Chapter 121: Next Battle
Sensing the many hostile eyes, Xu Min could do nothing but shake his head. He did not care about how others viewed him. The Light Fairy was someone whom he had considered a friend. Thus he would treat her as one, even if this caused others to be displeased.
"Well done fighting. It seems that ranker underestimated you," the light fairy said with a smile on her lips. She could not hide the fact that she was proud of Xu Min.
The light fairy was not much older than Xu Min. It was expected that when the next Immortal allowed for their student to graduate, they would take her in. As such, she was a half ranker already.
After this fight, all the others somewhat lost their luster. The battles were simple and straightforward; none of them held any excitement.
Seeing that the end of the night was over, the next few days went on in a blur. Before it was finally time for the exciting parts of the tournament, it was time for the final two matches of each of the groups to find the semifinalists and then the finalists. At this point, now only rankers remained.
Everyone arrived early in the morning. A bustling atmosphere filled the academy. Every student was talking to one another, discussing who they thought would end up being up winning the group fights, as well who they expected to become the tournament champion.
Although no one expected Xu Min to rank highly, everyone was excited to see what tricks he had up his sleeves. Logically thinking, Xu Min was the one who had been a student of an Immortal for the shortest amount of time. Consequently, people did not expect him to be able to put up much resistance, but no one knew exactly how he fought. No one had seen him go all out. For some reason, some of the students who had seen him at the sparring field had the impression that he might be able to put up a brave fight. The ones who had been beaten by him were split into two groups. The first group was people who blamed everything else for their loss and truly believed that Xu Min was nothing more than cannon fodder, an easy person to defeat.
The other group was certain that Xu Min, who had defeated them, was truly an expert in disguise; he would be able to dominate the battles. The previous fight against the ranker had especially made them feel like this. Seeing Xu Min easily manage him, they had unexpectedly high expectations now.
Xu Min was unaware of the two groups of students’ reflections of him. When it came to him and his fighting ability, he did not care either way. When Xu Min reached the sparring field, his eyes roamed across a lot of students before they landed on the petite figure of the light fairy and with a smile on his mouth, he moved towards her.
He felt a feeling of friendship with this light fairy. She was a little bit like his deceased sister, and he could not help but want to be her friend, but there were no romantic feelings in the gaze that landed on her. In his heart, there was only one woman whom he would ever love, and that was Yong Meilin, the young auctioneer from Ri Chu City who was waiting patiently for his return.
Thinking about Yong Meilin, Xu Min's heart became warm, and the gentlest smile appeared on his lips, a smile which stunned everyone who looked at him. The fairies’ hearts started throbbing in surprise. Even the light fairy, who had noticed Xu Min, could not maintain her indifferent attitude, and a look of surprise appeared on her face before she was startled as she noticed that her heart had skipped a beat.
"Come and draw your lots so that we know who will be fighting who today," the Immortal said. The four remaining experts from the group politely moved as they were told and drew their lots. Xu Min was not the first to battle but the second. Now he could watch the others fight. In his mind, he had already decided that he was going to fight the winner of this battle tomorrow, so knowing what the fight was like could be of great assistance to him.
Seeing Xu Min’'s focused eyes, the light fairy smiled a little since she felt very special for being beside this young man who had turned the academy upside down.
Although he was a little extreme and had shocked her time and time again, the light fairy felt that there was something special about him. He had scared her with his killing intent and had surprised her with the ability to control both spiritual energy and elemental affinity and not to mention his devouring ability that no one knew anything concrete about yet.
The battle began. An elf and a fairy were fighting against each other. The fairy was higher ranked than the elf the previous year, but they had been ranked rather close to one another. The elf was certain that with a bit of luck he could win this time.
Scorching hot flames instantly combusted out of nowhere as the fairy had gained the domain level of the fire element. The elf was using a spirit sword to continually cleave the flames into small embers; spiritual energy was floating everywhere.
This spiritual energy was covering the elf like a shield protecting him from the wayward embers that shot towards him. The sword was not only protecting him against the flames, but it was also attacking at the same time, stabbing and slashing towards the fairy which used shields made of flames to protect herself.
