Alex looked at the house carefully. It seemed to have been made out of brick and mud mostly, yet had a moderately large wooden board on the outside.
'That's a weird choice for a design,' he thought. He looked around thinking what to do next.
He then saw a person walking on the road outside and stopped him. "Hello brother, I'm new here. Do you mind telling me how I can find the owner of this house?"
"New?" he looked at Alex's cultivation base and realized he was just as strong as him. "If it's for challenging, just go to the fighting hall and challenge him. Unless he is out of the sect, you can fight him for the house."
"Oh, and where is the fighting hall?" Alex asked.
"Take this road straight around the mountain, and you will find the fighting hall in the sect crater." The man left after saying that. Alex decided to follow what the man was saying and followed the path that went around the side of the mountain.
After a few minutes of walking, he went past the mountain, coming up on the other side. When he looked down on the other side of the mountain, he was surprised.
"He wasn't kidding when he said crater." In front of him was a massive crater on the back half of the mountain. The crater had reshaped the mountain to have a crescent shape on the backside, and the paths that went around the side, all joined eventually to go down to the crater through either of the two narrow parts of the mountain remaining.
Alex walked down to the crater and was shocked at just how large it was. The crater, just by itself, was about twice the size of the Hong Wu sect's sect valley.
'What could have fallen here to have caused such a large crater?' he wondered. Even a saint realm monster only made a 20 meters wide crater. For something to make such a big crater, it would have to be very large or very powerful.
He walked into the crater looking at the different buildings. Surprisingly, there were very few buildings here. What there were a lot of were fighting stages. Everywhere he turned his head to, he could see two disciples fighting each other with an elder staying as a referee.
He finally found a building named Fighting Hall. He saw at least a dozen different lines of disciples outside the hall. He asked the person in front of him how he should go about fighting someone, and the person simply pointed towards the wall behind the elders recording the fight requests.
'Oh wow, that's quite a comprehensive list of rules.' He thought. He read the rules and was surprised just how much fighting was allowed in the sect.
A disciple could challenge 10 times in a day, and could also be challenged 10 times a day. Unless the disciple was out on leave by the authority of the sect, he would have to fight every single one of the challenging battles.
Every Monday to Thursday, one would have to finish their fights by 9 pm. On Friday and Saturday however, there was no limit to how much someone was challenged. But also, one didn't have to end all of their fights at all. But, if they went an hour without fighting, the match would be automatically forfeited.
Sunday was the only day of rest for these people and nobody was allowed to challenge anybody. This was his first day today, so he was exempted from the rules, but starting tomorrow, he would have to fight this way too.
Finally, when his turn came, he took out his badge and handed it to the elder, and said, "275". According to the rules, one could register a fight with someone based on their names or their badge number.
The elder was surprised to see a number difference between the number in the badge and the number of the opponent. But when he looked at Alex's robe, he understood.
The elder quickly registered the fight and took out a medallion from his bag to transmit something. "Go to stage 24 and wait for your opponent to arrive. If he doesn't arrive by 9 pm, you win."
Alex thanked the elder and searched for stage 24. It didn't take him long to find the stage as there were numbered stones in front of the stage.
He waited outside the stage and watched the people in front of his fight. Most of the people used swords or spears, while very few liked to fight hand to hand. He didn't see any of the other types of fighters his master has told him about.
Many people came and fought. The elder would call out his and his opponent's number from time to time, but only he would respond. His opponent was nowhere to be seen.
Once again another fight ended. The elder always took the disciples badged before they fought and gave the lower numbered badge to the person who won. 'What exactly is the benefit of having a lower-numbered badge aside from getting to live in the inner set disciple's area?' he wondered.
"Number 2608 and 275"
"" Here"" two sounds came out at the same time. One of them was Alex, while the other one belonged to a 20-year-old man with an elongated face. The man looked towards Alex and was shocked. Hearing the number, he had expected an outer sect disciple to try out his luck at the lowest-ranked inner sect disciple. But when he saw Alex in his inner sect clothes, he was shocked.
Alex looked at the man and realized he was in Muscle Tempering 5th Realm. 'So weak?' he thought.
Both of them walked up to the stage and handed their badges to the elder. The elder too was surprised to see Alex wearing inner sect disciples' clothes, but said nothing about it.
Alex wasn't sure how exactly to fight this person. His only fighting experience till now had been with the monsters in the forest, and those were the ones he killed. He couldn't even hurt his opponent badly here, much less kill them. He was in a real dilemma now.
