Chapter 110

With a rumble from the ground, walls suddenly rose in the arena, splitting the massive field into one small room after another.

In the rest area of Songyang High School, Zhang Yu stared in surprise: "The Ziyun High School stadium can actually transform? Compared to this, our school’s stadium is no different from a sandpit."

Most of the Songyang people around him darkened their faces at this, but considering Zhang Yu’s just-demonstrated physical strength of 4.95–grade, which placed him fifth, no one dared call him out to his face. Even He Dayou, the school board chairman’s son, could only pretend not to have heard what this Songyang critic said.

After all, in Songyang High School, scores reigned supreme, and with physical strength as high as Zhang Yu had shown today, he was the king of kings—the kind of existence that could make slackers’ souls scatter with just a look.

Wang Hai, standing nearby, changed the subject: "After the physical strength contest, the sports competition will test agility, speed, and strength respectively."

"Agility has a total of 75 points, speed also 75 points, and strength 150 points. Every stage is important. Students with unbalanced skills won’t get good rankings, because the physical test assesses the overall physical quality of the students."

"Listen carefully—they’re about to explain the competition rules."

On the big screen, an animated video began playing, demonstrating the process of the upcoming stage.

In the video, each competitor stood alone in one of the small rooms on the field.

A ring of light with a radius of three meters lit up beneath the competitor’s feet.

Of course, depending on body size, the ring under larger competitors would be scaled up proportionally.

Then, in the video, the four walls of the room began to continuously fire high‑speed steel balls at the competitor.

At the same time, the ring of light under the competitor began to shrink. As it shrank, the difficulty of dodging the steel balls within the ring increased.

The stage ended as soon as a steel ball hit the competitor; stepping out of the ring also counted as a loss.

The score for this stage was based on how long each competitor lasted inside the ring—the longer, the better, and the one who lasted the longest was first place.

Competitors who did not make it into the top twenty in this stage would be eliminated immediately and couldn’t proceed to the next stage.

Wang Hai said, "Everyone understand? It’s very similar to the agility training I usually take you through, only a bit more advanced."

Zhang Yu rubbed his chin and said, "So that means big guys are at a serious disadvantage in this stage—they’ll have to dodge more steel balls in the same amount of time."

Wang Hai explained, "Being big has its advantages—you can show off in the strength competition later—but it also has disadvantages, like being easier to hit in this agility stage, and you’ll also be at a disadvantage in the next speed stage."

"After all, the sports competition tests overall physical fitness. Even if there’s some emphasis, it won’t let students with severely unbalanced skills get high rankings… Strength, speed, and agility—none can be missing."

Then the video began introducing some details: during the competition, no mana may be circulated, and mana detection patches must be worn to monitor any flow.

Zhang Yu nodded slightly, knowing he would have to temporarily stop the passive breathing of the Circular Qi‑Gathering Technique when his turn came.

Of course, since this was a sports competition testing physical strength, spiritual roots could not be used either.

So ever since they got on the bus today, Bai Zhenzhen had been concealing her spiritual root inside her body, not allowing its power to take effect at all.

After all the detailed rules were played, Bai Zhenzhen said from the side, "There are ten minutes until the official start. Come on, Yu, let’s go to the bathroom together—don’t hold it in when the competition starts."

The two headed to the bathroom together. Along the way, they saw competition teams from various high schools preparing for the event—and the main form of preparation was, of course, taking drugs.

They watched ordinary high school students inject unlabeled, unwrapped syringes into their acne‑covered arms.

They watched Bailong High School students, relying on their powerful bodies, swallow canisters of branded potions in front of the surrounding cameras.

They watched the black monsters from Hongta High School jab needles into their blood vessels one after another.

They watched Le Mulan and Lian Tianji from Ziyun High School undergo intracranial injections after their intracardial ones, boosting all their abilities…

Watching all this… well, Zhang Yu was no longer as shocked as before, nor would he ask questions like "Aren’t sports competitions supposed to test only the physical body? Why aren’t drugs banned?"

If someone asked him that now, he would explain confidently: "Testing the various abilities of the physical body naturally includes the body’s drug tolerance—that’s how it is in our Kunxu."

When they reached the bathroom, the two split off toward the men’s and women’s restrooms.

Although Zhang Yu had already sampled many bathrooms in his life, including but not limited to those at Songyang High, Hongta High, and Bailong High…

He was still shocked now.

"This damn place actually has a sideboard? And on that sideboard, there’s a box of chopsticks? A box of spoons?"

And since there was a sideboard, Zhang Yu wasn’t that surprised to see a dining table nearby.

But when he saw the notice on the table reading "No urinating on the dining table"… he fell silent again.

Damn… Are Ziyun High School students this uncivilized?

But after looking at a notice on the wall, he realized his understanding was a bit off.

Because there were too many students breaking down, the school's profit declined last quarter, so they introduced a "Care for Underachievers" policy.

Not only did they install dining tables and cabinets in the restrooms so that underachievers could eat with confidence and comfort, they also banned bullying in the restrooms.

"I see, it's to care for the underachievers... but it feels even more beastly."

At the entrance of the women's restroom on the other side.

Bai Zhenzhen was curiously observing the other doors besides the women's and men's restrooms...

One of them was labeled "Reserved for Le Mulan".

