Chapter 156: The Day Before the Competition

Moving forward, under the lead of Shi Quan, the group soon encountered their first Spirit Beast.

It was a top-tier agility-type, dark-attribute Spirit Beast around 6,700 years old, known as the Blood Shadow Mad Leopard; in terms of bloodline rank, it belonged to the top tier of Spirit Beasts.

Its raw speed was not much different from a Nether Spirit Cat, but its pair of sharp claws were incomparably keen and carried a sharp metal attribute; heavy armor was as fragile as tofu before its claws.

Wherever it went, it was bound to leave blood behind, which was how it earned the nickname "Blood Shadow."

Zhu Zhuqing was not lacking in offensive spirit skills at the moment, so Shi Quan specifically chose this Blood Shadow Mad Leopard for her.

If she absorbed the Blood Shadow Mad Leopard's Spirit Ring, the sharpness of her Nether Spirit Cat claws, as well as her armor-piercing and penetration capabilities, would be significantly improved, and she would likely obtain an augmentation-type spirit skill.

This time, Dugu Bo did not make a move; instead, Shi Quan led the members of the Heaven Dou Team to attack together, which was one of the purposes of this trip.

After a fierce battle and with the tacit cooperation of the group, the Blood Shadow Mad Leopard was quickly knocked unconscious by everyone.

After Zhu Zhuqing finished it off, it took a few hours to successfully absorb the Spirit Ring, and her soul power reached level 41.

Shi Quan had many abilities, and there were too many things he needed to adapt to and master, so every day was very fulfilling.

After absorbing the Wind Spirit Eagle's Spirit Ring, Yu Feng's soul power level also reached 41, and he obtained his fourth spirit ability, Wind Spirit.

It could be considered a fruitful harvest, though it was a pity that no soul bone dropped.

Time passed quietly.

In the blink of an eye, it was already the day before the competition.

The group pursued and surrounded it for over half an hour before they finally found an opportunity to capture the Wind Spirit Eagle.

Under Shi Quan's arrangement, Zhu Zhuqing and Yu Feng prepared to accelerate their adaptation to their newly broken-through strength through high-intensity training.

However, being able to harvest such a good spirit skill, Zhu Zhuqing was still very satisfied.

After walking for about half an hour, amidst a gust of strong wind, they encountered the second target of their trip—the Wind Spirit Eagle.

Under Shi Quan's guidance, the group changed direction again and led everyone toward the other side.

The augmentation for Zhu Zhuqing was almost comprehensive, and the consumption of this spirit skill was not high, which meant that the augmented state of this spirit skill could last for a long time.

After a simple cleanup, Shi Quan released his Blue Silver Domain again; this time it was very fast, because Shi Quan had already helped Yu Feng identify the Spirit Beast earlier, and because Zhu Zhuqing was absorbing her Spirit Ring, Shi Quan had temporarily retracted the Blue Silver Domain.

Although the competition had not yet begun, the entire Heaven Dou City had been preparing for tomorrow's start for a month; the streets were bustling with people, filled with young men and beauties.

The group returned to the academy, and after resting for a day, they began a new day of training the next day as usual.

There were no major changes in the others' cultivation; they just cycled between Martial Arts, martial soul, spirit skills, and soul power.

Now setting off again, Shi Quan followed the previous locations and searched along the way, quickly locking onto the Spirit Beast they had identified earlier.

Both the Wind Spirit Eagle and the Blood Shadow Mad Leopard belonged to top-tier Spirit Beasts, and the Wind Spirit Eagle even held the title of "Son of the Wind," with astonishing speed.

Wind Spirit was also an augmentation-type spirit skill, especially for speed, which reached an astonishing 60 percent; moreover, after Wind Spirit was cast, Yu Feng's perception of wind elements became more sensitive, and it had a certain augmentation effect on all three of his spirit skills, making it a top-grade spirit skill just like Zhu Zhuqing's Nether Blood Shadow.

As Yu Feng finished absorbing his Spirit Ring, the trip to the Sunset Forest came to an end.

The spirit skill obtained was just as Shi Quan had planned: Nether Blood Shadow, increasing speed by 30 percent, enhancing perception and negative status resistance by 20 percent, increasing attack power by 50 percent, and adding armor-piercing and penetration capabilities.

In addition to the spirit skill, the attack power and speed of the martial soul itself also improved to a certain extent, especially the armor-breaking capability, which was significant.

There were a total of 28 participating teams in the Heaven Dou City division, and as the competition approached, all the participating teams had arrived in Heaven Dou City.

To show the Empire's importance to the competition, the Heaven Dou Empire arranged for a special hotel to welcome every academy.

Of course, if an academy was close enough, or if they were dissatisfied with the accommodation and wanted to arrange their own, they could choose not to stay there; the Heaven Dou Empire did not have mandatory requirements.

The Heaven Dou Imperial Academy was located in the suburbs of Heaven Dou City, and the journey back and forth was not short; although the Heaven Dou Team was the Empire's Seed Team and did not need to participate in the Preliminary Round or the Promotion Tournament, they still had to attend tomorrow's opening ceremony.

Therefore, after a day of training, Shi Quan and the others gathered together and came to the designated hotel in Heaven Dou City with Dugu Bo, preparing to rest in the city for the night so they could go directly to the opening ceremony tomorrow.

As a hotel specially arranged by the Empire, the scale was naturally not small, and most of the teams chose to stay in the hotel arranged by the Empire.

