The Presence measuring crystal cracked, allowing spiderwebs of damage to race along its surface before it burst into a cloud of dust.
The golden robed elder trembled where he stood.
Although the crowd might not know, he knew what the meaning was behind the crystal shattering.
Since the methods for testing titles was imperfect outside of the Epistemic Tower, it was obviously much harder to test those with higher potential. For a mere 98th quadrant, their best materials could only test to the marquis level, even those who were on the borderline between marquis and duke would cause the crystal to shatter. For example, their current Legatees would cause the crystal to shatter.
However, this was a massive problem. Even for those Legatees, the time it would take for the crystal to shatter was at least double if not triple the time it took for Dyon to cause it to do the same action. By all rights, this meant that Dyon’s title potential far exceeded that of their Legatees!
No one even noticed when Dyon walked over the soul crystal and placed his hand down. It was only after he stood there for more than ten seconds without it showing a reaction that the golden robed elder finally reacted.
“N- no innate soul… Passed…”
It was only now that those of the Unseen Peak sucked in a breath. It seemed Dyon didn’t lie about being a Duke, or else he would have never achieved these test results.
“Ah, ah.” Dyon’s voice interrupted. “Does that mean your first assessment of my title potential was correct? After all, you did say no title out loud. Could it be that crystals shatter for those with no title?”
The golden robed elder ground his teeth. “Duke Potential. Passed.”
Donari’s elder brother couldn’t understand. How could someone with 7th grade talent have better potential than he did? It didn’t make any sense!
In the crowd, behind the concealment array, Asyna and RolRol were just as surprised. After being highly disappointed by Dyon’s meridian grade, Asyna had even thought of leaving. Although it was true that other talents could make up for it, there was a reason energy cultivation was seen as the main path. It simply had the best returns of any of the other paths, so of course it was.
“By all rights, a 29-year-old who had entered the trials shouldn’t be able to make it to the essence gathering stage with mere 7th grade meridians.” RolRol muttered.
“Also, assuming the honey he has was a reward for his trials, it makes even less sense…” Asyna added.
Before, Asyna thought that Dyon had entered the tower around 10 years old. This would give him about 20 years in his trials, and would also mean that he had already reached the first essence gathering stage at 10.
However, such a thing was impossible for a person with 7th grade meridians, let alone the fact Dyon’s original set of meridians should have been far worse than that.
This crumbled Asyna’s whole theory and made her look down on Dyon slightly. If it wasn’t for the fact he was a formation expert and had a powerful body, Asyna would have already lost all interest. As one could see, her standards were quite high.
“Lilith should be coming with the core disciples of Soul Rending Peak soon since the preliminary rounds are almost finished. We should decide whether it’s worth it to stay or not now…” RolRol reminded.
Asyna frowned, unsure of what to do. Before, they were sure that Dyon was a major variable and they could use that as justification to stay. However, now Dyon’s poor talent had thrown a wrench in that.
In the end, the only way Asyna could make certain that Dyon was as much of a threat as she thought was by fighting him, but in order to fight him, she would have to wait for Lilith to arrive. It was truly a problem.
“Fuck it.” Asyna snorted. “What’s the worst she can do to us? Look.” Asyna pointed. “They’re here already anyway. Let’s go meet up with them.”
**
The first two rounds came to an end and the groups for the third were being quickly arranged.
For now, all 2500 hundred or so eligible participants stood in an organized formation with core disciples of the branch sects standing at the front and the miscellaneous participants standing behind them. Of course, Unseen Peak and Slaughter Peak took front stage as the two most powerful Peaks with Dyon and Donari’s elder brother at the very front.
This surprised many people because it only meant one thing: Unseen Peak had already conceded that Dyon was the most powerful among them. At this moment, Donari’s elder brother finally felt some pressure. He didn’t even remotely have the right to bet his family’s heaven stage technique… What if he lost?!
As for Dyon, he hardly cared. To him, there was exactly a 0% chance of him losing, he hadn’t even bothered to learn the name of his opponent, constantly calling him Donari’s elder brother this entire time.
However, before Donari’s elder brother could sweat it out any more, a blinding flash of light appeared in the sky near an empty platform that stood high in the sky.
“The elders have arrived!” The crowd started to get excited, this was always a rare event for them. It truly wasn’t often they saw such entities.
“They should have brought the challenging disciples too! Do you think we’ll see the Legatees?”
In that moment, the lights faded and the observing crowd was stunned into complete silence as 4 mind numbing beauties appeared, standing before a crowd of 100 or so Soul Rending Peak disciples.