After his Five Element Intent finally stabilized, Li Yun’s allotted time inside the Enlightenment Pagoda ran out, and he made his way toward the exit.
"Next, I should take a look at the remaining five great secret realms."
He rose to his feet with anticipation showing plainly in his eyes. The Enlightenment Pagoda had already given him a great deal, since his understanding of several sword paths had deepened noticeably, so he naturally hoped the other five realms would prove just as valuable.
"Li Yun, you finally came out."
A cold voice reached him the moment he stepped outside. When he turned his head, he found a young man in dark blue robes standing squarely in his path. A crimson mark sat between the youth’s eyebrows, and the faint smile on his face carried contempt he made no effort to hide.
"Who are you?" Li Yun asked, frowning slightly.
Whoever this person was, he clearly had not come with friendly intentions.
"The name is Tu Beichen." The blue-robed youth lifted his chin. "And I came here today to challenge you to a gambling match."
"A gambling match?"
Tu Beichen had raised his voice on purpose, making no effort to disguise what he was after, and his words immediately pulled the attention of the cultivators passing nearby.
"Isn’t that Tu Beichen?"
"He’s one of Lei Xuankong’s followers. Lei Xuankong has never liked the newcomers from the Heaven’s Chosen Assembly, so Tu Beichen must be here to teach Li Yun a lesson for him."
"Tu Beichen may be the weakest of that group, but he still ranks five hundred and twelfth in the training camp, and Li Yun sits more than a hundred places below him."
"Do you think Li Yun will actually dare to accept?"
The crowd began talking among themselves almost at once. Some of them looked amused, while others stared at Li Yun with open mockery.
Gambling matches were extremely common inside the Genius Training Camp. Everyone gathered here counted as a genius, and geniuses tended to be proud, so conflicts broke out all the time. The gambling arena existed precisely to settle those disputes, and as long as both sides agreed, they could step inside and fight under the camp’s rules.
Naturally, every gambling match required a wager, and the wager could only be paid in training points. The minimum stake was one hundred points, while there was no upper limit at all.
"What is it, Li Yun?" Seeing him stay silent for a moment, Tu Beichen’s smile turned even more scornful. "Don’t tell me you’re too afraid to accept."
He raised his voice again so that everyone could hear him clearly.
"I heard you were the champion of this year’s Heaven’s Chosen Assembly. So what happened? Does the mighty number one genius of the Heaven’s Chosen Ranking not even have the courage to fight me? Or was that championship of yours just a joke? Maybe you only know how to bully weaker opponents and shrink back the moment someone strong shows up."
Li Yun’s gaze turned noticeably colder.
"How many points do you want to wager?"
"I won’t take advantage of you." Tu Beichen laughed out loud. "You’re a newcomer, and your cultivation is only at the 5th level of Heavenly Core Realm, so I doubt you have many points saved up. Let’s keep it simple and wager the minimum, one hundred points."
That decision had nothing to do with kindness. Tu Beichen simply worried that demanding too much would leave Li Yun unable to produce the stake, which would hand him a perfectly reasonable excuse to walk away from the fight. One hundred points was safe enough, since Li Yun had already climbed to rank six hundred and thirty-seven and should have been able to gather that much.
"One hundred points?" Li Yun shook his head. "Tu Beichen, you came here making all this noise and deliberately gathered a crowd to put pressure on me, and after all that, you only want to wager one hundred points?"
His voice stayed perfectly calm.
"That’s far too little. I have no interest in a stake that small." He paused for a moment before continuing. "If we’re going to fight, let’s wager one thousand points."
"What?"
Tu Beichen’s eyes went wide, and the crowd around them erupted into noise. Had they heard that correctly? Li Yun had not only accepted the challenge, he had raised the stake himself, and he had not raised it by some modest amount either. He had multiplied it tenfold, turning one hundred points into one thousand in a single breath.
"Is this fellow insane?"
"Does he think winning first place in the Heaven’s Chosen Assembly means he can do whatever he likes inside the Genius Training Camp?"
"One thousand points is a serious sum even for plenty of cultivators below the 3rd level of Spirit Manifestation Realm."
"What’s wrong? Are you afraid?" Li Yun glanced at the stunned Tu Beichen without much interest. "If you don’t dare, then get out of my way."
The expressions of the watching cultivators turned strange. Tu Beichen had been the one who came here to provoke Li Yun and humiliate him in front of everyone, yet somehow the situation had flipped completely, and now Tu Beichen was the one under pressure.
"What a joke."
With countless eyes fixed on him, Tu Beichen’s face darkened, and he sneered.
"Li Yun, don’t think I can’t see through your little scheme. You’re suggesting such a huge wager because you want to scare me off before the fight even starts. Do you really believe one thousand points is enough to make me retreat?" He narrowed his eyes. "More importantly, I doubt you can even produce that much. If I beat you and you can’t pay, what then?"
"Then I’ll owe you," Li Yun replied calmly. "If I can’t repay it right away, I’ll pay next month. If that still isn’t enough, I’ll pay the month after that."
"You..."
Tu Beichen glared at him, because those few words had sealed off every path of retreat. If he backed down now, he would be a laughingstock for certain.
"Fine." He ground his teeth. "One thousand points it is."
A cold smile spread across his face. "I’d love to see the look on your face after you lose."
Even for Tu Beichen, one thousand points was no trivial sum, since an ordinary month only earned him a little over a thousand, and losing would sting badly. Still, his opponent was only Li Yun, a cultivator at the 5th level of Heavenly Core Realm.
If he let himself get frightened under circumstances like these, he might as well stop showing his face in the Genius Training Camp altogether. In his mind, whatever hidden tricks Li Yun might have, this wager amounted to the boy handing his points over personally.

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