The day before the big tournament, the specially built venue on the edge of the city was bustling. Quite a few Beastmasters had come early just to check out the arena and get a feel for the specific rules.
Even though this time the big tournament only awarded medals with no other material prizes at all, the number of sign-ups was much higher than for the usual beast battles.
After all, for them this was also a great chance to gauge their actual strength. Especially now that everyone had been using Ascension Stones—lots of Beastmasters had no real grip on their current power. They felt strong, but the strength others were showing seemed even stronger than theirs.
Plus, with their power suddenly shooting up, many people genuinely had no idea what their true level was anymore—especially after that whole Fake Legendary Level talk started spreading. They weren’t even sure if they counted as Fake Legendary Level themselves.
Now this suddenly announced big tournament just happened to be exactly what they wanted. Other methods might not be all that intuitive, but a tournament with relatively few rule constraints like this could reflect concrete strength pretty clearly.
Because of that, all those brand-new Legendary Level Beastmasters who were struggling to find someplace to test themselves signed up in droves, directly setting a record for the highest number of participants in a local beast competition.
The authorities in each region had actually expected this and were already prepared. Besides using the power of Data City to open as many simultaneous battles as possible, they also lengthened the schedule to try their best to keep things fair.
There was no helping it—too many Beastmasters were taking part. They couldn’t possibly do multi-person free-for-alls. If a guy like Feng Yuan slipped in among a bunch of relatively weak Beastmasters, that would be trouble.
Feng Yuan also came a day early. He wasn’t here to look at the venue, though; he was here to pick up the tournament process. No helping it—the Special Duty Team was also joining this big tournament, so Feng Yuan couldn’t just ask Liao Yu for the paperwork.
"It’s really lively."
Looking at the noisy crowd around him, Feng Yuan couldn’t help saying that. Veronia let out a soft snort and said,
"They sure have guts. With this many people in one-on-one arena matches, how many years do they plan to keep this going?"
"Mm, it’s probably not that exaggerated. Fifty thousand arenas running at the same time... that’s gotta be the spatial limit of Data City, right?"
One-on-one doesn’t mean just one round and done. First it’s up to five rounds of lottery-style arena matches. Then, based on the arena results, those who get three wins enter the second phase of arena matches, while the losers’ bracket gets up to five rounds of revival matches.
As long as you manage to win three times in the revival rounds, you also get into the second phase of arena matches.
The same rules will be repeated four times. In the description, that’s four phases of competition; after that comes the final top?100 arena defense battles.
Only Beastmasters who have made it through the first four phases can enter at this stage. Arena defenders have to keep accepting challenges from others, defeating each challenger.
There’s no limit on the number of arena defenses. If you lose, you can challenge again to seize an arena, but once you lose, your win count resets to zero.
The whole arena defense phase lasts for one full day, and in the end rankings are based on how many wins you had when you successfully defended your arena.
"So the final phase is actually an endurance test. Figures."
Feng Yuan shook his head slightly, a bit helpless. He really hadn’t expected the final phase to be arena defense instead of pure one-on-one matches.
But thinking it through, it wasn’t half bad either, because in formal beast competitions, there’s no shortage of Beastmasters who only have enough in them for a single battle.
Or rather, they can only burst out terrifying Combat Power over at most a few fights, and after that they need half a day to rest up.
This kind of "point-kill the key target" combat style isn’t all that common, but in real combat, sometimes you do see that tactic used.
By contrast, the ability to fight continuously at high intensity doesn’t really get to shine in standard beast competitions.
No way around it—once a Beastmaster enters the top 32, they get plenty of rest and recovery between matches every time. In that setup, continuous high-intensity combat ability just can’t really show its value.
Feng Yuan wasn’t worried at all about not making it to the end. As for the final arena defense phase, he thought about it and decided he’d take part without the Beastmaster himself entering the arena.
Even though in that case, if all his beasts lose combat ability it counts as a loss, Feng Yuan had never planned on taking the championship at all costs anyway.
If he goes up personally, it’s no different from tossing a Divine Beast into the fight.
