Chapter 277: Curtains Open on the Great Selection
After continual rumors of the great selection, the atmosphere around this event finally reached its peak within the sixteen kingdoms.
Almost all pract.i.tioners who fulfilled the requirements were each fighting for a piece of cake just for their chance to try.
On this day, Jiang Chen brought his personal guards to register within the capital.
The registration period would last for half a month.
There were hundreds of registration sites.
Particularly for the Skylaurel Kingdom, as it was one of the four great kingdoms, there were many who’d reached the basic requirement of the advanced true qi realm.
In the entire Jiang manor, apart from Jiang Chen, Ke Mu, Shen Yifan, and Bi Yun were also partic.i.p.ating in the great selection.
Jiang Chen had once spoken to Gouyu privately, but her att.i.tude had been resolute and she’d had no interested in the great selection. She’d emphasized that her intuition told her that following Jiang Chen was far greater than joining any sect.
Although she didn’t publicly criticize Ke Mu, Shen Yifan, and Bi Yun’s decision, she privately thought very little of them. She felt that they’d thrown away the watermelon in order to pick up a sesame.
Setting aside the question of whether or not they’d be able to make it through the great selection, even if they could, they wouldn’t receive too many resources from the sect with their potential. It was better to remain by Jiang Chen’s side.
When had Jiang Chen not done right by his people?
Of course, Gouyu could only keep these thoughts to herself. Everyone had their own ambitions, and she was just his follower and naturally wouldn’t say much else.
The registration procedure for the great selection wasn’t complex. One had to supply proof of ident.i.ty, test their strength, and verify their age.
They would receive the partic.i.p.ation medallion after pa.s.sing these three parts.
Of course, the medallion was tied to each person’s ident.i.ty and could not be transferred. Once lost, the pract.i.tioner would lose their right to partic.i.p.ate.
Jiang Chen was quite renowned in the kingdom by now, and his appearance immediately caused a furor at the registration station. Many young pract.i.tioners even cleared a path for him, wanting to let Jiang Chen register first.
Ordinarily speaking, no one should be offered the right of way in the world of martial dao, particularly in the matters of registration. No one could even think about cutting in line then.
The fact that he could inspire pract.i.tioners to voluntarily give up their place in line showed that Jiang Chen had a place in their hearts.
However, he waved his hands and turned down everyone’s good intentions with a smile. He was signing up with three personal guards and didn’t want special treatment.
When they saw that Jiang Chen wasn’t about to cut in line and was standing there with everyone, these ordinary disciples felt even more kindly disposed towards Jiang Chen.
They’d almost forgotten that they were here to sign up as they made their greetings to Jiang Chen and started chatting.
Jiang Chen was also quite easy going. Even when some of them asked him for pointers, he didn’t hesitate to converse with them.
In this regard, his popularity grew even higher.
Those who’d received his pointers were overjoyed and their eyes sparkling with excitement.
People with higher abilities of comprehension restrained the delight in their eyes, meditating where they stood in order to digest the pointers Jiang Chen had given them.
With this, the registration site that Jiang Chen had selected became extraordinarily crowded.
In the end, even the person in charge of registering everyone wanted to abandon his station and listen to Jiang Chen’s lecture.
After all, Jiang Chen’s reputation lately had simply been too great.
Thanks to the processing of the gossip mill, everything he’d done had become synonymous with legends.
That a pract.i.tioner from a foreign land had gone up against stronger powers time after time, but had always won!
Everyone had thought at first that he was relying on Ye Chonglou’s support.
But this time, when the honored tutor had gone to the Precious Tree Sect, Jiang Chen had used his own power to capture sect geniuses Iron Dazhi and Zhou Yi!
When this news spread through various channels and had been embellished through the grapevine, Jiang Chen had become the youngest legend within the capital without a doubt.
Without Ye Chonglou’s help, Jiang Chen had taken down two earth spirit realm geniuses and had even captured a group of law enforcement disciples by himself!
When this news traveled, Jiang Chen’s fame shot upward, unstoppable in its momentum.
In actuality, the hearts of the ordinary pract.i.tioners held a particular longing for the sects. This feeling, apart from yearning, was also mixed with a bit of distaste and even envy for the sect disciples.
On what basis that they were out there in the ordinary world, fighting tooth and nail for a bit of resources and yet these sect disciples could sit within their homes, enjoying vast amounts of resources, becoming the proud sons of the heavens? Why could these sect disciples throw their weight around in the mundane world and have no one within their sights, stepping on faces as they would?
While ordinary pract.i.tioners envied the sect disciples, they were also quite ticked off about their demeanors.
And Jiang Chen happened to fulfill their various negative feelings. He’d beat them into a pulp, stepped on them and pulled them down from their thrones, thereby ripping through the facade of their geniuses and thoroughly made them lose face!
One had to say, they’d found a psychological comfort with Jiang Chen and a place to vent their emotions.
In this regard, it wasn’t too hard to understand why the mundane pract.i.tioners viewed Jiang Chen as a hero.