"A restroom reserved for the top student of the grade?" Bai Zhenzhen wanted to try going in, but found that the door didn't even have a handle; it seemed to require identity verification to open automatically.

A trace of envy flickered in Bai Zhenzhen's eyes: "Songyang High School is so lame, they should learn from Ziyun. How nice would it be to build a restroom for the top three."

After a moment, the two returned to the side of the arena.

And before officially entering, Bai Zhenzhen took a bottle of cognitive enhancer to improve her concentration in the upcoming match.

Zhang Yu also took a bottle of stimulant to boost his movement speed in the upcoming match.

Although he followed the path of natural body refinement, as long as he could improve his performance in the arena by a few points, Zhang Yu naturally wouldn't stubbornly refuse to take medicine.

Then the two together drank a few bottles of neural filler to prevent drowsiness during the late-night competition.

Soon, all the contestants entered together, and after each person had a magic detection patch attached to their body, they were assigned to individual small rooms.

As the ring on the floor suddenly lit up, Zhang Yu's nerves immediately became tense.

The next moment, with a whooshing sound, steel pellets shot at high speed from the surrounding walls.

"Thankfully... it's much slower than the body-breaking sword aura that Azhen thrusts at me."

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Having taken the stimulant, Zhang Yu's muscles were now fully excited, and his physical reactions were extremely swift. Watching the steel pellets shooting toward him, he continuously moved his body to dodge.

"Since the circle on the ground is large enough, I don't need to use Full Concentration yet."

The Full Concentration state was the level 10 effect of the Heavenly Martial Heart Tempering Technique, allowing Zhang Yu to focus unprecedentedly, even creating an illusion of time slowing down when observing the world.

But Full Concentration had a flaw: it couldn't be used for a long time.

When Zhang Yu first mastered it, he could only maintain it for one minute.

Now, with his Dao heart improving and his martial will becoming stronger, the duration had increased to one and a half minutes.

"But since I can hold out in normal state for now, I'll wait until the circle shrinks a bit more and dodging becomes more difficult before using Full Concentration..."

In the audience stands.

Gangshan, an internet celebrity blogger, watched the arena and commented: "This round's difficulty increases sharply as the circle shrinks, testing not only physical reaction and speed but also the persistence of mental focus..."

Just then, students in the arena began to be eliminated.

A high-speed steel pellet slammed into the leg of a student from an ordinary high school with a bang, making him stumble.

As the student's movement paused, more steel pellets shot toward him.

By now, this student's mind was already in a panic, and his physical fitness and brain reactions couldn't keep up with the continuous high-speed steel pellets.

"Is the competition really that much harder than our school's usual training?"

The next moment, as steel pellets crackled and slammed into his body, the student fell to the ground, spitting blood.

After withdrawing from the match, he looked with a mix of envy and jealousy at the students still competing on the big screen.

"Are these students from the key high schools and the Big Three high schools all monsters? How can they still be dodging?"

Scenes like this were occurring continuously in various corners of the arena; a large number of participating students from ordinary high schools were not only eliminated but also injured.

Gangshan showed the audience the eliminated ordinary high school contestants, then turned to look at the Ziyun High School contestants who were calmly dodging the steel pellets.

In the circle, Lian Tianji was keeping his eyes and ears peeled, constantly shifting his body in small movements to dodge the incoming steel pellets.

Not far away, Le Mulan looked even more relaxed, walking in the circle as if strolling leisurely, letting the afterimages of high-speed steel pellets brush past her body, as if they were dancing gracefully around her.

Gangshan sighed, "The gap between the two sides is too large. Students from all the ordinary high schools are almost already eliminated, but here in the three major high schools, it's far from the limit."

Le Jingchen looked at those eliminated ordinary students and only felt a kind of stupidity.

Spending a few thousand or tens of thousands a month just to learn to cultivate immortality?

Le Jingchen couldn't understand why these poor people worked so hard at cultivation. In his view, whether these poor people cultivated immortality or not, their lives didn't have much of a gap, and forcing cultivation was nothing but asking for trouble.

But of course, Le Jingchen wouldn't voice such thoughts — otherwise, where would Ziyun Pharmaceutical get so much money to earn? Where would his family get so many resources?

So at this moment in the livestream, Le Jingchen said, "Actually, the gap isn't that big. I believe that ordinary high schools also have exceptionally talented students. The reason they show such a big gap compared to students from the three major high schools is often just a lag in information."

Before the competition started, the three major high schools had been keeping secret and probing each other's breakthroughs in body refining techniques.

Now that the competition had started, Le Jingchen knew there was no need to continue keeping it secret.

He then continued, "For instance, the super metabolic surgery of Ziyun High School, or the slightly inferior imitation monster muscle surgery of Bailong High School. If ordinary high school students knew about these techniques and underwent these surgeries, they might not necessarily lack the chance to compete with Le Mulan, Song Hailong, and the others."

As he spoke, Le Jingchen pointed toward Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen and said, "Look, Gangshan, didn't these two students from Songyang High School, after accepting the new body refining technique, now catch up to the level of the three major high schools?"

Since he had detected that Songyang High School wanted to make a stunning debut in this physical competition, Le Jingchen didn't mind using them in turn to promote the new body refining technique.