Chapter 17: Freshmen Ruler
After resting for two hours, the competition finals finally started. Jian Chen and Tie Ta walked into the arena together,before walking to opposite ends 10 meters apart.
There were over 1000 students watching the arena already, while even more people were trying to find seats.
Jian Chen looked at Tie Ta with a smile as he spoke he praised Tie Ta, “Tie Ta, I didn’t think you were this amazing to be able to end up in the finals.”
Hearing Jian Chen’s compliment, Tie Ta’s face reddened from embarrassment, though it was obvious that he was very happy to hear the praise. With an honest laugh, Tie Ta spoke in a low voice, “Changyang Xiang Tian, you’re just as amazing.”
Stretching his arms and legs, Jian Chen laughed, “Tie Ta, this is the final round. Only one of us will be crowned the Freshmen Ruler, so you need to fight your hardest. If you beat me, then you’ll be the champion; by winning, you’ll earn a Class 3 Monster Core that is worth a few hundred purple coins. It’ll be worth enough to feed your family for a lifetime.”
Tie Ta grew pumped up after hearing Jian Chen talk, “Changyang Xiang Tian, I’ll definitely use all of my strength, so you’d better prepare yourself!”
Jian Chen could only laugh and nod, “I won’t be that easy to defeat.”
“Boom!”
As the gong sounded to indicate the beginning of the match, Tie Ta immediately rushed forward after the sound. Tie Ta rushed at Jian Chen, and immediately reached out to grab him with both hands, he planned to use his heavenly blessed strength to lift and throw Jian Chen out of the arena.
Realizing his plan, Jian Chen laughed; he was already extremely familiar with Tie Ta’s style of fighting. For every single match so far, Tie Ta had used the same strategy, but it had worked nicely. If Jian Chen was caught by him, then it would be extremely difficult to escape from Tie Ta’s grasp.
Jian Chen retreated a few steps to escape from Tie Ta’s reach. Clenching his left hand into a fist, he used around 80% of his strength to strike at his chest.
Jian Chen’s fist was well timed and fast, not allowing Tie Ta any time to react at all.
“Peng!”
Jian Chen’s fist let out a muffled sound on impact against Tie Ta’s chest. However, Jian Chen’s look of satisfaction slowly changed, while Tie Ta had a look of amazement. What he had punched did not feel like a human at all, instead, his fist had felt like it had smashed against a wall. Not only was Tie Ta strong, but his physical body was extremely robust, so robust that it was actually beyond belief.
Jian Chen’s punch, however, had forced Tie Ta to stagger backwards, but only for a moment. Roaring out loud, he charged at Jian Chen once more with both of his hands outstretched. With a punch using only 80% of his strength, Jian Chen didn’t even leave a mark on Tie Ta’s skin.
Jian Chen began to feel excitement as he watched Tie Ta come closer with his fists. He didn’t bother to dodge or flee; instead, he prepared to use 100% of his power to strike back with his own hands.
The two fists struck against each other in midair, and the impact created a loud sound. It was so loud, that everyone in the crowd below the arena could hear it as clear as day.
As the two fists made contact, Jian Chen’s feet couldn’t help but slide backwards at least 10 meters before finally stopping. His right hand had already started to tremble, so it was clear to see that Jian Chen had taken more damage than given. Even though he had surpassed the average cultivation level for Saint Force, he was still far from the level where he could easily ignore damage from something like this.
Tie Ta, on the other hand, only slid backwards two meters. His face showed no outward emotion, and he appeared to not have suffered even the smallest amount of damage.
Jian Chen rubbed at his reddening hand. After two confrontations, he now fully understood how foolish it was to engage with Tie Ta straight on. Tie Ta’s strength wasn’t just used for intimidation, his body was actually inconceivably strong.. Even someone a level stronger than Tie Ta could not be his equal. The only thing that could lead to victory against Tie Ta was if one relied on speed.
“Tie Ta, your strength has already far surpassed my expectations, but I’ll be using my full strength now.” Jian Chen said as he walked forward.
Tie Ta laughed, “Come then, Changyang Xiang Tian, you won’t be able to hurt me.” Tie Ta’s tone was filled with a fierce conviction.
Jian Chen stopped his idle chatter as well. When the distance between him and Tie Ta had been reduced to only 5-6 meters, his footsteps suddenly changed. His legs became a mysterious blur that suddenly re-appeared behind Tie Ta. Before Tie Ta could even react, two fierce fists landed consecutive blows on his back.
“Dong!” “Dong!” “Dong!”
A constant series of muffled blows came ringing out from the arena, almost as if it was just a single continuous line of sounds. Under such heavy attacks, even Tie Ta’s body couldn’t help but falter forwards so much that he was left with very little time to turn around.
“Ha!”
Tie Ta snarled in anger as he tried to steady himself. Suddenly, he turned around with his fists out and tried to smash them into Jian Chen.
The moment when Tie Ta tried to attack Jian Chen, he lightly leapt 2 meters into the air. Narrowly dodging Tie Ta’s fist, Jian Chen used both of his legs to kick at Tie Ta from midair. Both of his legs held formidable power, and they thrusted towards Tie Ta’s back.
“Dong!” “Dong!” “Dong!”…
Jian Chen lashed out with his feet several times before landing back onto the ground. By this point, Tie Ta’s face had been kicked by Jian Chen multiple times, causing his face to bruise all over.
Immediately after landing on the ground, Jian Chen turned around on the floor and bent his legs down without pausing. His left leg revolved in a 180 degree arc, his right leg swept at Tie Ta’s own legs.
“Peng!”
Tie Ta’s leg crumbled down below him, but he immediately bounced back up, and snarled as he rushed at Jian Chen.
