Chapter 147 - True Meaning of the Ultimate Style!
One stone could stir up thousands of ripples.
All the martial arts course freshmen cast puzzled gazes at him.
“Why?”
“Meng Chao clearly did not join the tournament between freshmen yesterday!”
“Didn’t you say that standards to enter the list are based on our results during classes and our performance yesterday? If it’s based on those two, he shouldn’t have been able to be chosen, right?”
“That’s right! Isn’t it better to choose me? If I go to the frontlines, I will definitely be able to kill more monsters than him!”
It was a chance that came once in a blue moon. There were a lot of resources to be gained, connections to be formed, treasures to be found, and real fighting experience to be obtained, and they were all waiting for them to be harvested at the frontlines. The martial arts course freshmen were naturally jealous.
“Quiet!” Li Yingzi frowned a little, and she gave off the spirit flames of a griffin. Once she suppressed the entire field, she said faintly, “The list was decided by Dean Zong and the lecturers in the course based on all sorts of elements. I can assure you that each of the students on the list was chosen for a reason.
“Of course, since this is a rare chance to get real fighting experience, we have tried our best to be fair, transparent, and just. If you have any opinions about the list, you can bring them out. We will give you a chance to accept the results.
“Since you’re in the martial arts course, the frontlines naturally want us to provide our maximum fighting power. So, if you have absolute confidence in your fighting strength, you can challenge the students on the list. Any one of you who manages to win against the students on the list can take their place to fight in the north!”
Once she said those words, more than a few people in the crowd gulped. Everyone rubbed their fists and stared at Meng Chao hungrily.
It was as if they were staring at a feeble duck that was placed on a chopping board after it was cooked.
“But there are rules to challenging the students,” Li Yingzi said coldly. “First, the challenged is to set the time, place, and rules for the fight. Second, the challenged can only be challenged once a day. After they are challenged three times, they have the right to refuse any other challengers. Third, the challenged can set the stakes. The loser must give the winner a certain number of monster coins to restore the challenged’s stamina, spirit energy, and mental strength.”
The three rules were all normal.
When the students fought against each other in the martial arts course or had fights against students from other courses, they had similar rules.
If they could not accept it and challenged the person, they naturally had to pay a certain price for it.
Otherwise, when dozens of people went up one after another to challenge a person, the challenged one would be exhausted and get sick of being challenged.
And if there were no stakes in a fight, the two sides would have no motivation to battle.
The students were familiar with the rules, so quite a number of people immediately got ready to fight.
But before they could do anything, Meng Chao walked forward.
“Ms. Li, is there any room for a change in the rules?” he asked calmly.
The crowd was stunned and looked at him with disapproval.
Li Yingzi schooled her face and said, “If you don’t want to be challenged, you can give up your slot. I believe that no one will force you on the arena if that’s the case.”
“You misunderstand me. It’s not that I don’t want to accept the challenges. I just think that the number of challengers is too small. I can only accept one fight a day, and at most, it’ll be three challenges. I won’t have fun that way.” Meng Chao smiled and said clearly, “I want to fight against ten.”
“What?!”
The students were dumbfounded. They wondered whether their ears were deceiving them.
When they noticed that everyone else made the same sounds, they started wondering whether there was something wrong with Meng Chao’s head.
“Besides, I don’t want to limit my challengers to the students outside the list. The ones listed on the list are all outstanding students in our course. I’m also very interested in showing them the newest development of the martial art that will transform the way we fight.”
Meng Chao did not hide his provocative gaze. He stared straight at Duan Lian.
He extended his arms and drew a huge circle around him. “As for the rules. There’s no need for so much trouble. We’ll do it here. From now on, ten of you can have a go at me at once. If I defeat all of you, the losers have to give me three thousand monster coins each. If you defeat me, I will give you thirty thousand monster coins and even give up my slot. How does that sound?”
His incredibly arrogant words made all the students lose control of their facial muscles for a full ten seconds.
“Does he even know what he said?”
“He’s going to fight one against ten! That’s even harder than fighting against ten people back-to-back!”
“The top fifty students in the course are about the same level in strength. Even if Sun Ya has cleared more than eighty main meridians, she wouldn’t dare to say that she can fight against ten people in a row. Even if she was fighting against five and ran into someone at the level of the Four Great Kings, she’d feel incredibly troubled.”
“Meng Chao should have only cleared around three main meridians. Even if that Ultimate Style he’s been playing with has made progress, it’s impossible for him to handle ten opponents’ attacks!”
Even Li Yingzi frowned.
“Meng Chao, martial artists aren’t monsters. They won’t be fighting each other,” she said with a hidden meaning in her words.
Meng Chao quirked his eyebrows.
