"Madman."
"This Li Yun really is insane."
The spectators shook their heads at one another. They had seen arrogant cultivators before, but rarely anyone this reckless. A cultivator at the 5th level of Heavenly Core Realm had accepted a challenge from Tu Beichen and then raised the stake to one thousand points of his own free will.
Most of them decided he had simply grown too used to winning and had not yet understood that the Genius Training Camp was nothing like the Heaven’s Chosen Assembly. This time, they were sure, he would suffer a crushing defeat, and losing one thousand points would be a painful enough lesson.
News of the match spread quickly, and before long, cultivators all over the Genius Training Camp were dropping whatever they had been doing and heading for the gambling arena. By the time the battle was ready to begin, more than three hundred spectators had gathered, which was close to half the camp.
"Li Yun, if you lose this fight, I’ll tear you apart myself."
The wild, arrogant voice came from somewhere in the crowd, and the speaker was Xie Wushang. Not far away from him, Monk Yiming pressed his palms together.
"Benefactor Li, there’s no need to feel any pressure. This poor monk believes you will win."
As the champion of this year’s Heaven’s Chosen Assembly, Li Yun naturally drew enormous attention, and nearly everyone from the same assembly had turned up to watch. Huang Tianlin and Drunken Monk were among them, though neither of them said a word.
"You’re dreaming," a black-robed youth in the crowd sneered. "Tu Beichen is at the major accomplishment stage of the 2nd level of Spirit Manifestation Realm and ranks five hundred and twelfth in the Genius Training Camp. Beating a newcomer like Li Yun should be as easy as reaching into his own pocket."
"That’s right."
"Tu Beichen is going to win for sure."
"Li Yun will lose, and badly."
Once the black-robed youth spoke up, several cultivators around him immediately echoed the sentiment. Just as he had said, plenty of camp members disliked Li Yun and the rest of the newcomers from the Heaven’s Chosen Assembly.
Swish!
Two figures landed on the arena at almost the same instant, and Li Yun and Tu Beichen stood facing one another.
"Li Yun, I’ll admit you’ve got more nerve than I expected." Tu Beichen clasped his hands behind his back and sneered. "Unfortunately, when nerve outruns sense, it stops being courage and turns into stupidity. I only meant to take a hundred points off you and teach you a small lesson, and instead you insisted on putting a thousand straight into my hands." He laughed. "Since you’re feeling so generous, I suppose I have no choice but to accept the gift."
"Is that so?" Li Yun looked back at him calmly. "When you lose, remember what you just said."
"You certainly have a mouth on you."
Tu Beichen’s expression darkened, and he prepared to attack, only to stop himself at the last moment as a proud smile spread across his face.
"Since you’re handing me a thousand points, I really shouldn’t bully you too much." He raised one finger. "How about this? Before we formally begin, I’ll let you have the first move."
"You’re giving me the first move?" Li Yun’s gaze sharpened. "I’m afraid you won’t survive even one."
"Destruction Sword Intent."
Li Yun erupted in the next breath. His chaos qi surged through his body, and an overwhelmingly sharp Sword Qi burst from his blade like a black torrent.
Boom!
The Sword Qi carried boundless destructive power, and everything in its path felt as though it might simply be erased from existence. Its speed was astonishing, and the dark beam flashed across the arena to arrive in front of Tu Beichen in an instant.
"What?"
Tu Beichen’s expression twisted violently as a powerful sense of death rose in his heart. In that moment he completely forgot his own words about letting Li Yun strike first.
His figure shot backward while he struck out again and again with both palms, and massive earth-colored palm prints formed in front of him. Each one resembled a towering mountain, and several of them overlapped as they tried to hold back the incoming Sword Qi.
His defenses turned out to be useless. The mountainous palm prints shattered one after another, torn apart like dry grass before that terrifying destructive Sword Qi, and they failed to slow it for even a heartbeat.
"This is impossible."
Tu Beichen’s face went pale as he cursed frantically inside his own mind. How could Li Yun possess this kind of strength? With power like that, he should never have been ranked somewhere in the six hundreds, since he clearly had enough to break into the top five hundred. Tu Beichen had been completely misled by that ranking.
Boom!
The Sword Qi landed. Tu Beichen’s protective essence qi shattered instantly, and his body was blasted backward and thrown clean out of the arena.
One move. Li Yun had won with a single strike.
Silence fell over the crowd as the spectators stared at the arena in disbelief. Before the battle, almost everyone apart from a small handful had expected Li Yun to lose, and many had come specifically to watch him embarrass himself.
Instead, Tu Beichen had become the joke. He had arrived full of aggression, loudly announced that Li Yun was gifting him free points, and then arrogantly offered his opponent the first move, only for that single move to end everything.
"Li Yun, you deliberately hid your strength."
Tu Beichen struggled back to his feet below the arena with his face twisted in grief and fury.
"You’re despicable. You’re shameless."
His heart was bleeding. One thousand points was hard even for him to earn, since an ordinary month brought him only a little more than that, and losing the wager had wiped out over half a month of effort in a single instant.
What made it truly unbearable was knowing that every one of those points had gone to Li Yun. He told himself bitterly that if he had not underestimated his opponent, he would never have lost so miserably.

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