The strength of the two fighting parties was clearly equal as neither managed to get the upper hand. Both were spending their energy, one on fire shields and constant fire attacks, the other with his spirit sword and spiritual energy attacks and shields.
Looking at the fight, Xu Min was rather bored. Although he had to be alert against both of the rankers, he was also sure that if they did not display more strength than this, then he would be able to beat them.
The one he was up against today, however, was not as simple to manage as these two fighting experts. Last year he was ranked as the fourth on the heavenly rankings. This time it was likely that he was even stronger. No expert who had the guidance of an Immortal was bound to improve over the span of a year.
Xu Min, although interested in the battle in front of him, was many times more interested in the fight that he was going to fight later; he was almost shaking with excitement.
The last time he had gone all out was during the Immortal Valley Rankings where he had fought a hundred experts at once. He had been forced to use his berserker stance, and every last strand of energy had been used to kill his opponents.
The fights that Xu Min had been in previously were all life and death battles. It was fought where one would lose their life with just the slightest bit of mistake. If one lost, one was lucky if they ended up as cripples.
Xu Min was used to fights like that. When he looked at this tournament, he could not help but feel that it was slightly wasteful. Still, he wished to win and to win he would give it his all. Although the tournament did not have life and death battles, he was likely to go all out if he wished to win.
While in deep thought about his battles, Xu Min realized that the fight that had been ongoing was finishing. The fairy had a greater advantage compared to the elf. Although he could control his spiritual energy and use it as the fairy used her fire, she used less of her energy controlling the fire as this fire was created by the energy in the world surrounding her.
The elf was running out of spiritual energy, and he could no longer hold on. The loss was so similar as to how it had been the previous year. Although he felt bitter, he could only clench his teeth and accept it. Their level was simply too similar, and the fairy had the benefit of her race. Fairies were simply the hardest to deal with since they did not have much internal energy but relied on the elements that surrounded them. As soon as she saw that her opponent was running out of energy, an exhausted smile appeared on her lips. She spent her energy to control the fire that was floating in the air, compress it into an explosive fireball which finally managed to remove even the smallest bit of spiritual energy that was left.
"Winner is the Fairy of the Inferno," the judge said carelessly. The surrounding area turned into a loud and noisy crowd. Although the fight had been a dogfight between two evenly ranked experts, these were the rankers of the academy, the pride of all students and their display of power had fully astonished them.
Fairies did not use inner energy as much as they used elemental affinity to attack. They used elemental affinity, and the elements in the surrounding world answered their call it took a toll on the fairy's body. She was only able to channel the elemental energy through her body for a specific amount of time before she would also need to give up. By pushing her limits, she should be able to control it for a longer period, but it would injure her body in return.
Although one could only control the energy for a specific amount of time, this was a rather long amount of time compared to how other experts were capable of controlling their energy.
Thinking like this, Xu Min smiled slightly. He controlled both internal energy such as Qi and spiritual energy, but he also possessed the ability to control elemental affinity and his sword allowed for him to devour even more energy and make it his own. Xu Min had so many tricks up his sleeves that he fully believed in himself. He would be able to become the highest ranked in the heavenly rankings before it was possible for him to advance and visit the Blood Pagoda once more.
After visiting the Blood Pagoda a second time, Xu Min fully believed that he would be able to deal with the Zhong family. He was soon within his reach of his goal.
Blood was boiling within Xu Min's body as he thought about the Zhong family. His eyes shone with a desire to battle. He heard the Immortal at the stage call out, "The next battle is to begin, the second battle in this group is to commence!"
Clenching his hand, Xu Min took a deep breath and forced the bloodlust within him to go down a bit. He chuckled as he moved towards the stage and stood on top of it.
The person he was up against was an elf which had ranked fourth last year. His eyes were filled with hostility. Looking at this person, Xu Min could instantly see that his eyes were not those of a person willing to do a friendly battle. These eyes showed a bloodlust that Xu Min was all too familiar with. The fighter's eyes showed a hate he had seen so many times before. With a snort, he had instantly understood that this expert in front of him was not going to go easy on him. He was not going to underestimate him. He was going to do his very best to humiliate and hopefully cripple him. After seeing this expression on his opponent’s face, Xu Min's lips curled upwards, and he no longer suppressed the killing intent in his body.