Jian Chen and Tie Ta began to engage in another close combat situation, but with Tie Ta’s god given strength and his frighteningly robust body, Jian Chen had no chance of winning against him. Since Jian Chen had already experienced it twice, he had thought of a countermeasure for this situation. Although it wasn’t the best idea, he had no other ways of fighting against him. Jian Chen had decided to rely on his nimbleness to fight against Tie Ta. Even though Tie Ta’s body was extremely strong, Jian Chen had been attacking the same place on Tie Ta’s body to make it so that Tie Ta would feel so much pain, he would eventually be forced to grimace.
The following situation was now becoming one sided. With Jian Chen relying on the experience he had accumulated over the past world to constantly beat Tie Ta so much that he could only run around with his hands over his head. Although at times Tie Ta had found some opportunities to fight back, he was not able to hurt Jian Chen, his attacks could not even touch Jian Chen’s clothes at all.
At this display, every student in the audience could only watch the match in shock. No matter how fast Jian Chen was with his martial arts, his speed had far outstripped the average person, causing all of the students to look on with great interest, as it was something they had never witnessed before.
On the top of the platform, Bai En gasped in admiration as he watched Jian Chen, “This kid is definitely a unique one, his battle experience is rich, and his speed isn’t slow at all either. It seems this student is called Changyang Xiang Tian, so judging from his name, he is from Lore City’s Changyang Clan. It seems that I really will have to make a report to the headmaster later.”
As the battle continued to persist, Tie Ta finally reached his limit. He cried out loud, and exclaimed, “Stop, stop! I can’t fight anymore, I give up!”
Jian Chen immediately stopped his attack and smiled brightly at Tie Ta, “Why aren’t you fighting anymore?”
Tie Ta rubbed at the reddening spots where Jian Chen had repeatedly hit with a miserable face and said sadly, “You move so fast that I can’t even see you clearly. There’s no way I’d be able to attack you, so the entire time was just you wailing on me.”
Laughing, Jian Chen asked, “So you’re just going to give up the number one spot then?” Although Jian Chen hadn’t held back as he fought against Tie Ta, his skin was so thick and his body was so strong, that there was barely any serious damage done to him at all.
Tie Ta nodded his head and spoke in a muffled voice, “I won’t be able to beat you, so the number one spot isn’t mine to have. Second place is already decent enough; a Class 2 Monster Core can be sold for a decent price to.”
Afterwards, the two students walked off the stage while the third place winner was announced; Ka Di Liang and Tian Mu Xiong who had fought it out against each other in a battle to determine the winner. In the end, it was Tian Mu Xiong who had won and claimed the title of third place.
After the quota for the top three players was met, Jian Chen was called up onto the platform. As the vice headmaster Bai En walked towards him, he glanced at Jian Chen with no small amount of admiration. Immediately looking away, he turned his head to look at the thousand students in the audience and announced, “Dear students, this year’s freshmen competition has finally come to a conclusion. I declare the Freshmen Ruler of this year to be the student Changyang Xiang Tian who is an 8th Saint Force layer practitioner!”
The vice headmaster Bai En spoke in a firm voice, causing everyone to applaude and cheer. But as some of the 9th Saint Force layer students heard the new Freshmen Ruler was a student was at the 8th Saint Force layer, many of them couldn’t accept that. However, they could only grumble out their displeasure. But Jian Chen’s strength was something they could accept, some of them had even been dazzled by the way he fought, and his speed was something that not many people could dismiss.
“This year’s freshmen are really too useless. In front of so many people that had reached the 9th Saint Force level, the final Freshmen Ruler ended up being a youth at the 8th Saint Force layer. This is really too embarrassing.”
“That’s true, today’s freshmen were really too weak. Not only was the title of Freshmen Ruler taken by a person at the 8th Saint Force layer, I heard that the suntanned youth in second place was also someone who was only at the 8th Saint Force layer. I really don’t know what these freshmen had practiced to the 9th Saint Force layer for.”
The two people that spoke were seniors wearing the academy uniform, their tone were filled with a mocking voice towards those who had lost against the two.
Hearing the two students complain, another one of the seniors replied to them, “You guys shouldn’t even say anything, it’s not that those freshmen who reached the 9th Saint Force layer were weak, but it’s because those 8th Saint Force layer students were stronger than them by a large margin. That suntanned kid had strength that could scare anyone. Don’t tell me you guys didn’t see how those 9th Saint Force layer students were easily thrown out of the arena. If it were us that were fighting instead, I’m sure that we wouldn’t had been better off than the freshmen. As for that first place freshman, his strength was even more terrifying. Did you guys also miss how fast he was moving around and attacking? Even if it were us in that same situation, we would have a hard time trying to dodge his attacks.”
Other than those two students, many other seniors of the academy were also discussing the matches amongst themselves. They had already been at the academy for so many years, but this years competition had left them speechless. This year’s freshmen batch had many students who reached the 9th Saint Force layer, but no one had expected that the top two students would be 8th Saint Force layer students.
Soon after, Jian Chen obtained the Class 3 Monster Core as a reward. It was a deep red in color, and was bigger than the monster core than the one his brother had given him earlier.
Holding his hand up, Jian Chen could clearly feel the huge amount of power radiating from the core. The huge amount of energy in the core and the True Qi in his previous world had a very small difference, but as far as Jian Chen was concerned, the energy coming from the core was extremely huge.
Aside from the monster core, Jian Chen had also received a medal that was cast in complete gold with a decorative design written on it.
From what Jian Chen had heard, there was no information on the medal he had won, so he had no idea what use the medal was for. But as he was trying to figure it out, the vice headmaster Bai En explained to him, “This medal can only be rewarded to the first place winner of every freshman competition. As long as you have this, then you will be given a Class 1 Monster Core every month. Other than that, the medal allows the wearer to access the first 5 layers of the library.”