Chapter 143: Competition Rules (Seeking Subscriptions, Seeking Monthly Votes!)

The All-Continent Advanced Soul Master Academy Tournament is hosted by the royal families of the Tian Dou and Xingluo Empires, co-organized by the Spirit Hall, and is the grandest martial soul competition in the Soul Master world; all participants are the continent's finest young Soul Masters.

Among the rules, several must be observed.

First, the participants sent by each competing academy must be under twenty-five years old, and each match must field exactly seven members.

Second, during the competition, with the goal of friendly exchange, we should avoid injuring opponents as much as possible, and deaths are not allowed.

If anyone kills an opponent, that academy must not only bear the corresponding losses but will also be expelled from the Soul Master Tournament.

Besides these two hard rules, there are some more standardized regulations; of course, everything is based on fairness.

For example, during the competition, no medicine or food produced by non-food or non-healing Soul Masters may be used; only food- or healing-type Soul Masters on the Soul Battle arena may replenish their own teammates.

In other words, to obtain supplies on the competition stage, a support-type Soul Master must occupy one slot, which also prevents teams with food-type Soul Masters from cheating.

Regarding weapons, there is also a rule that no weapons other than one's martial soul may be used.

The preliminary rounds are held by division; on the the Heaven Dou Empire side, centered on Tian Dou City, all advanced Soul Master academies within the empire that do not belong to other kingdoms or principalities will hold their preliminaries in the Tian Dou City division.

The academies of the various kingdoms and principalities hold their preliminaries according to national divisions; the the Heaven Dou Empire has four kingdoms and one principality.

That is, including the Tian Dou City division, the the Heaven Dou Empire side will have a total of six preliminary divisions.

Besides the Royal Battle Team already qualified for the finals, these six divisions will compete for fifteen spots.

Among them, the Tian Dou City division, with many advanced Soul Master academies and being an imperial direct division, has five qualifying spots.

The other four kingdoms and one principality each have two qualifying spots per division.

The situation in the Xingluo Empire is almost the same as that of the the Heaven Dou Empire.

After the preliminaries, thirty Soul Master teams will advance and all will participate in the finals.

However, before the finals, there is a promotion match, which is actually a ranking match for the teams already in the finals; the final order of appearance in the finals is determined by their rankings.

The formats of the preliminaries and the promotion match differ.

The preliminaries will be conducted in the team battle format most familiar to Soul Master academies, using a single round-robin system; the team with the highest victory points in each preliminary division advances to the promotion match.

The promotion match, however, will be conducted in a special way: although each team still sends seven participants, they will face off one-on-one.

The winner stays on the field, while the loser side keeps sending participants until one side's entire lineup is defeated, deciding the victory.

Thus the preliminaries can be said to showcase team strength, while the promotion match is a stage for individual ability.

The reason for having the promotion match is to allow the high-level officials of the two empires and the Spirit Hall to better identify outstanding young Soul Masters among the participants and recruit them.

Meanwhile, the finals will feature thirty-three teams, who will draw lots for a brutal elimination tournament.

These thirty-three teams consist of the thirty teams qualified by the two empires, plus the teams recommended by the royal academies of the Tian Dou and Xingluo Empires and by the Spirit Hall Academy.

This also counts as a privilege of the two empires and the Spirit Hall.

Of course, although it is a privilege, the champions of each major tournament are basically monopolized by these three, while other Soul Master academies merely go through the motions.

The promotion match rankings will be conducted separately in the two empires, producing positions from first to fifteenth.

The advantage of this ranking will be shown in the finals, which adopt an elimination system.

Each round will have several teams receiving a bye; in the first round of the finals, three seeded teams will get a bye.

The remaining thirty teams will pair off, and the fifteen winners will advance to the next round.

In the second round, adding the three seeded teams makes eighteen total; at this point, the two teams with the highest promotion match rankings among the remaining will receive a bye.

The remaining sixteen teams will compete to determine eight that advance to the third round, leaving ten teams in the third round; as before, the two teams ranked highest in the promotion match will get a bye.

Teams that have already received a bye will not receive another; after the third round, six teams will remain—the final six—and there will be no more byes.