He knew it. The lecturers and the dean of the department already knew about what had happened the previous night. It was the reason he got his slot.
“Thanks for the reminder, Ms. Li, but I trust myself, and I believe in the power of the Ultimate Style.”
Meng Chao flung his arms. His shoulder blades and chest let out cracking sounds. Bright light shone in his eyes, and a sharp fighting spirit shot out of him.
“Who are the ten students who want to challenge me? Come forward!”
Duan Lian could no longer hold himself back. He growled and stepped forward.
His muscles were filled with explosive strength, causing the incredibly elastic uniform to stretch out so tightly that it looked as thin as a cicada’s wings. He looked like a balloon that was about to burst.
The other students looked at each other at a loss. Sun Ya, Xie Feng, and Jiang Rui found it embarrassing to attack Meng Chao together with Duan Lian, but three other students who were listed among the twenty-one stood out. They were joined by six students who did not make it onto the list, but were acknowledged to be the six strongest out of the ones who did not make it. They formed a group of ten martial artists and set up a killing formation that gave off a shocking pressure.
“Very well. Next, I will let you understand the fighting model of the future, and you will see the secret of the Ultimate Style. Of course, you will also understand the reason behind why I went into the grove with Wu Wu yesterday night.”
Despite being faced by ten people surrounding him, Meng Chao showed no fear. Instead, he squatted down to take a crouching start, the position for a sprint.
For a period of time, visible ripples could be seen in the air around him.
It was as if his fighting spirit had gained physical form. It turned into layers of ripples, which were filled with blades that could cut hair.
In fact, his whole body became blurry and mysterious.
Even the students who had not thought of him as anything special found their hearts clenching up when they saw this scene.
‘Could it be that he wasn’t boasting, and he has actually understood some sort of secret martial art?’
The ten students instantly stopped underestimating him. They felt the wind blades cut into their skin, and goosebumps rose on their skins. Even their hair stood up on end.
Their minds started playing tricks on them. They felt that they were not surrounding Meng Chao, but a peerless monster that came from the apocalypse. It was currently covered in human skin, and in truth, it was the one surrounding them.
Whoosh!
Meng Chao moved.
He pressed his foot against the ground, and sparks shot out while crushed stones flew out more than ten meters away. When he stayed still, he was nothing special, but when he moved, his speed rose to the max. He turned into a fierce afterimage and charged at Duan Lian, who was right in front of him, and who also happened to be the strongest.
“Perfect timing!” Duan Lian shouted out like a monster. He punched forward, and the spirit flames that were stirred up actually resembled a raging lion with its fangs and claws in attack. It looked like it wanted to eat Meng Chao.
The two looked like tidal waves that were about to crash into each other.
At the moment they were about to exchange blows, Meng Chao spun like a high-speed top.
Not only did he manage to avoid Duan Lian’s offense, he also used the friction to increase his speed.
Just like that, he moved in a strange curve that allowed him to avoid the other three students’ offense, and he continued moving away from the crowd.
The attacker’s had yet to react to it.
They could only watch as surrounded by an astonishingly murderous intent and fighting will he took up a stance suggesting that he wanted to take the initiative at a high speed. He charged past half of the field like a mad dog, jumped on the rostrum, ran past Li Yingzi along with a few morelecturers, landed behind the rostrum, and arrived at the highest spot of the audience seat.
Up to that moment, he hadn’t turned his head around.
Without doing it still, he jumped down and vanished outside the field.
The response from Li Yingzi, Duan Lian, Sun Ya, Xie Feng, Jiang Rui, and all the martial arts course students was identical.
“…”
After the challengers registered what had happened, they quickly chased after him to the highest part of the audience stand and rose on tiptoes to look outside.
“No way, he ran away!”
“He sure is fast! In just a moment, he ran out of the martial arts course and is already halfway through the university compound!”
“Wha… What’s the meaning of this? Didn’t he say that he wants to fight against ten?”
They looked at each other with so many sarcastic quips on their tongue that they did not know where to start.
“Damn it, we were duped again!” Duan Lian slapped his thigh and said through gritted teeth, “He said just now that as long as he defeats us, he will give us thirty thousand monster coins and will even relinquish his slot.
“But the problem is, he didn’t specify the arena. He just swung his arms around the area casually and said ‘here’. Who the heck knows how big his circle is and what his ‘here’!
“The field can be ‘here’, the entire martial arts course can be ‘here’, even the Agricultural University can also be ‘here’. Our university is famous for having a complicated terrain. Plants grow everywhere here. He can just find a place to hide and sleep comfortably until midnight, and no one will be able to catch him.
“He has never thought about fighting against ten of us because it’s impossible for him to fight against ten of us. This was just a scheme to provoke us. To hell with his Ultimate Style. He wanted to run away right from the start!”