To him, that would be extremely unfair. And it’s pointless too—the big tournament doesn’t have any real rewards, just a medal at best. Feng Yuan didn’t think that thing was worth him playing tricks over.
"Mm-hmm, rules that favor the official Beastmaster system, huh."
Veronia hummed lightly, rolled her eyes. Feng Yuan said testily,
"It only looks that way. I don’t think it’s a problem. At least for those guys who specialize in studying the rules, this is a good thing."
The reason Feng Yuan had no interest in beast competitions, aside from the fact that his own strength can easily stomp everyone, was that many of those Beastmasters who compete year-round love to exploit the rules for extra advantage.
Take the Beastmasters being targeted by this final phase—those who can only erupt with massive power in a short window. Most of them are the ones who’ve been participating in beast tournaments year in, year out.
Because to maintain a certain level of fairness, beast competitions never schedule continuous battles. They actually give Beastmasters plenty of time to recover, which is exactly what let this playstyle spread in beast tournaments.
As for whether it’s practical in reality?
The military absolutely has the ability and the need to prepare such assault squads. What they do is unleash their power when needed to break through defenses or other key targets.
But relatively speaking, the demand for Beastmasters like that isn’t actually that big. After all, most official Beastmasters need to fight continuously; this kind of short-lived combat ability really isn’t what they’re looking for.
Feng Yuan felt that if nobody reined them in, those guys might gradually fall into Possession.
"Specialize in studying the rules? Mm-hmm, you humans really do have that kind of weirdo."
Veronia paused, then said that. She didn’t have much goodwill toward that type, but she could understand them. As long as they weren’t the kind who can only last a single beast match and then completely lose combat ability and need several hours to recover, going for that style of combat was probably out of helplessness.
In her view, figuring out how to exploit beast competition rules to boost your advantage is basically useless.
In real combat, who’s going to follow your tournament rulebook? Still, considering that beast competitions usually offer hefty prize money, it’s hard to blame them for doing this.
After all, not everyone is like Feng Yuan, with absolutely no shortage of all kinds of cultivation resources.
The prize rewards from beast tournaments might be their main way of obtaining resources. So it’s not strange at all if they specifically study tournament-focused tactics that are useless in actual combat.
"Mm, in that case Xiao Ji will have to give the Flame Chasing Furry Dog some extra recovery during the arena defense phase."
Feng Yuan rubbed his chin and said to Xiao Ji. The Flame Chasing Furry Dog had its own self-healing methods, but it didn’t have any way to restore stamina. On that front, it just so happened Xiao Ji had that rather rare ability.
Which made sense—mental fatigue is usually linked to the soul. The Death Series and Ghost Series are exactly the ones who specialize in soul-related stuff; this is right in their professional wheelhouse.
"Just that won’t be enough, you know. Your opponents won’t be weak. Aren’t you going to prepare something like Undying Fire?"
Veronia gave Feng Yuan a strange look as she said this, rolling her eyes. Feng Yuan answered irritably,
"Why don’t you just suggest the supreme Shelter of the Netherworld while you’re at it? What’s the point of fighting then?"
Sure, "can’t-die" type skills aren’t unbreakable, but... Xiao Ji doesn’t have that kind of Ultimate Move. If Feng Yuan slaps that onto Xiao Ji and the Flame Chasing Furry Dog before the matches, how is that any different from cheating?
"Mm-hmm, doesn’t sound completely impossible."
Veronia cackled weirdly, then dropped the topic and looked at Feng Yuan instead.
"Do you think they’ll arrange stronger opponents specifically for you?"
"Probably not. It’s a lottery. They don’t have the time to sort out a full power ranking."
Feng Yuan thought about it seriously as he spoke. This big tournament was obviously put together in a rush. If they want to play tricks, they likely don’t even have the time. Doing it sloppily would easily cause problems—especially with so many Legendary Level Beastmasters participating this time...
If they can’t guarantee fairness, it’ll absolutely turn into a serious scandal. So Feng Yuan didn’t believe they would deliberately tailor his opponents.

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