Jiang Nancheng? Tianming had seen this person before. He had some impression of this person, a cold person who had kept quiet the entire time in their last meeting.
“The Ancient Theocrats?” Ye Lingfeng knitted his brows when he heard it. He was feeling uncomfortable in his heart.
“Feng, what’s the matter?” Li Qingyu asked in a concerned tone.
“I’m fine.” Ye Lingfeng shook his head, but there was a ferocious glow in his eyes.
At that moment, a black-clad youth, Jiang Nancheng, jumped on the stage as the challenger. “Zhou Yuanyuan, come up. I issued you a challenge three days ago, and you’re required to participate in this ranking battle no matter what.” He was pretty strong and rumored to be at the fourth level of the Earth Saint stage, surpassing many members from the Theocracy. Otherwise, how would he be qualified to be in the same faction as Wei Wushang and Dongyang Yu?
“Get up there, fatty!” Behind Jiang Nancheng, there were more than thirty youths gathered around Wei Wushang. All of them were earth saints, and most of them were descendants of the Ancient Clans. Those were the clans who founded the dynasty together with the Theocrats, and many of them still retained their might.
More than four decades ago, the Ancient Qilin Clan was the strongest clan. At that time, the West Hall King was someone from the Ancient Qilin Clan. Standing among the crowd, Wei Wushang glanced at Tianming and sneered. They were a group that valued face and connections. So if Wei Wushang couldn’t get back at Tianming for the humiliation he had suffered, he wouldn’t be able to raise his head in the Divine Capital.
“Get up there, fat pig!”
“What a disgusting fatty. You still dare to stand out? Don't you know shame?” Many youths mocked beside Wei Wushang.
“Shut up! If I slimmed down, I’d be ten thousand times more handsome than you!” Zhou Yuanyuan snapped.
“Cut the crap,” Jiang Nancheng’s cold voice echoed out on the battlefield. When he spoke, he had already summoned his lifebound beast, a sixth-order saint beast with a total of sixty-two stars. It might not have a high ranking among sixth-order saint beasts, but it was strong.
After reaching the sixth order, even a difference of a single star was enormous. The difference between sixty and sixty-nine stars was on a whole different level. At sixty-nine stars, it meant the lifebound beast was approaching the level of an empyrean saint beast.
Jiang Nanchen’s lifebound beast was an Eight-eyed Kunwu. A kunwu could be considered a tiger-like beast, just slightly different. The kunwu before Zhou Yuanyuan was enormous, similar to the combination of ninety-nine mortal tigers. It had nine tails that looked like nine long whips spreading out in the sky. However, it had a human-like head, which seemed horrifying, and eight eyes scattered on its face. The eyes emitted a black smoke that swiftly spread out over the stage and enveloped Jiang Nancheng.
Jiang Nancheng took out a slender black sword with thirty-two saintly heavenly patterns on it. The name of the sword was the Devilkun Sword. It was valued at more than 1,800 saint crystals on Treasure Street, making it as valuable as the Mountshield Tome.
This showed how wealthy a patternscribe could be. Things became rare when there was no supply. There were many blacksmiths for saint beastial weapons, but patternscribes were rare, and those who had achievements in heavenly pattern tomes were rarer. Most three star patternscribes might not even be able to inscribe a one star heavenly pattern tome.
The meaning behind heavenly pattern tomes was to exchange wealth for trump cards, either for yourself or as gifts to someone else. This made defensive heavenly pattern tomes extremely valuable, and Zhou Yuanyuan was probably confident because he had one.
Although he was only in the second level of the Earth Saint stage, he still jumped onto the stage and faced his opponent. Jiang Nanchang was ranked below the seven hundreds in the Earth Ranking. That was because he had withdrawn from the ranking and only recently returned. That made Zhou Yuanyuan, who was in 250th place, a springboard for him to rise in the rankings.
When the two of them stood on the stage, that meant the ranking battle had begun. Jiang Nancheng sneered and immediately attacked before Zhou Yuanyuan could summon his lifebound beast. An enormous golden pig appeared beneath Zhou Yuanyuan. It was called the Gold Devouring Sacred Beast. As its name implied, it loved eating gold. The pig looked bigger than the Eight-eyed Kunwu, and it was also a sixth-order saint beast. But it only had sixty stars, which meant it was slightly inferior to the kunwu.
The Gold Devouring Sacred Beast was still stunned when it was summoned. But when Zhou Yuanyuan slapped its ears, it immediately executed its ability—Gold Stonewall. Suddenly, a huge golden shield rose from the ground, protecting Zhou Yuanyuan and the Gold Devouring Sacred Beast behind it. At the same time, Zhou Yuanyuan’s body started brightly shining and transforming, until he turned into a muscular, three-meter-tall man.
Looking at Zhou Yuanyuan’s explosive muscles that were made of gold, Tianming was shocked. In everyone’s eyes, the golden muscle man wasn’t inferior to the other party. But just when the two sides were about to clash, the golden muscular man suddenly raised his voice and shouted, “I’m not Jiang Nancheng’s opponent! I surrender! You can have my ranking!”
The abrupt turn of events made everyone start cursing Zhou Yuanyuan. Zhou Yuanyuan could’ve just surrendered, but he chose to flex his muscles first, instead. But just as Zhou Yuanyuan had expected, Jiang Nancheng pretended not to hear his words and charged over, arriving before him in an instant. When Jiang Nancheng swung his sword down, the golden shield exploded.
