Chapter 3767 — The Peculiar Rules: How to Weigh the Choices So As to Maximize One's Gains Is a Technical Art Demanding Careful Thought; Otherwise, However Great One's Strength, All Effort Comes to Nothing, Yields No Benefit, and One Can Never Laugh Last
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
But while the other newcomers had to puzzle this question over carefully, Wei Zhao and his band of underlings had no such worries trailing behind them at all.
As far as they were concerned, the spirit herb seeds had already been handed over entirely to Wei Zhao; the task that remained was simply to throw themselves wholeheartedly into the challenge tournament, to go all out with no misgivings whatsoever. That made them far happier men than the rest of the newcomers.
Once Hu Yunfeng had explained the rules in detail, he let the newcomers of the Three-Tiered Pavilions go back and prepare as they pleased. Today was the nineteenth, precisely the day appointed for the challenge tournament, so the first round would formally begin that very afternoon, leaving the newcomers precious little time.
When Hu Yunfeng finished his announcement, the newcomers did not disperse; they gathered in twos and threes to debate their countermeasures.
Two heads were better than one, after all. To go home and shut oneself away, working everything out alone, might well be the death of one's chances; and though rivalry made true candor impossible in such huddled discussions, there was still something to be gained from them. At the very least, one would not wander off course or be left stranded on one's own.
"The rules for this challenge tournament really are a bit bizarre. Hard to make sense of them!" Qiao Hongcai scratched his head in bewilderment and said to the long-suffering senior brother, Wei Zhao, and the others.
Xiao Che nodded, sharing the feeling deeply. "They are, a little. Normally these challenge tournaments are plain and direct: you challenge as high a place as you can and give it everything, instead of all these checks and restraints that keep a man from going all out."
True enough, these few had no need to fret over nurturing spirit herb seeds as the others did, and so had far fewer burdens on their minds; yet even for the challenge tournament alone, there were many subtleties hidden in these rules, nothing like the crude simplicity of former years.
For one thing, this stage of the tournament ran a full two months. Even setting aside the question of supplying true qi to the spirit herb seeds, one still had to ration one's effort sensibly; otherwise, by spending too hard at the start, whatever points one won for the moment would be useless, and flagging strength later would lose them back — or lose even more.
For another, under these rules a higher-ranked cave dwelling was not necessarily better. True, a finer cave dwelling aided one's cultivation, and might even benefit the nurturing of spirit herb seeds.
But the catch was that it meant greater risk as well: once one lost in the tournament, the challenge points deducted would be far greater than those of a newcomer in an inferior cave dwelling.
A newcomer like Xiao Che, holding Mountain-Low No. 1, seemed at first glance to be sitting pretty: the fine cave dwelling, the abundant spiritual qi, the advantage. And under these rules his starting score would be the points accumulated in the two earlier assessment stages, plus, in this stage, the fifteen points that corresponded to Mountain-Low No. 1 — higher than any of the other fourteen cave dwellings. Everything looked lovely. But it was all surface.
In truth, judged by the challenge rules as published, Xiao Che, seated in Mountain-Low No. 1, was decidedly the most disadvantaged of all fifteen.
Quite apart from having to surrender all fifteen of those points the moment he lost, the crux of it, the deadliest point, was this: under the rule that only a lower-ranked newcomer might challenge a higher-ranked one, he had no right to challenge anyone of his own accord.