Chater 119: Heavenly Rankings Begins
Xu Min was excited as he was walking around the academy, but it wasn’t just him. All around him the atmosphere pulsed with excitement. Even amongst all the students, they were thrilled. Laughter rang throughout the open grounds. Everyone seemed to be moving towards the sparring field.
Usually, half the students within the academy would be out on missions in the Immortal Valley to earn contribution points. However, this time everyone had returned to the academy. No one wanted to miss out on the heavenly rankings. Even the students who had not finished had rushed back to partake in this event.
Xu Min was unaware of which kind of rewards the heavenly rankings offered, but he could sense an allure and importance in the air. This moment was different from the beginning of his time at the academy.
This was also the first time he met the stronger experts at the academy. All the private disciples of the immortals were here.They looked down on the rest of the students. They all stood together in a group, discussing something Xu Min did not know.
This group was considered the elite amongst the academy. They were rarely on campus and were most of the time out on missions in the constant pursuit of contribution points to trade for cultivation resources.
When they saw Xu Min, two of the women frowned. They could not help but feel that this human had nothing to do with their academy and needed to be kicked out as soon as possible. He had been picked up by Mu Jianyao, and although they were personal disciples, the experts that they were following were weaker than this woman.
So far the rankings always worked where the strongest expert was the disciple of the strongest immortal, but now the strongest immortal was Mu Jianyao, and no one would even guess Xu Min could be the strongest expert. It just couldn't be true that her student, a mere human, was going to become the next champion, could it?
These experts all felt indignant. They were the cream of the crop, and everyone was supposed to look up to them, revere them, and praise them. For some unknown reason, all of them were looking at the human, some with jealousy and hate, others with curiosity and interest.
"So he is the famous human," a fairy from the group of elites said with a smile on her face. Her emotions were simply impossible to guess. While she was looking curiously at the human, the face of three of the male experts were turning increasingly sour.
This woman was an expert amongst experts. She had ranked second amongst the experts at the last heavenly ranking. Many men were wooing her, including three of the experts who also were personal disciples of the immortals. Amongst them was the number one ranked student, a young elf who was around twenty years of age. He wore a very frosty expression on his face.
"He is only famous because he is a human," the elf said disdainly. "We cannot forget that he is a new student and has only been at the academy for a very short period. As well, out of his time here he has been Mu Jianyao’s disciple only ten percent. Although we would take him seriously, had he been here for longer, I don't feel like we need to lower ourselves to his level as it is now. He is far from being able to threaten our position."
Xu Min, who was walking past this group of experts, clearly heard every word they were saying, but he said nothing. He just looked at the elf and smiled. It was a smile which did not reach his eyes; rather, it was filled with coldness, intended to warn rather than welcome.
The elf was startled slightly when he noticed the glance and smile from Xu Min, but he quickly shook his head. In his mind Xu Min was not worthy of anything, Xu Min was not even worthy of him getting annoyed with.
Xu Min continued walking towards the sparring field; as he reached the area, the light fairy came floating towards him.
The fairy who ranked second at the last heavenly ranking was shocked when she saw that Xu Min and the light fairy greeted each other like friends. Contrary to what the heavenly ranked fairy expected, the light fairy did not leave Xu Min's side. Instead, she stayed and chatted with him. Her pearl-like laughter resounded through the silent area, but neither Xu Min nor the Light Fairy seemed to care about the fact that the two of them were the center of all attention.
While the faces of some of the immortal disciples felt a bit better after seeing Xu Min’s relationship with the light fairy was good, others became more upset since they had been wooing the light fairy previously. She was a woman who had never before placed an elf within her mind was now merrily chatting with a human. It was shocking for everyone!
Soon the entire area was filled with people. Every student from the academy had appeared. Sounds of voices could be heard chatting to one another as they all waited for the tournament to begin.
"Students!" A voice called out; everyone quieted down. Hovering in the air everyone was the headmaster. As he clapped his hands, beams of light from everywhere over the academy came towards the headmaster.
Soon twenty immortals were moving next to him all of them bowing in unison. "Greetings headmaster," they all called out. When Xu Min looked closer at Mu Jianyao, he noticed while she bowed and called out it she seemed as if she was swallowing a toad. It was clear that she in no way wished to respect her father.
Seeing this, Xu Min had to hide his smile behind a hand. Nevertheless, the moment he smiled, he felt the eyes of his master land on him, and these eyes promised a world of pain. The smile on his face quickly vanished and instead a sigh escaped his lips.
