The Yuhao Chronicles - Volume 1 Chapter 49

Only a single day had passed, yet a large number of freshmen had already been eliminated from the freshmen assessment. There were even more people in the Spectator’s Stand today. The stands had already been filled up, despite the matches not being started yet. After the second day finished, only the top 16 teams remained, with a total of 47 students. Everyone that had reached this point could be considered an excellent figure from this year’s freshmen; which increased the excitement Yuhao had towards today’s matches.

The area used for each individual match was widened once again, and eight massive arenas all simultaneously began their matches. This time around, Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong were facing three boys, in sharp contrast to yesterday’s three girls.

Once their opponents entered the arena, they stood in a horizontal line. The person who stood in the centre was a fat boy. This boy helped to define the term fat, as even though he would have to be 12 years old at most, he was nearly 1.7 metres tall and almost equally wide. He dwarfed his two teammates, as two short, and super skinny boys stood on either side of him.

The proctor spoke up, “Both sides, introduce yourselves. Prepare for the match to begin.”

The mountain-sized boy slapped his chest fiercely, causing the fat on his body to jiggle disturbingly. “I’m Xie Huanyue from Class 2.”

“Class 2, Luo Tianlong.”

“Class 2, Luo Tianba.”

Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong also introduced themselves. When the proctor announced the start of the match, the round of 16 formally started.

As soon as he did so, just like yesterday, Yuhao and Wang Dong shared an excited look. They were actually facing another three-ringed spirit master. Zhou Yi and a couple other teachers and elders who were watching these ‘two’ boys fight couldn’t help but smile at seeing their enthusiasm.

Three spirit rings rose up from the student known as Xie Huanyue. In the instant that he’d released his spirit rings, his body had unexpectedly expanded once again, causing his height to jump from 1.7 meters to 1.9 meters. Moreover, the colour of his skin had instantly darkened to a greyish-purple. He forcefully thumped his chest using his fists, causing muffled thumps to ring out. Immediately afterwards, he charged towards Huo Yuhao with large strides.

Luo Tianlong and Luo Tianba didn’t release their martial spirits straightaway. Instead, their bodies flashed as they began to run behind Xie Huanyue; they were using his enormous body to hide themselves.

This was their usual style of fighting, and it had allowed them the advantage of making the first move on many occasions in the past. Unfortunately, this was the first time they’d met someone like Huo Yuhao who not only had an insane defence, but also the means to use that defence in extremely versatile ways.

Following their previous strategy, which was extremely similar to their opponents, Yuhao and Wang Dong began running in a straight line. As they neared each other, Xie Huanyue used his second spirit ring which turned his skin even darker, prompting Yuhao to follow it with his own second spirit ring and increased his physical and elemental resistance by fifty per cent.

Two seconds later, they clashed together, with Yuhao having a big grin on his face. Contrary to what Xie Huanyue expected to happen with him bowling his opponent over due to his force and weight, he felt the elastic properties of his martial spirit come into play as it attempted to absorb the insane force being pressed into it. Xie Huanyue’s body fat began slowly compressing, expanding and squishing over Yuhao’s arms, however, it eventually stopped and that was when Huanyue’s face showed complete shock and fright.

At about one and a half times the speed he ran towards Yuhao at, Huanyue got rebounded backwards, flying across the arena and smashing into the portioning wall. Luckily for him, he didn’t fall down out of the arena as his rubber elephant spirit caused him to rebound back into the arena. When he came flying back towards them, with either a miracle or skill, he used his first spirit ring to perfectly launch himself into the air. At this point, as he began descending towards Yuhao and Wang Dong from the sky in a weird spinning motion, Yuhao couldn’t help but think of a movie he had heard about on Earth, ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs’.

Despite the massive temptation to use his FrostFire spirit to smack the meatball out of the sky like a homerun, Yuhao decided to instead save it for a later battle. Instead, he used his third spirit ring, summoning a portal in front of the descending opponent and spat him out towards the charging Luo brothers. These brothers had released their spirit already and used their first spirit ring to transform their arms into enormous Mantis Blades.

Both of the brothers quickly noticed the portal that shot out their teammate towards them and they both attempted to dive out of the way. However, for whatever reason, even though Tianba was closer to the right side of the portal, his first instinct was to jump to the left, the same way as his brother.

This caused him to be clipped by the massive, speeding Xie Huanyue, and with only his agility-based physique, he was unable to defend himself and was both knocked out of the arena and knocked unconscious. Huanyue himself managed to just land inside the arena. He suddenly stood up, as if he was ready to fight, before heeling over and vomiting all over the side of the arena and his shoes.

Wang Dong in this time took the opportunity to appear up close to Luo Tianlong and activated his first butterfly wing guillotine skill. His speed easily matched that of Luo Tianlong’s without converting his spirit power into speed, however, with Wang Dong’s four attack capable wing blades in comparison to Tianlong’s two attack capable arm blades, he was steadily overpowering him.

Wang Dong slowly but surely pushed him towards the back of the arena using his skill and wings, giving him a final four-wing slash to destroy his block and send him sprawling out of the area. Yuhao followed this up by kicking Xie Huanyue in back, directly through a portal to avoid having to step near the vomit. This, just like what happened with Tianlong, sent him outside of the arena.

The proctor and spectators who had been watching the match were silent. Despite many of the interested parties knowing to an extent, the level of skill and ability these two kids had, they still couldn’t help but be surprised seeing their ability to not only smoothly coordinate their movements with one another but also their ability to easily counter any kind of attack they faced. Despite them dominating the fight from the get-go, unlike other fights where one team easily overpowered another, these kids just seemed to do it in an extremely varied, eye-catching way.

The proctor quickly called the match in Yuhao’s favour and signalled some nearby staff to assist with the recovery of the injured students and the cleaning of the arena for the next fight that afternoon.

The Director of the Martial Spirit Department, Du Weilun, walked over to the stunned Zhou Yi. “Teacher Zhou, congratulations on teaching these two excellent students. Report them to the higher-ups. I believe that they both have the qualifications to become core disciples of the outer courtyard.”

The freshmen assessment had already entered its final stages, and the top eight had already been decided from the morning matches. There was no doubt that these eight teams were the most outstanding teams amongst the freshmen students. However, two of the teams in the knockout tournament that were led by Spirit Elder-ranked students had actually been eliminated, to everybody’s surprise. More importantly, they had actually been eliminated by the same team.

There were only eight teams left in the knock-out round. The moment Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong arrived at the Assessment Area, they immediately attracted the attention of the other seven teams. It was clear that none of the other teams were wanting to fight against the two of them in the quarterfinals, as they had managed to gain quite a rumour of their strength.

Huo Yuhao walked back towards Wang Dong after finding out who they are facing. “There’s a one in seven chance that we’re going to fight against the last team that has a Spirit Elder in it.”

Wang Dong leaned in mysteriously, attracting the gazes of all the surrounding students. He smirked and whispered, “Should we pray for it?”

Huo Yuhao chuckled, “If you want. Our luck has already been good so far. I wouldn’t count on it. Our opponent should be strong regardless if they made it this far.”

Wang Dong nodded as they walked to their arena, ready to enter their third last battle for the tournament.