Walking into the hotel under Dugu Bo's lead, the group swept their eyes across and caught a glimpse of a beautiful sight.

Tight-fitting blue clothes revealed their beautiful figures, and beneath their short skirts were white, tender, and straight long legs; their attire was uniform, their faces were pretty, and they were all great beauties.

Even without looking at the academy logo on their arms, one could guess that this group was definitely the participating team from Tianshui Academy.

Not far from Tianshui Academy, there was also the fiery-red Blazing Academy and the purple-clad Thunder Academy, which were quite lively.

Seeing this, Yu Feng straightened his back almost instantly, trying hard to appear gentlemanly.

Ye Lingling subconsciously moved a little closer to Shi Quan.

Hearing footsteps, the teachers and students of the major academies like Tianshui and Blazing in the lobby turned their heads in unison.

"Heaven Dou Imperial Academy, Heaven Dou Team." A glance at their attire was enough to recognize them, and they couldn't help but shift their gaze to the front.

Dugu Bo!

The fact that the Heaven Dou Team's leader was a Title Douluo had long since spread, and everyone looked at Dugu Bo with eyes full of awe.

"Is that this year's Heaven Dou Team? To be able to have a Title Douluo as a leader, it seems the Heaven Dou Team is determined to win this year's championship."

The people present immediately began to whisper.

"Is he the one who drove Yu Tianheng from the Heaven Dou Team to the Second Team?" Yu Tianxin of Thunder Academy fixed his gaze on Shi Quan.

As a competitor to Yu Tianheng, he naturally kept an eye on news about Yu Tianheng at all times.

"Is that Shi Quan? He's actually quite handsome." From the direction of the Tianshui Team, Shui Yue'er said in a low voice.

"..." The group looked at Shui Yue'er speechlessly.

"Yue'er, stop being a fangirl; didn't you see his girlfriend is right next to him?" teammate Xue Wu couldn't help but retort.

"Hehe, I'm just purely appreciating," Shui Yue'er stuck out her tongue playfully, "and isn't it said that this Shi Quan is the strongest in the Heaven Dou Team? I'm just observing the enemy in advance."

"This year's Heaven Dou Imperial Academy is very different from before; I don't know why the original Heaven Dou Second Team changed its name to something called the Shrek Team, and Yu Tianheng, who originally belonged to the Heaven Dou Team, for some reason withdrew from the Heaven Dou Team and joined the Shrek Team."

The leader of Tianshui Academy looked at the Heaven Dou group going upstairs and reminded them seriously: "The strength of this year's Heaven Dou Team is definitely not simple; everyone, pay attention."

"Understood." The members of the Tianshui Team nodded quickly.

On the other side, the Shrek Team had arrived at the hotel earlier than Shi Quan and the others, and they had already checked in.

"Qin Ming, distribute our team uniforms." Flender's voice came.

Qin Ming responded and moved a uniform out from under a table nearby; the light gold uniform had the characters "Heaven Dou" embroidered on the left chest, and on the back was a seven-silver-star pattern, which was the emblem of the Heaven Dou Empire; it looked quite normal.

But as Ma Hongjun was the first to take the garment and flip it left and right, his expression suddenly turned somewhat strange, "Teacher, are you serious?"

As he spoke, Ma Hongjun lifted it with both hands and gave it a light shake, displaying the entire top.

It could be seen that on the right side of the team uniform was actually a verdant monster Shrek pattern, with the three large characters "Shrek" embroidered above it, which not only instantly lowered the grade of the originally luxurious-looking uniform by several levels, but the Shrek pattern on the clothes was also truly too strange; no matter how one looked at it, it was discordant.

Flender coughed a few times, "Although we are Heaven Dou Academy, we are also Shrek; half and half, it's very reasonable, right?"

Hearing this, everyone was speechless, but this sh*t-green color of Shrek was just too ugly.

"Teacher, can't we change the color?" Ma Hongjun looked at Flender with a bitter face; after all, they had seen many beauties when they arrived at the hotel, and he did not want to lose face in front of these beauties.

Flender glared at Ma Hongjun and said, "What do you know? It is precisely this color that makes it eye-catching; otherwise, how would other academies know about our Shrek?"

Dai Mubai gritted his teeth and said, "Isn't our team's name already Shrek? How about this uniform..."

Flender immediately said, "What? You forgot your roots after entering Heaven Dou? Does wearing a uniform with half a Shrek on it cost you your lives?"

With things said to this point, everyone could not say much more and could only helplessly choose to accept it.

Before long, Qin Ming finished distributing all the school uniforms, and Flender, Qin Ming, and the other instructors each took a set as well.

However, compared to their school uniforms, the uniforms for them as instructors were significantly more normal; there was only a Shrek pattern embroidered on the right chest, about the same size as the Heaven Dou one on the left chest, which looked much more harmonious and not strange at all.

Seeing this, Ning Rongrong was also exceptionally speechless; as teachers, not only did they not lead by example, but they also made such ugly uniforms for them. Moreover, as Heaven Dou Imperial Academy was a royal academy, and they were the team for Heaven Dou Imperial Academy, wearing such a uniform out would lose face for the Heaven Dou Empire; were they not afraid of the Heaven Dou Empire blaming them?

The others also had somewhat aggrieved expressions on their faces.

But they were soon suppressed by Flender.