Seeing the change in Xu Min's appearance, the Light Fairy could not help but laugh herself. Once Mu Jianyao saw Xu Min being laughed at, she felt much better.
"Everyone, this is the beginning of the Heavenly Rankings! We will split the students into four groups.The winner of these groups will move on to the semi-final."
Lifting his hand, a strong wind suddenly appeared and divided the group into four smaller groups. Then the immortals split into four groups of five and flew down to the students.
In their hands was a jar. Each jar contained numbers and colors. Each color had some one to two hundred and fifty hundred, and these students as soon as their opponent had been found started the battles.
Xu Min had withdrawn the red tag number seven, but the blue number seven had not appeared yet, so Xu Min was waiting for his battle to begin.
While he was waiting, one battle after another ended before his number seven opponent appeared.
Xu Min was excited. He stood on the stage. He was smiling at his opponent who moved towards him. However, as quickly as the smiled appeared, it disappeared. The student bowed at him and quickly jumped off the stage, "I forfeit!" he called as he ran as fast as he could.
Seeing this, Xu Min was shocked. He could do nothing but accept it without complaining and step off the stage. He had no reason to stay on the stage with no one to battle. As he left the light fairy stepped up. Her opponent equally gave up quickly, and she could only shrug her shoulders as she too jumped down from the stage.
Although the day had to go through a total of two hundred and fifty battles on each of the stages, this process did not take as long as one would expect. Every student had an inkling of how strong their opponents were. Around half the students chose to give up right away. The ones who did battle were quickly finishing their fights. Soon the first day of the heavenly rankings had come to a close.
The next day Xu Min once more was matched with a weak opponent who gave up instantly. The two hundred and fifty students had now dropped down to sixty-three students. Since it was an uneven number the following day, a student who had been chosen randomly was allowed to advance to the fourth day without battle Xu Min also advanced with no problem as all his opponents gave up without a hint of resistance.
He had been incredibly lucky so far. All his opponents had given up at the mere sight of him, but this was not going to last for long. He knew that sooner or later he would run into a dead stop. As to whether or not he could overcome this challenge depended on how well he fought.
Looking at the elf who ranked first, he noticed that this expert had not battled yet either, but this expert was not in the same group as Xu Min.
"Let us hope he fails before I have to battle him," Xu Min mumbled to himself as he shook his head. Looking over the remaining experts of the same group that he was in, he found that some of the first-ranked elf's friends were in his group. All of them were looking at Xu Min with hostility as they cracked their knuckles.
Seeing this, Xu Min just smiled at them. He wished to prove that he was just as good as these experts; he knew that if he failed his master would flay him alive.
The following day Xu Min’s luck finally ended.
His group had a total of six experts who had immortal teachers. Every single one of them had reached this stage with no problems whatsoever.
Now Xu Min finally understood why all of his opponents so far had forfeited instead of fighting him. The reason was not just because that they had seen Xu Min display his prowess before at the sparring field, but because he was the student of an immortal. It was clearly the habit that no one would fight the immortal students apart from other disciples of immortals.
Although this Heavenly Ranking was made for every single student to participate the truth was that no one cared for the ordinary students. It was a way to rank the immortal's students and see how strong they were compared to one another.
The only reason that every student would participate was that that they would be given contribution points. The further they reached, the more rounds they finished, the more contribution points they would gain.
This time Xu Min was up against one of the previous rankers of the heavenly ranking. Usually, the rankers on the heavenly ranking would not be up against each other this early. Nonetheless, for some reason, Xu Min was already up against one of the heavenly rankers. This meant that one of the rankers would be kicked out of top twenty, and one of the previous rankers would now rank below some of the ordinary students!
Everyone was looking at the stage with bated breath, some of the students within the group were filled with excitement as they realized that they would be ranked higher than their current rank if Xu Min were to win.
Standing on the stage, a casual smile adorned Xu Min's face as he looked at the other expert who was moving towards the sparring arena where Xu Min stood. Xu Min patiently waited for his opponent to approach.
The other expert had a hideous expression on his face. His teeth were bared in a sneer, and his eyes shone with anger. Although he did not think that he would lose to such a mere human as Xu Min, he was still feeling threatened by the fact that he had to fight a proper fight as early as this.
As he landed on the stage, one of the immortals flew to the stage and stood there perfectly still. "I am the judge for this battle. Although fists have no eyes and kicks know no fear, hold back on killing moves. Killing your opponent is not allowed. Should we see that you use true killing techniques with killing intent, I will interfere and stop you. The perpetrator will be punished severely!" Looking at the two experts, the immortal nodded his head, "Let the battle begin!"