In the fourth round, the six teams will be drawn into three pairs to compete, determining the final top three.

To determine the final order of the top three fairly, both team battle and individual elimination formats are required.

First, an individual elimination match will be held, using the same format as the promotion match.

The three teams will compete in a ladder format, with each side sending seven members who take turns to fight.

The contest remains elimination: the loser is eliminated, the winner continues to face the next opponent until the participants of the other two academies are all eliminated, after which the winner's academy directly advances.

The other two academies will hold a team battle to decide the other qualifying position, and then face the team that advanced via the individual elimination in a final team battle.

These are the complete rules of the tournament, known to all Soul Master academies before the competition begins; some even search for loopholes to gain greater achievements!

…………

At this moment, the tournament staff quickly entered the resting area, and the assembled participants began to enter the venue.

Around the vast open square, countless spectators shouted and cheered; in front of the central field stood a podium with a golden backdrop, and behind it was the renovated VIP area.

The field's diameter exceeds one hundred fifty meters; the academies that have entered have already formed neat formations in the center, and each academy's entrance is introduced by a dedicated announcer on the podium.

At this moment, the final academy has also entered.

"The last team to enter is that of Shrek Academy. Shrek Academy, formerly Lan Ba Academy, was renamed a year ago."

"Look, their strange uniforms are striking; ten members are competing, and their registration slogan is 'Champion without opponents'—a truly creative slogan; I hope they perform excellently."

Listening to the announcer on stage, the audience in the stands burst into laughter, their cheers rising and falling.

Because Shrek Academy's uniforms are bizarre—not ordinary green but a hue between yellow and green, which in one word could be called 'shit-green'.

Of course, if that were all, it would be fine; but besides the shit-green, the most bizarre thing is that each member's back bears six large red-stitched characters soliciting sponsorship advertisements.

Below the six large characters is a line of small print: advertising fees should be discussed with Dean Flandre of Shrek Academy.

Inside a private box in the VIP section, Gu Xuan saw this through the glass window, his expression somewhat stern yet he couldn't help revealing an indescribable smile.

Gu Xuan simply could not understand how an academy like Shrek Academy could continue to exist.

To become an advanced Soul Master academy, no other academy is as poor as Shrek Academy.

Even now, after Shrek Academy has absorbed Lan Ba Academy, Flandre still acts as if he doesn't know embarrassment, pulling this stunt.

But Gu Xuan soon realized that Flandre was participating for the first time in the All-Continent Advanced Soul Master Academy Elite Tournament; previously, Shrek Academy lacked the qualification.

All one can say is that ugly people cause trouble, but there's nothing to be done; after all, it's their first time, so attracting attention is inevitable.

However, Gu Xuan was not drawn by their shit-green uniforms; he merely wanted to see how Shrek Academy had pieced itself together after losing Rong Rong and Xiao Wu.

These people, Gu Xuan basically knows who they are: Tang San, Dai Mubai, Zhu Zhuqing, Oscar, Ma Hongjun — the five of the original Shiluoke Seven Monsters — plus Meng Yiran who joined later and the four original geniuses of Blue Overlord Academy.

Tailong, Jingling, Huangyuan, Jiangzhu.

There are ten people in total.

Although Gu Xuan remained calm, Qin Ming was not calm, because Shiluoke Academy is his alma mater.

Although the Royal Battle Team was directly promoted to the knockout stage, Qin Ming still brought them to watch the opening ceremony, in order to get their spirits up beforehand.

After all, with the Royal Battle Team's current strength, contending for the championship is no longer a problem, since Qin Ming already knows the fact that Gu Xuan is at level fifty-six.

Although somewhat surprised and hard to accept, with Gu Xuan, the Royal Battle Team is definitely a dark horse.

Upon hearing the name of his alma mater, Qin Ming couldn't help but take a closer look, but at this moment Flender had gone off to do advertisements, and Master Yu Xiaogang, whom he had never met before, so he dared not be certain.

But he had already decided that after the opening ceremony ended, he would go to Shiluoke Academy to confirm.

ps: First correct the typos, then revise.

(End of chapter)