Chapter 3706 — The New Rules
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
Never mind how Meng Jueming brimmed with ambition on his side—once Wei Zhao returned to his cave dwelling, he entered the jade pendant space as always to cultivate and consolidate his strength. The night passed without a word.
When dawn broke the next day, all the newcomers of the Welcome Pavilion gathered in the main hall early in the morning, every face bearing excitement and nervousness that were hard to conceal.
For starting today, after the one-month adaptation period that had come before, they would formally enter the real game, and from now on the Welcome Pavilion would have only one theme: competition!
By the rules that had varied only slightly over the years, beginning with the second month the newcomers of the Three-Tiered Pavilions would commence cruel and fierce ranking matches among themselves. Every newcomer around them would become their rival—either trample the other beneath your feet, or be trampled beneath theirs. There was no third possibility.
If your strength was sufficient, then even if you were the most inconsequential newcomer of the Azure Cloud Pavilion, you could openly challenge the top seed of the Soaring Heaven Pavilion, trample him beneath your feet, and claim all the finest cultivation resources for yourself.
Conversely, if your strength was too weak, then even if you were a scion of the Soaring Heaven Pavilion with powerful backing, you were fit only to be another's stepping stone; for the rest of your time in the Welcome Pavilion you could only endure the worst and most inferior cultivation resources, sinking into obscurity with no hope of turning things around.
In the end, the cultivation world had always been one where the weak were prey to the strong. Even the relatively mild Welcome Pavilion acted solely by the law of the jungle, without exception. The only concession was a certain limit placed on the competition between them, so that deaths were unlikely—and that was all.
As for this, after the preceding month of adaptation, all the newcomers had long since steeled themselves; strong and weak alike knew well what each of them would face. Yet after the Pavilion Master Hu Yunfeng took the stage and finished his first sentence, the whole hall erupted in an uproar.
"In response to the Council of Elders' call for an all-around elevation of the newcomers' strength, from this year onward the Welcome Pavilion abolishes the ranking match system. In its place will be a more comprehensive and more equitable newcomer assessment. I ask all you junior brothers to make your preparations; the specific rules of assessment are posted on the public notice."
What? Abolish the ranking match system?
The hall of newcomers instantly broke into a clamor. Many of them had spent the past month preparing with the ranking matches as their goal; some had already decided which opponents they meant to challenge. As for those like Meng Zhou and Wei Zhao who had prior grievances, they had long since proclaimed that they would wipe out their humiliation in the ranking matches.
And yet, unexpectedly, the ranking matches—a tradition the Welcome Pavilion had followed consistently for the past several decades—were to be abolished.
And when Hu Yunfeng ordered the notice, already transcribed, to be posted with its rules, the assembled newcomers buzzed all the more.
Wei Zhao and the others pushed forward and roughly scanned it. This newcomer assessment had no fewer than six stages, covering intimidation, defense, spiritual medicine, spiritual beasts, actual combat, and several other aspects; the assessment would last as long as five months, with points awarded at every stage, and the final ranking determined by accumulated points.
It was indeed as Hu Yunfeng had said—compared with the crude and simple ranking matches of old, this newcomer assessment was genuinely far more comprehensive.
Yet there was one very important point in it that quickly drew the attention of Wei Zhao and his companions.