Chapter 533: 533: Hall of Water’s Trial (18)
After the arena had closed for registration, all those who were recorded and split into different stages in accordance to the level of competition they had signed into. The arena had three levels: Beginner, Normal and Master. Those who had registered at the Beginner level only had to fulfill the following requirements.
First is that their cultivation realm must be only in Early Yuanying Realm. Those in Mid Yuanying Realm can only join the normal level and those beyond this level and within the range of Late or peak Yuanying Realm, they can only join the master level where their opponents were at least Advance Warrior grade Mermaid warriors.
The first round for each level is similar to what everyone had watched yesterday. A battle royal with minimum time duration. After the battle royal, the individual battles would begin as well. Of course, those that can be lost for individual battles can only be done by those who had survived the battle royal.
At the beginner arena, Monk Hu Gu and Yue Huashui are waiting with the other contestants. Unlike yesterday where there were only female warriors around, this time there were more men in the crowd and most of them possessed lean bodies looking like young mermaid warriors. These guys are glaring at the two boys who were seen flirting with female mermaid warriors yesterday. Their eyes were burning with jealousy.
Monk Hu Gu who is calmer seeing that there are almost no females among the opponents is now acting like an excited kingkong who is ready anytime for a brawl. He is clearly excited to fight against these warriors and didn’t notice the jealousy in their eyes.
On the other hand, Yue Huashui looked like he was bored or something. He can feel the realms of people and feel if they are stronger than he is. Unfortunately, no one in the beginner arena can be considered an opponent for him and just decided to play along protecting his naive brother monk.
Yue Huashui grabbed the robe of Monk Hu Gu then climbed up on his back, "Brother Monk, Shuishui doesn’t want to fight, carry me on your back as you fight. Don’t I won’t fall off."
"You truly won’t fight?" Monk Hu Gu asked as he knew how strong this boy is from his older brother.
The lazy sentient blue lotus flower spirit leans his chin on the monk’s smooth head and yawns.
He responded, "Shuishui is sleepy~ Brother Monk, good luck~"
Seeing Yue Huashui acting like this confuses the innocent young monk. However, he didn’t remove the child clinging to him and even found a cloth to tie him to himself making sure he wouldn’t fall even if he somersault in air. Of course there are some who felt offended seeing them act this way and would speak unlikeable words no one wants to hear.
"Do you think this is a playground? Why bring a child into the arena, Stupid monk!?"
"Indeed. Why did they even allow a child like that to register?"
"Is he even at Yuanying Realm?"
"Stupid bald donkey! See how I threw you two little bastards off the stage!"
A burly man was already walking towards Monk Hu Gu with an ugly expression while staring at Yue Huashui on his back with a disdainful look. He was about to use force and pull Yue Huashui off the young monk when suddenly he felt water covering his nose and mouth. Moreover, it appeared out of nowhere.
This not only made the burly man panic as he tried to remove the water on his face, he even ran around causing everyone to see his state. Only when his eyes rolled and fainted that the water covering his nose and mouth had disappeared. Everyone saw what happened only to see the Monk with a bewildered expression on his face and a sleeping boy hanging on his back.
{Gladiator # XXX fainted and is now disqualified!}
"What had happened to him?" Monk Hu Gu mumbles while looking naive.
Most of them didn’t see who did such a thing and caused the burly man to be disqualified even before the battle began. But there are some who were keen enough to see that it was the boy’s doing that made that man suffer. However, they didn’t blame him after all, they saw the burly man about to sneak an attack towards the young monk.
An announcement was made before the Battle Royale began.
{We will now announce the rules in the arena.}
{Killing is forbidden! No one is allowed to kill anyone in the arena.}
{Weapons not provided by the aren cannot be used during the competition.}
{Once you fell off the boundaries of the stage, fainted or shouted that you’re forfeited, you will be escorted off the stage.}
{Individual competition had its own set of rules. It will be announced before the beginning of the event.}
This announcement was heard all over the arena. Even though the stage of each competition level differs from one another, the rules stay the same. The same set of rules were not only heard by Monk Hu Gu and Yue Huashui who are at the beginner arena but also Xia Baiyu and Tan Bingyu who are at Normal and Master Arenas waiting for the event to start.
