Beastmaster of the Ages

Chapter 3022 – Battle Royale

Even though he was still far from the nightmare rabbit, there were few people nearby when Tianming arrived. The nightmare rabbit wasn’t pinned to one spot and was constantly moving. All the cultivators that had it in sight were busy chasing it down.

Tianming immediately spotted the critter. It was rather small and had stars dotting its body. Its eyes were blood red and seemed to be formed from ferocity and illusions. No doubt, the creature was capable of beguiling the soul. It could easily create multiple illusions so that others couldn’t tell which was its true body. That was how nobody had managed to stop it since its discovery.

It kept darting around at high speed. Some were able to keep up, while others fell off. With so many people gathered in one place, they began fighting each other for the points to rise higher up in the ranking. Quite a number of black ring holders took the opportunity to gang up on the inner valley disciples.

With how chaotic the situation was, there was no way Tianming would be called out for cheating by ziplining straight to other participants, so he fought with abandon. He didn’t dare to touch the nightmare rabbit and instead simply followed behind it. Then, with the Prime Starchain and his fusion abilities, he unleashed them on the crowd.

The Prime Starchain intentionally went after gold myriadpath ring holders. After all, they were worth more points. Not to mention, far too many black ring holders had died by their hands. Yin Chen had reported that the entire time, but there’d been nothing Tianming could do about it. “Let’s stand up for my fellow outer mundi disciples then! They must’ve had it hard to have come all this way to follow their dreams.”

The chain stretched to hundreds of thousands of meters. Many gold myriadpath ring holders couldn’t quite see where the attack had come from before the chain struck them and shattered their cosmic charts! Injuries of that extent were automatically registered as a defeat by their myriadpath rings, which quickly transferred one-third of their points to Tianming.

Many who had thought their spots secure suddenly fell in the ranking after losing a third of their points. Replacing them were quite a lot of black names, which began occupying more and more of the higher rankings. Tianming wasn’t the one who was solely responsible for causing the situation; instead, the rule change had created it by drawing all those geniuses together in one spot.

The outer mundi geniuses immediately huddled together to resist their oppressors. Even though the inner valley disciples had incredible authority and status, they chose to make their stands alone. As a result, they couldn’t pin the blame on anyone when the black ring holders ganged up on them together with their weapons hiding their faces.

Of the initial ten thousand participants, only around three thousand were still alive. Most of them were outer mundi geniuses that had experienced similar hardships. They had come to this hellish place, only for their dreams to be shattered and spirits to be crushed! So why would they not rage? They had to bear seeing their new friends dying one after another.

However, the chaos had given them all a chance to resist, even without a good backing. When they joined up, the inner valley disciples knew that they couldn’t stand a chance against their numbers even if they were individually much stronger than normal outer mundi geniuses. They were outnumbered by tens of times, after all!

While the outer mundi disciples wouldn’t dare to hunt down inner valley disciples alone, it was different in a group as it would be difficult to tell who exactly killed who. The ranking merely kept wildly changing as points were added and deducted, so there was no point in lining up the time of death with the change in ranking!

Throughout the entire thing, Tianming’s points rose the fastest. However, he still remained in fourth place. Within a short hour, he got thirty thousand points, almost achieving parity with the third-ranked Qiu Ciling.

“The key still lies with the nightmare rabbit. Gaining more points now is pointless. Since the one that gets those points will be targeted, I’ll hold off for now.” Tianming stopped participating in the battle royale and left it to the outer mundi disciples.

“That Li Tianming really is savage!”

“What kind of mundus did he come from? He’s at least a sixth-level cosmic cartographer! That’s quite powerful!”

“Anyone that can reach that point in an outer mundus would’ve definitely become a foundationeer if they’d grown up in Myriadpath Valley. Maybe he would’ve become the strongest fortuna disciple ever.”

“Who can say? He’s powerful. That, we can all agree on. It’s also clear that he’s aiming for first place!”

The outer mundi geniuses that were turning the tides had that to say about Tianming. They’d had enough of the bullying and had adopted him as their spiritual leader.

“By the way, has there been any precedent of outer mundi geniuses getting first place?”

“I’ve seen records of the past hundred cycles. Not a single one made the top twenty.”

“First? It’s unheard of. I’ve only heard of an outer mundi genius more than a thousand cycles back managing to enter the top ten, and they were treated as a paragon for that alone. That person is now a reverend of Myriadpath Valley.”

“More than a thousand cycles ago? Then… Li Tianming is already unprecedented by being ranked fourth!”

“Well, it isn’t entirely fair to compare us with the inner valley disciples. They’re usually half our age when they come to the Skyward Grandpath. Still, Li Tianming’s result is impressive, to say the least.”

Normally, inner valley geniuses would challenge the Skyward Grandpath around the age of two hundred, while outer mundi geniuses would come around five hundred. Otherwise, they wouldn’t even have a chance of competing.

In other words, the gold ring holders like Huang Daoxiong that Tianming was competing against were among the youngest geniuses in Myriadpath Valley. The ones around five hundred years old were bound to be far more talented and monstrously powerful.

“If he really gets first place, he’ll become an exemplar to all outer mundi geniuses henceforth. All future outer mundi geniuses will be inspired by his example and have faith in their chances. They’ll believe that even with no background at all, they can actually achieve success if they’re powerful enough!”

To think that the participants could still be so excited after so many people died.

“The rule change, especially, gives everyone a chance to become first place by slaying a single beast.”

“That’s right!”

“Did you notice that there’s more than twenty black names high up on the ranking? How many times more do we have in this cycle?”

“At least three times more than previous cycles!”

Everyone could see nothing but opportunity.