well take revenge on those fellow disciples...

Thinking of that, she quickly explained how she had triggered the hidden ceiling and also expressed remorse over her impulsive actions.

She could clearly feel the oppressive weight of Wang Li’s aura and did not dare to act recklessly.

At the same time, she somewhat understood why the other disciples kept praising Wang Li.

A great senior who, even from outside the fray, still cared about the disciples—how could such a person not be loved by them?