At first, they hadn’t accepted Jiang Chen as they felt that he was just someone who depended on the great tree which was Ye Chonglou. But now, Jiang Chen could still stomp on the sect disciples without the honored tutor!
What did that mean?
It meant that Jiang Chen was an ordinary genius, making him the hope of ordinary pract.i.tioners, and the role model that they should strive to emulate.
Jiang Chen hadn’t thought either that his surprise appearance would cause such an uproar.
Normally, registration should have taken only an hour, but it took ten to twelve hours for him before he was allowed to leave.
This scene also made the three followers who were also registering pause and think for a moment. They couldn’t help but doubt themselves, was it a wise move that the three of them were joining in the great selection?
However, they knew that since they’d made their choice, there was no way to turn back now.
Fifteen days registration period actually wasn’t a generous amount of time. It was a good thing that those who reached the minimum requirements didn’t want to miss out and made haste, making it so that there weren’t very many left who needed to sign up in the last two days.
Three days of preparation followed the end of registration.
Jiang Chen made use of this time to make some basic preparations.
This initial selection was of no difficulty towards Jiang Chen. He knew that his goal was the ultimate selection in the second round.
He wasn’t that interested in becoming the true disciple of an origin realm pract.i.tioner.
However, he truly needed that kind of core resources. In his current stage, only the sects controlled the core resources of the sixteen kingdoms.
Jiang Chen was well aware that with the rise of his martial dao, he could not possibly avoid the sects.
Since he couldn’t avoid them, then he would face them with aplomb. The demeanor of his past life allowed him to be able to put anything down in front of him.
“Although I, Jiang Chen, possess the memories of my past life and thus hold an unparalleled advantage, this body is only of average quality in this world. If I can’t put my pride down and join the sects, then I will only meet stronger and stronger young geniuses in the future. In this vast world, not all of them are as childish as Iron Dazhi…”
Jiang Chen thought through things after he’d made up his mind.
He must try his hardest in this great selection!
There were around fifty thousand who’d reached the advanced true qi realm below the age of 40 in the Skylaurel Realm.
All of the four great kingdoms could field this number.
The second rate kingdoms were around ten thousand.
The third rate kingdoms, such as Eastern Kingdom, could send around two to three thousand.
After the disaster of the Soaring Dragon rebellion, it was in last place without a doubt, along with the Darkmoon Kingdom.
After the Darkmoon Kingdom’s failure to invade the Eastern Kingdom and the thorough defeat by Jiang Chen, they’d suffered great losses and their number of elites diminished.
The number of people from the two kingdoms were less than a thousand. It was a true tragedy.
Within the sixteen kingdom alliance, all of their numbers added together were almost four hundred thousand!
Although this number was enormous, it still fell far short of the four great sects’ expectations.
They’d thought that the total would exceed five hundred thousand at the very least, or perhaps even reach a million. They hadn’t thought that there’d be less than four hundred thousand suitable candidates.
The smaller the denominator was, the less choice they had in selection.
…...
The legacy territory of ancient times sat in the center of the sixteen kingdoms, within the third rate Redflame Kingdom.
With the legacy territory within its boundaries, that should’ve been a boon to the Redflame Kingdom. However, it was an absolute nightmare instead.
With the legacy realm here, the four great sects naturally wouldn’t let any strong kingdoms appear around it.
Why was that?
It was naturally because they were worried that the Redflame Kingdom would grow too strong and thus control the realm, threatening the four sect’s positions of power within the sixteen kingdoms.
The four great sects could not afford to let this situation happen at all.
Therefore, the strongest kingdoms and four great sects of the alliance had all formed an accord that limited the development of the Redflame Kingdom, continuously halting it at the stage of a third rate kingdom and never allowing it to have any hopes of growing strong.
Whenever a genius appeared within its borders, they would immediately be taken out of the Redflame Kingdom, absorbed into the sects and brainwashed into becoming loyal to the sects unto death.
In this regard, it was impossible for the Redflame Kingdom to grow strong.
The royal family of this kingdom were also puppets and had seemed to accept their fate, never rebelling even once.
However, the number of partic.i.p.ants from this kingdom was slightly better than the Eastern and Darkmoon kingdoms. It was third from last.
It was actually rather surprising that the shame of being last hadn’t landed on its head.
Three to four days were needed to travel from the Skylaurel Kingdom to the Redflame Kingdom. Jiang Chen had made sure everyone was settled at home before leaving.
He obviously couldn’t take the Swordbird Army with him, so he left them to Gouyu and directed them to protect home.
Jiang Chen brought the Goldbiter Rats with him, however.
The key thing was that the Millionditch Stone Nest could be placed into a s.p.a.ce ring and thus made it easier to carry around.
The most defining factor was that no one knew anything of the legacy realm. So one additional bit of preparation was one more bit of insurance.
The partic.i.p.ants from the Skylaurel Kingdom reached the Redflame Kingdom in less than a day.
As for the Redflame Kingdom, it was a bustling spot of activity as many partic.i.p.ants had already arrived.