Hugh Xu actually lost!
This outcome was hard for many to accept, especially those who’d bet big on Hugh Xu—they were extremely unwilling, and their resentment quickly turned toward the victorious Leon Huang.
Meanwhile, the new students who quietly made a fortune wore looks of pure joy.
All of them started shouting, “Leon Huang!” at the top of their lungs.
This battle established Leon Huang’s position among the low-level students, making him the undisputed number one among the freshmen.
That night, the new students all scrambled to visit Leon Huang. After all, every new arrival to the academy gets bullied by the seniors at least a little, but now that Leon had defeated Hugh Xu, they naturally saw him as their protector.
If any senior tried to bully a freshman again, they’d definitely have to care about Leon Huang’s opinion.
The next day.
Henry Ji and Tiffany Wenren came to visit together, boosting Leon Huang’s reputation even higher.
Their visit was a public sign of recognition.
That evening, an invitation was delivered to Leon Huang’s dorm. The sender was Felix Zhu—a big name among the low-level students. He might not be the strongest himself, but his connections were solid, so he had a crowd of students around him. He also ran the betting for this duel.
Thanks to Leon’s victory, Felix Zhu made several million taels of silver in profit.
Night fell like a curtain.
West Continent, a remote mountain village.
This village was cut off from the world. The residents lived by hunting and gathering herbs, and there were over five hundred people in total.
At midnight, the whole village was silent except for the occasional bark of a dog.
Just then, a shadow as eerie as a ghost drifted silently into the village.
The shadow quickly slipped into the home of a local hunter near the village entrance.
This was a family of five, spanning three generations under one roof.
The hunter kept three dogs, but as soon as the shadow entered the yard, all three burst out of their kennel, baring their teeth and growling at the intruder.
“Thwack, thwack, thwack!”
A flash of black sword light swept by—three dog heads flew through the air, and the scent of blood instantly filled the room.
Bang!
The shadow pushed open the master bedroom door and walked right in.
The noise startled the hunter on the bed. He rolled over and grabbed a dagger from under his pillow.
By the faint light, he saw an extra shadow in the room.
“Who are you?”
The shadow didn’t answer. The sword in his hand turned into a streak of black light and stabbed forward.
The sword was so fast, the hunter didn’t even have time to react before it pierced his chest.
Gurgle...
It sounded like boiling water. In an instant, the big, strong hunter’s blood was sucked dry by the sword.
“Honey!”
The hunter’s wife woke up in terror.
Squelch!
A flash of sword light stabbed into the wife’s chest too, draining her blood and flesh in an instant.
A while later, the shadow drifted out of the hunter’s house. The whole family of five had been reduced to skin-and-bone corpses.
The shadow was like a demon from the underworld, slipping in and out of every house in the village.
After an hour, the shadow quietly left the isolated mountain village. The place that once held five hundred people had become a village of the dead—no survivors.
After slaughtering the village, the shadow drifted into the forest.
He traveled hundreds of miles before finally entering a hidden cave deep in the mountains.
He pulled off his black robe, revealing a young, handsome but deathly pale face. If Leon Huang were here, he’d instantly recognize this man as Nate Moore—the one who was supposed to be the protagonist of this world, now turned into the fiend who slaughtered a village of over five hundred.
Pristine Way Sect… Leon Huang, one day I’ll take back everything I lost!
Nate muttered to himself, then sat cross-legged in the cave, gripping his sword. Instantly, a blood-red power flowed from the demon blade into his body.
This process lasted a full three hours.
Suddenly, with a boom, Nate’s whole body shook violently. A blood-red, Shura-like domain radiated outward from him, covering a ten-meter radius.
Ha ha!
Nate couldn’t help but laugh wildly. He’d broken through to the Grandmaster realm, and now his domain stretched ten meters around him. His future potential was limitless.
With that thought, his urge to kill grew even stronger—after all, only by slaughtering more living beings could his cultivation rise faster.
So, on the second night, he set out again and wiped out three more villages—nearly two thousand people.
Still, he was rational enough to target only remote villages, so the city lord’s office wouldn’t catch on too quickly.
But on the third day, the city lord’s office discovered the slaughtered villages.
In just three days, Nate had massacred eight villages, killing nearly ten thousand people.
All nine villages fell under the jurisdiction of Qingshan City.
The slaughter of nearly ten thousand people was a huge shock. The city guards mobilized everywhere, searching for the Slaughter Fiend.
But after several days, not only did they fail to find the Slaughter Fiend, even more villages were wiped out. Helpless, the city lord had no choice but to station guards in batches throughout the region and quickly report the situation to the ruling sect.
West Continent is part of the territory controlled by Shifang Sect.
Shifang Sect governs West Continent, Sword Continent, Cloud Continent, and Sky Continent. Its strength is even greater than Pristine Way Sect.
Upon hearing the news, Shifang Sect took it very seriously—they immediately sent five elite disciples to Qingshan City to help City Lord Fu Ge hunt down the Slaughter Fiend.
All five elite disciples were mid-Grandmaster level, so their confidence was sky-high.
Since the Slaughter Fiend only killed ordinary people, these elite disciples assumed his cultivation wasn’t high—at most, early Grandmaster level.
Among the five elite disciples from Shifang Sect, one was especially skilled at tracking.
So, on the day they arrived, they tracked down the Slaughter Fiend and cornered him in the forest.
Their guess was right—the Slaughter Fiend’s cultivation wasn’t high, just early Grandmaster level.
To the five elite disciples, taking down the Slaughter Fiend should have been effortless.
But the result was shocking: two elite disciples died in battle, and the Slaughter Fiend escaped with serious injuries.
This enraged the Shifang Sect leaders, who issued a kill order throughout their territory: anyone who captured the Slaughter Fiend would be rewarded with a fifth-grade spiritual weapon, a million taels of silver, and various pills.
Once the reward was announced, countless martial artists began hunting for the Slaughter Fiend.
But the Slaughter Fiend seemed to vanish—ten whole days passed without a trace.
Sanctum Martial Academy.
The freshman entrance assessment was over—a third of the students had been eliminated.
At yesterday’s entrance ceremony, all five vice deans appeared and gave the freshmen a pep talk.
After a few days of settling in, Song Yan learned that the academy had over ten thousand low-level students.
But the Qi-Refining Ranking only listed the top five hundred students.
Anyone who made it onto the Qi-Refining Ranking would receive a monthly reward of 100 contribution points.
If you made it into the top four hundred, you’d get 200 contribution points per month.
Top three hundred earned 300 points monthly.
Top two hundred got 400 points per month.
Top two hundred received 500 points monthly.
Top one hundred earned 1,000 points per month.
Top fifty received 2,000 points monthly.
Top ten received 5,000 points each month.
Song Yan defeated Hugh Xu, proving he was qualified for the top ten. So, Yoon Zhengyang and the others kept urging him to take on new challenges.