Observation

Edrick observed the subsequent duels with a keen eye, watching people fight was a rather interesting thing to do, though right now, he was trying to look for female outer disciples that could capture his attention, as there were plenty of rooms for maids in his residence, and that number would keep on growing, so it was best to be on the lookout for potential recruits.

Naturally, there were some conditions, first of all, they needed to get his middle leg interested, secondly, they needed to show some sort of aptitude at something, naturally, the most obvious thing here would be combat strength, unfortunately, so far there wasn’t much to see, as one might expect, the majority of disciples were male to begin with, and none of them were even remotely feminine enough for Edrick to consider, sure, he still had an Everlasting Elixir Of Inversion, but only a single vial, and without any clear way to acquire more for now, futhermore, he already had someone in mind to use it on.

So alas, apart from the spectacle of watching people strike and injure one another, things were rather uneventful, and so, he waited whilst his wives leaned against him until his name was called again, which took about three hours as the rest of the disciples fought their duels, this time, he would be facing off against someone who had previously won, and coincidentally, he was called at the same time as Xiao again, but once more, not to fight against one another.

As he stepped onto an arena again, he glanced at his adversary, a man wielding a rather uncommon weapon, a twinblade.

It was hard to miss him during his previous fight, that guy was pretty good indeed, spinning and swinging his weapon around with remarkable ease, clearly, he had some good coordination to handle such a weapon, if his cultivation talent was at least average, he should have a pretty good shot at going far in life.

His opponent must have also seen his fight, as he visibly tensed up the moment he realised that it was Anoteros whomst he was facing off against, but once again, Edrick's adversary kept his cool, and the moment Elder Gang gave the signal for the duels to begin, the outer disciple rushed forward, twinblade spinning and moving around, clearly attempting to confuse Edrick and keep him from predicting where the first strike would come from.

In response, the noble scion merely poised himself as though he was going to take a swing with his Kanabo, going for an incredibly wide swing that was heavily telegraphed, the outer disciple guessed that Edrick was merely going to swipe the area in front of him to prevent him from approaching, but just as it seemed like Anoteros was committing to the attack, he simply let go of his club, letting it spin weakly through the air.

The way it was thrown forced the twinblade user to jump over it, and for a few seconds, his attention was directed to the flying weapon, which was equivalent to just staring at the ground, and before he could even glance back up, something sunk into his right shoulder, cleanly cutting into a muscle linking the shoulder to the arm.

His arm suddenly lost strength, and he could barely even groan in pain as he saw Anoteros barrelling toward him, full-on sprinting, looking as unstoppable as a rhinoceros blindly charging through the savanna.

And with the knife in his shoulder, he couldn’t raise his twinblade in time, getting a taste of Edrick’s shoulder before he was flung like a ragdoll, hitting the ground and rolling.

“I… I give up…” he weakly called out, having managed not to be put to sleep on the spot by that hit, Edrick just picked up his Kanabo and left the throwing knife with the outer disciple as a little souvenir.

The Elt glanced up at the elevated stone box, right now, there should be two, young noble ladies accompanying their great aunt and aunt respectively, and he wasn’t certain if these fights would pick their interest, they were members of great clans after all, and were certainly far more accomplished in cultivation than him, so it might not be very enteirtaining to watch him trounce some poor commoners.

Hopefully, they would stick around until he ended up against Xiao, that fight should be a whole league above everything else here.

Speaking of the protagonist, the crimson-eyed youth had easily defeated another opponent, having once again pushed them out of bounds with a feint, either the feint was a new one, or his opponent had unfortunately not seen Xiao’s previous fight, in any case, the main character was progressing unimpeded.

A few more rounds went by, and like a jar filled with venomous creatures, the weak were culled, leaving only the top of the basket amongst the outer disciples, most were amongst those who had already caught the eye of elders and had received guidance from them, but there were also a fair amount of outer disciples who had gotten here solely by training on their own.

This included some disciples that Edrick had met whilst training under some of the elders before, and those guys were even less confident than his previous adversaries, they had a better grasp of just how powerful he was compared to them, getting far in the tournament was not helping them be any less spooked.

Especially since, unlike when sparring under the watch of an elder, Anoteros could actually hurt his opponents, and he had already lodged a throwing knife through someone earlier, and that was without even mentioning the poor fellow who was bear hugged until he gave up, everyone thought that guy was going to get squeezed into paste.

No one had gotten to experience any of his main weapons, however, it had just been a single throwing knife alongside some unarmed martial arts, and even then, since one hit was usually enough to knock the air out of people’s lungs, he had not shown much martial arts, just individual strikes.

Inside the stone box, the elders watched every fight attentively, trying to discover diamonds in the rough, at least, the three male elders were, Ku Xing and Ting Zhenniao, had standards that were a fair bit higher considering their background, having some talent was not much in the eyes of grand cultivation clans.

And right now, they were more interested in propping Edrick up in the eyes of their younger relatives they had convinced to come over, not like the two girls could refuse anyway.

Ku Xing was the sister of her clan’s matriarch, and Ting Zhenniao was a beloved daughter of her clan’s patriarch, they could drag their great-niece and niece wherever they wanted as long as it wasn’t overly dangerous.

And the two members of the younger generation were not holding back on the comments directed at the ones fighting in the arenas…