“Let’s go!” Zhou Yuanyuan, riding the golden pig, turned around and left. The pig protected Zhou Yuanyuan with its body and started rolling toward Tianming’s party.
“Mentor Jiang, I have already surrendered! Your grandson is violating the rules!” Zhou Yuanyuan yelled.
“Die!” The golden pig was quick, but Jiang Nancheng still charged over. The stage wasn’t huge, and Zhou Yuanyuan was already about to roll off of it. But right at that moment, Tianming could see a sinister smile hung on Wei Wushang’s lips.
When the golden pig was about to roll off the stage, it knocked against an invisible barrier and was stopped. Tianming was familiar with that; it was a heavenly pattern barrier. So who created this barrier to stop Zhou Yuanyuan from leaving? Without even needing to think, it was naturally someone in Wei Wushang’s party. Or, in other words, the elder who was supervising the ranking battle right now, Jiang Shangjing, had one eye closed in this battle. Now that Zhou Yuanyuan couldn’t leave, Jiang Nancheng had more than enough time to do whatever he wanted.
“Fatty, your life isn’t good. I’ll first cripple you before chopping off your hands,” Jiang Nancheng smiled eerily and charged over together with his Eight-eyed Kunwu. The kunwu spewed out black smoke, enveloping Jiang Nancheng within. As for the audience, they were shocked. Some of them were gloating, while some were terrified.
“It was obviously a trap today, and Tianming still came out. He’s really stupid,” many people mocked. But in the next moment, two incidents happened. Tianming and Ye Lingfeng charged over, and Tianming used his black arm to tear apart the heavenly pattern barrier. After coming to the Decimo Dao Palace, Tianming had experimented, and discovered his black arm was the nemesis of all heavenly pattern barriers. He could even tear open the Infernal Soul Barrier, not to mention this.
After Tianming tore apart the heavenly pattern barrier, Ye Lingfeng charged forth. The second was Zhou Yuanyuan, who brought out a heavenly pattern tome and dropped his blood on it. In the next second, an enormous mountain was summoned. It was like a huge wall that stood before him. When Jiang Nancheng and the Eight-eyed Kunwu ran into the mountain, they felt dizzy from the impact.
“What a waste!” Tianming was feeling heartache as he saw Zhou Yuanyuan use the Mountshield Tome. He and Ye Lingfeng had already come up, and they had more than enough time to deal with Jiang Nancheng. But Zhou Yuanyuan was so timid that he instantly used the heavenly pattern tome, costing more than a thousand saint crystals.
“Holy shit!” The appearance of the Mountshield Tome instantly caused a wave of wonder. No one had expected that Zhou Yuanyuan would be so wealthy. Even his weapons weren’t half of the price of the Mountshield Tome. Now that the heavenly pattern barrier was torn apart, Zhou Yuanyuan rolled off the stage on his golden pig and hid behind Li Qingyu.
“Are you guys insane?!” a woman’s voice suddenly sounded out. When Tianming turned around, he saw Bai Zijin where Zhou Yuanyuan had previously stood. That meant that even if Tianming hadn’t torn apart the heavenly pattern barrier, and Zhou Yuanyuan hadn’t used the Mountshield Tome, she could still have saved him.
At this moment, Zhou Yuanyuan was at the pinnacle of his life. The Mountshield Tome, Tianming, Ye Lingfeng, and Bai Zijin were protecting him.
The surroundings were dead silent. Tianming was worried that he would drag the fatty down, and the protective measures were all in place. There was no way Wei Wushang’s schemes could succeed. Looking at this scene, Zhou Yuanyuan was touched. He started crying and howled, “Why didn’t you say it earlier?! If you did, I wouldn’t have used the Mountshield Tome! If I sold it, I could have spent half a year fooling around with girls at the Romance River!"
He had suffered a huge loss. But what others saw was the failure of Wei Wushang’s scheme. Despite putting so many measures in place, they had still failed to deal with Zhou Yuanyuan, which meant that he had lost today.
“Who set up the heavenly pattern barrier? Stand out!” Before Bai Zijin could even speak, Jiang Shangjing descended on the stage and questioned.
“What a brilliant way of shoving the blame away. You’re afraid that others won’t know that you’re behind it?” Bai Zijin sneered.
“Brat, what are you talking about? Don’t you know that I can report you to the Disciplinary Hall for your accusation?” Jiang Shangjing raged.
“Retard.” Bai Zijin rolled her eyes. She couldn’t be bothered talking. Everyone knew that they were the ones behind it, trying to mess with Zhou Yuanyuan. But Zhou Yuanyuan wasn’t the key here—they were trying to infuriate Tianming. Although they had lost today, they’d already achieved their main objective, because Tianming was really furious.
“Let’s go. Don’t waste time with them.” Bai Zijin walked over.
“Okay.” Tianming nodded.
But right at that moment, Wei Wushang’s sneer sounded out, “Li Tianming, leave if you want. I can immediately get someone to issue a challenge once every three days. I’ll see how you’re going to cultivate! If you have the guts, protect this pig for the rest of your life. Otherwise, kneel and apologize to me right now, and I’ll let him go!”