After a month of nonstop duels, challenging twenty opponents and winning every match, Ian Song earned himself a new nickname: the Challenge Maniac.
At first, Ian didn't take these challenges all that seriously.
But gradually, he started paying attention, because every student who made it onto the Qi-Refining Ranking—even those near the bottom—had martial skills with something unique.
There's a saying: the sea accepts all rivers. There's another: knowledge in one area leads to mastery in others.
Now, Ian understood why the academy required challengers to climb the ranking one spot at a time, instead of just letting them take on the top contender.
Because fighting your way from rank five hundred all the way to the top ten would build up unimaginable combat experience.
After dueling twenty people in a row, Ian decided to take a break and sort through everything he'd learned before continuing his climb.
Besides reviewing his battle experience from this period, Ian also went over all the techniques he'd learned. His cultivation method, the Undying Phoenix Codex, came from the artifact ring he got from Nate Moore.
The Codex produced extremely fierce true qi; his movement technique was Drifting Dragon Steps, his agility art was Phantom Bird Shadow, his punching technique was Imperial Nine Slaughters, and his sword technique was the Nine Heavens Setting Sun Sword, passed down by his master Darren Fang Easton.
During this time, he read a huge number of classics in the library and learned that the undying phoenix, phantom bird, and wandering dragon were all ancient divine beasts.