Jinjing Liqiu stepped out from the loge of the elders and rose into the sky alongside Tengfei Ye and amidst a whirling tempest of wind that could be felt throughout the entire arena.

  It was a massive, elaborate structure that their two sects had, in a showcase of their wealth and capabilities, constructed entirely from the bottom up specifically for this tournament. And it was filled to the brim with tens of thousands of cultivators from sects all across the Northern Sect Alliance.

  Virtually every sect had sent a delegation, most accompanied by their leaders or at least their elders, as well as put up a participant. Regardless of if you counted numbers or tried to value diplomatic weight, this was the biggest gathering of cultivators in several decades. The whole thing was a monumental diplomatic success that people would be talking about for years to come and a strong signal that their influence still reached far and deep.

  In the face of this, many of the smaller sects had already renewed their oath of loyalty to them and many more that had at least indicated a wish to deepen their relationship with them. It was a full-blown turnaround from their previous image.

  All that was left now was actually holding the tournament. To perfect their work, they were naturally hoping that their disciples would stand out with a good performance and while there was ultimately no way to guarantee this, they had done their best to sway the odds in their favor.

  They had trained their chosen participants to the best of their sects’ abilities and even arranged the matchups in such a way, that high positions would be pretty much ensured for their best contestants. It was perhaps a little distasteful to do so, but if it meant a better situation for their sects, they were both willing to adopt such tricks.

  Once the two had arrived above the center of the arena and noise from the crowd had fully died down Liqiu started speaking, projecting her voice outwards through the use of Qi.

  “Greetings, everyone. I, Jinjing Liqiu, Matriarch of the Parting Clouds Sect, welcome you all to this grand occasion.”

  “I, Tengfei Ye, Patriarch of the Serene Plains Sect, extend my greetings to you as well. We are proud to see that all of you have followed our invitation to attend this tournament that our two sects are jointly hosting.”

  “We are holding this event as a showcase and celebration of our next generation’s talent and achievements in the art of cultivation. To this end, we have asked sects from all across the Northern Sect Alliance to put forward their most promising disciples of all ages to allow them to prove themselves before the united eyes of all important sects on the peninsula!”

  She made sure to emphasize that part, as it was the core message that this event was supposed to signal. The entire alliance, brought together under their actions.

  “To ensure fair chances for everyone, the disciples have been split into four brackets according to their age. The bracket for those up to age fourteen will give the young ones who have only just embarked on their cultivation journey a chance to shine. That between fifteen and eighteen will encompass those who have made it into the Body Reformation Realm, but not yet started enacting the physical changes to their body. The one between nineteen and twenty-four will allow those who are quick at progressing through these changes to utilize that advantage, while the one for those up to thirty will favor those who have completed it with the most skill.

  “Like this, quick adaptation to the life of a cultivator, good combat skills and extensive training, as well as both high speed and quality of cultivation are all covered in the different brackets of this tournament.”

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  In truth, this system was of course not nearly as fair as Tengfei Ye was making it out to be. Aside from the most obvious problems, like it heavily favoring those disciples at the upper edges of their age group or some of the younger disciples having been trained long before they were officially adopted as such, there were numerous more subtle ways that it could be exploited, most of which would naturally be identified and utilized by the majority of sects.

  In Jinjing Liqiu’s experience, that didn’t really matter though; a tournament like this was really not a great way to evaluate and compare the skill and talent of a large and diverse group of disciples in the first place, no matter the setup, and most people in the position to make decisions were aware of that. This was more so a way for sects to show off and measure each other in a matter that didn’t involve actual conflict than for the actual disciples, so all that was needed was an illusion of fairness to maintain appearances.

  With Tengfei Ye having finished his segment of explanation, it was once again her turn to speak.

  “The tournament will be held in a manner of single-elimination duels. The victor of any given battle will move on to the next round, the loser will be eliminated. To ensure that the most promising disciples aren’t eliminated early, the matches have been arranged by an impartial party in a manner that ensures they won’t meet each other in the first rounds.”

  This ‘impartial party’ didn’t exist of course. Not only would that not make sense from a tactical point of view, but it would also be an almost impossible task to find a cultivator skilled enough to make all of these estimates in an accurate way based on the little information available who was truly impartial between all of the sects.

  “As you can see, the arena has been split into five stages. In the early rounds, all of these stages will simultaneously be utilized. Because over five hundred disciples will participate in total, this is necessary to finish all the fights in a timely manner. The matches deemed most interesting and worthy of attention will always take place on the central stage. We can not guarantee the accuracy of these estimates though, as they are merely based on observations of our tournament examiners.”

  Another point that was important to emphasize, in this case to make sure not to offend the many sects that would inevitably not be featured on the main stage, while undoubtedly feeling that they deserved that spot. They could be angry at some anonymous examiner all they wanted, what mattered was that they wouldn’t feel insulted by the hosting sects.

  “There are a few additional measures and rules to avoid any tampering by outside forces. Participants will be monitored for the influence of strengthening substances. All equipment is provided by the hosts, so no enchanted artifacts influence the outcomes. The attention of the present cultivators will naturally detect anything that might otherwise slip through the cracks, so I would heavily disadvise anyone from trying. Failure to comply with this will lead to immediate disqualification from the tournament.

  “A duel ends either by knockout, decision of the examiner, or yield. In the latter case, the other fighter needs to officially accept the yield, showing their agreement that the outcome of the battle has been sufficiently made clear. If they are of the opinion that this is not the case, we ask them to reject the yield and continue with the fight. This is necessitated to hinder intimidation tactics by making any such instances plain obvious to outside observers. For similar reasons, participants will only be informed of their matchup shortly before their turn.”

  All of that didn’t truly prevent intimidation, but it did make it more difficult to pull off. In the end, that was all they could hope to accomplish without resorting to unreasonable measures. In the end, as with the other measures of fairness, it was mostly a matter of optics.

  “Aside from that, we simply ask all competitors to honor the competition through acting fair and reasonable, depending not on tricks but on their own skill to succeed. In that spirit, we wish everyone the best of luck and hope that we have a tournament worthy of the honor and greatness of all the present sects!”

  With that the two floated back to the loge, leaving the eyes of the crowd behind. In their stead, the announcer they had chosen climbed a small podium built for him on the floor of the arena. The large, muscular man took the attention of the crowd with his loud, voluminous voice.

  “Hello everyone, and welcome to the tournament! Since I’m sure you are all ready for the fights to start, I won’t leave you waiting. Our first duel on the main stage will take place between Xiaobo from the Silver Blood Sect and Chonglin from the Esteemed Lunar Peaks Sect! Let’s welcome them with a cheer!”

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