{Let the competitions within the arena begin!!!}
As soon as the gong in the arena had rang everyone from each stage had made a move of their own. Those at the beginner arena immediately found their opponents and started attacking. Monk Hu Gu threw some punches and palm attacks on the people who jumped to fight against him.
Monk Hu Gu’s excitement flares as he defeats more and more opponents. What he didn’t know is that the reason he wouldn’t get surrounded by many men was because some of them would slip and fall out of nowhere lessening the burden on him while fighting. Moreover those who sneak attacked like assassins were also handled by someone. It was mostly done by the sentient blue lotus flower spirit who is pretending to be asleep.
"Hahaha~ are there no more of you!? Come fight this monk!" Shouted Monk Hu Gu.
—
At the other arena, this time at the normal level arena, Xia Baiyu, Xing Suiri and Tan Shenyu were surrounded by many mermaid warriors. Most of them focused on defeating foreign participants making them feel targeted as soon as the Battle Royale had started.
Xing Suiri, Xia Baiyu and Tan Shenyu gathered in a small group while being surrounded by mermaid warriors who wanted to defeat them as soon as possible.
Tan Shenyu said, "More than half of those on stage are targeting us. Are we that popular?"
"I don’t think that’s the real reason Uncle Tan. I think they are targeting outsiders like us. Preventing us not only from winning," Xing Suiri said as he gestured to them to look at the distant part of the stage where the other outsider players were.
Then they finally looked at the burning gaze of the mermaid warriors stare at them.
The first to react even before their opponents made a move were some mermaid warriors whose cultivation was at least Mid Yuanying or so. They didn’t jump on them to sneak around. They move in groups even utilizing battle formation during the battle royale.
Tan Shenyu commented at the scene, "AH! This is a bit frustrating. Can’t we fight back first?"
"Uncle, once you got separated they would ganged up on you. Those who don’t have a team were the first ones to get eliminated," Xing Suiri said.
All of a sudden, Xia Baiyu’s urgent voice was heard, " Jump in the same direction as me. Fire walls and fire attacks from the walls of the arena had been activated."
A few seconds after these voices, the lava surrounding the arena suddenly exploded and a few fire walls and fire spells were launched towards the stage. Xia Baiyu guided his two teammates to dodge the attacks from the stage itself and avoided being burned. Well, they are still some who failed and suffered bad burns which directly disqualified them from this arena.
Tan Shenyu commented after avoiding the danger from the stage.
He exclaimed, "Holy shit! Who would have expected that the lava around the stage would explode and those walls would spit some fire!?"
"This place is exciting enough. I wonder how hellish the ones in the Master Arena are," Xia Baiyu commented.
Xin Suiri commented, "I heard the stage on the master level was limited. Though that should be a problem for those two who can turn the area into ice."
"That is also true. With Bing’er and Xiao Ren there, the arena in the master level would have been split to both fire and ice by now. It’s just that most of their opponents were on the same level, I hope nothing bad happens to their side," said Tan Shenyu.
Xia Baiyu said, "Don’t worry, Uncle Tan. In this arena, killing is not allowed and there should be a lot of healers on standby outside the stage. We should worried that they shouldn’t destroy the arena ins—"
BOOOM!
A sudden explosion had happened and it was coming from the arena itself. It even caused the whole building to shake making those in the other stages affected by this sudden rumbling from the whole building.
Xia Baiyu, Xing Suiri and Tan Shenyu looked up and saw a huge ice shard sticking out of their arena room’s ceiling and had a bad feeling coming from above.
"Hm~ I have a bad feeling about this ice stuck above our heads," Tan Shenyu mumbles.
Beside him, two disciples from the Starfield Sect were both using divination to learn what was happening and they both opened their eyes in shock after getting an unexpected result from their calculations.
"DODGE!"
Xing Suiri and Xia Baiyu both said at the same time as they grabbed Tan Shenyu and left the area where the ice shard had appeared. What happened next was so dangerous that they ignored others and focused on saving themselves and Tan Shenyu.