The opening ceremony ended, and the Grand Tournament officially began. Because there were far too many battle arenas starting at the same time, even the TV stations broadcasting live combat could only selectively pick a few more visually appealing arenas to commentate on.
Maybe it was because the military was involved, or maybe because time was tight, but the whole process was completely free of pointless dawdling. After entering the venue, Feng Yuan was taken straight to the prep area to wait for his entrance.
He didn’t know whether it was deliberate arrangement or just good luck, but Feng Yuan’s first-round battle was in the very first batch. After finishing their first-round fights, Beastmasters would be scheduled to rest, while the second batch of Beastmasters would go up for their first-round matches.
Simply put, the arenas never stopped, and Beastmasters rotated on and off. There was no helping it; there were too many Beastmasters participating in the Grand Tournament, and they couldn’t actually let the event drag on for a full month.
Leaving aside whether the participating Beastmasters could endure that, this time all the military Beastmasters were involved as well. They couldn’t keep that many military personnel off the defensive lines for long.
Even though The Imperial Timeline was currently being forced on the defensive, it was still impossible to completely avoid the extremely low-probability retaliatory raids from The Imperial Timeline.
So they didn’t dare to over-mobilize the garrisoned troops. To avoid accidents, they could only hasten the progress of the Grand Tournament as much as possible.
"That’s really efficient."
As soon as he entered, Feng Yuan found that there was no extra chatter at all. The referee directly had both sides prepare and immediately started a one-minute countdown; once the countdown ended, the battle began at once.
As for not managing to get ready within that one minute? That was your own problem.
Feng Yuan actually didn’t have much to prepare. The arena in Data City was about the same as a traditional arena: a huge square platform with stands all around it, and a standing area below the platform. That spot was originally for logistics and staff to stand in, but Feng Yuan himself didn’t go up on the arena, and simply let Xiao Ji and the Flame Chasing Furry Dog go up on their own.
The opposing Beastmaster frowned when he saw this, but didn’t say much. He quietly raised his guard.
He definitely didn’t think Feng Yuan was underestimating him. People with that kind of mindset wouldn’t have gotten an Ascension Stone. The fact that the other side dared to let his beasts fight autonomously meant he was very confident in his own Spirit Beasts.
If the Beastmaster didn’t go on stage, that was one fewer weak point, and the beasts didn’t need to constantly worry about protecting their tamer. That let them bring out their power to the fullest.
Of course, this demanded extremely high autonomous combat ability from the Spirit Beasts; otherwise it would still be stronger to have the Beastmaster on stage directing them.
Feng Yuan dared to do this purely because he’d long gotten used to "free-range" fighting. Though they might still be a bit behind those Spirit Beasts with truly top-tier autonomous combat, the gap wasn’t that big.
At least this Beastmaster himself couldn’t manage that. If he didn’t command his beasts, they would probably fall into bewilderment, not knowing how to respond.
The one-minute countdown quickly passed, and the other side didn’t have time to overthink it, immediately commanding his own Spirit Beasts to attack.
However, Xiao Ji and the Flame Chasing Furry Dog had long been ready. One in the sky and one on the ground, they opened their Crystal Stone Domains. The opponent had three beasts; they didn’t dare to be careless at all.
But based on the fact that the opponent had only two Legendary Level beasts while the remaining one was merely Elite Level, he should be one of those Beastmasters who had ascended to Legendary Level through an Ascension Stone.
Even so, Xiao Ji and the dog didn’t dare relax. None of the opponents Feng Yuan had found for them in previous training had been simple.
The reality matched that. Although only two of his beasts were Legendary Level, they cooperated extremely well. One Water Attribute beast played with ice to the point of artistry, while the other Wind Attribute beast could skillfully use its Ultimate Moves to enhance the power of Ice Attribute attacks and thereby restrict Xiao Ji and the dog’s movements.
Ice Storm combined with Calming Wind forcefully suppressed Xiao Ji’s and the Flame Chasing Furry Dog’s offensive. Golden flames burst forth from the Flame Chasing Furry Dog’s body; Purification was a common method for Fire Attribute Spirit Beasts, so from the start the opponent hadn’t expected Calming Wind’s attack-reduction effect to last long on the dog.
But as for Xiao Ji, whose form was that of an avian Spirit Beast, the opponent’s judgment was that it was highly likely Wind Attribute and might also possess Death or Ghost Attribute. No matter which, it didn’t necessarily have Purification-type methods.
Calming Wind’s effect was simple and crude, massively reducing attack power. However, it could be avoided by staying out of the Calming Wind’s range. To make Calming Wind take effect, it had to continuously hit the target for more than five seconds.
And the presence of Ice Storm could effectively restrict the opponent’s movements so they couldn’t evade Calming Wind, and could also conceal where Calming Wind was coming from.
Because under normal circumstances Calming Wind blew out a faint green breeze, and the entire Ultimate Move’s area of effect was clearly visible, making it not difficult to avoid.
But Ice Storm itself kicked up a large amount of ice shards, and those shards could effectively obscure the not-particularly-obvious Calming Wind.
On Xiao Ji’s side, they were naturally not going to be polite. Normally speaking, Death-type Spirit Beasts were somewhat better off, but Ghost Series Spirit Beasts seldom had methods to remove debuff states. However, Xiao Ji was an abnormal case.
Netherworld Wind rose up, and Xiao Ji added extra "seasoning" into the Netherworld Wind—Evil Curse·Calamity Synchronization was infused into the gusts of the Netherworld Wind.
As one of the Ghost Series Spirit Beasts’ favorite opening moves, Netherworld Wind had exceptionally strong extensibility. Many different types of Ultimate Moves could be blended into Netherworld Wind. The opponent naturally didn’t believe this was just a simple Netherworld Wind, but ironically, that was exactly why he had no solution to it.
Because everyone knew Netherworld Wind’s extension capability was outstanding: any kind of Ultimate Move could be mixed into it. When you didn’t know what was being added, it was very hard to respond effectively.
In fact, even if he ordered his own Spirit Beasts to do something, it would be useless. The Evil Curse series belonged to non-contact curses; as long as you got close to the target, they took effect.
Correspondingly, different Evil Curses had success chances attached to their non-contact activation, but Evil Curse·Calamity Synchronization’s own success-rate bonus was extremely high—almost a guaranteed hit.
The reason was very simple: Evil Curse·Calamity Synchronization had a single, fixed effect—it could synchronize all negative states and debuff effects currently on the caster onto every target hit by Evil Curse·Calamity Synchronization.
Because to work, the caster itself had to be under negative states, this Ultimate Move wasn’t particularly easy to use. But for Xiao Ji, learning Evil Curse series moves took almost no effort, so it had picked this up along the way.
The benefit of having many Ultimate Moves was now revealing itself. Even though there were other options, none were as straightforward as Evil Curse·Calamity Synchronization. If the opponent wanted to deal with Calamity Synchronization, he could only Purify, or avoid putting negative effects on Xiao Ji.
However, after Netherworld Wind was cast, it would linger for a period of time. If they wanted to dispel it using Purification, they had to deal with the Netherworld Wind first.
That Beastmaster immediately felt things were getting tricky. The Flame Chasing Furry Dog needed no explanation; this species wasn’t particularly rare, so he could roughly guess its methods.
Negative states were extremely ineffective against the Flame Chasing Furry Dog, because it had plenty of self-Purification and Ultimate Moves. As for putting negative states on Xiao Ji?
Unless he could crack the Calamity Synchronization attached to Netherworld Wind, it would be better not to mess around. Once the negative states stacked up, the Flame Chasing Furry Dog alone would be unaffected. At that point the other side would happily use powerful Ultimate Moves to heavily damage his own beasts.
"Ice Cold Wall! Extreme Storm!"
After a brief thought, he immediately changed his attack approach and issued new commands. Ice Cold Wall was a Water Attribute Defense Technique. Once cast, it created a wall of hardened ice to block attacks, and any close-range attack that struck Ice Cold Wall would trigger the Extreme Cold Invasion effect.
Of course, for a Spirit Beast like the Flame Chasing Furry Dog, whose entire body was wrapped in flames, Extreme Cold Invasion couldn’t take effect directly; it needed layers of accumulated chill invasions to a certain threshold before it would trigger.
But Xiao Ji didn’t have that kind of resistance. As long as it was hit, Extreme Cold Invasion would trigger, causing all of its movements to become sluggish.
The opponent’s goal wasn’t to have Xiao Ji come into melee and trigger the effect directly. Even without anyone commanding it, a flying Spirit Beast in the sky wouldn’t senselessly go up to physically attack an ice wall, no matter how tall it was.
However, Ice Cold Wall had a special effect: wind could carry away the chill. At that time, the chill taken by the wind would rapidly weaken once it left the wall’s range, but it would still have the ability to probabilistically trigger Extreme Cold Invasion on anything it touched.
What he needed to do was let Extreme Storm carry the Extreme Cold Invasion effect and directly apply that special negative state to Xiao Ji.
Because among his Spirit Beasts, the Water Attribute one was immune to Extreme Cold Invasion. This could make Calamity Synchronization fail on it in a different way.
As for the other two Spirit Beasts, there was nothing he could do, but the fortunate part was that slowed movement didn’t affect attack power—and Extreme Storm itself was a powerful Wind Attribute Offensive Ultimate Move.

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