“Bang!”
Before the words had even fully left Wu Yong's mouth, a terrifying pressure materialized out of thin air. The fat deacon had only a few front teeth left after Ye Lin's beating yesterday, but this time, not a single one remained.
“Thump!”
After crashing to the ground with a shrill scream, Wu Yong looked up furiously at the person who had severely injured him.
He saw a beautiful woman dressed in a purple gown holding a book in her hand.
Wu Yong did not know who this beautiful woman in purple was, but he knew she was on Ye Lin's side because when Ye Lin had thrashed him yesterday, she had been standing right beside him watching.
“You're finished! Attacking an assessment elder without cause—you and everyone from Tianyuan Academy are finished! Hahaha…”
Having been slapped into a pig's head in public, Wu Yong knew he was no match for her, so he could only sneer venomously.
After all, this was a Cultivation Academy, and behind him stood the Wu family, one of the three major families. He was supremely confident that Zhu Xuanwei would not dare do anything to him.
Unfortunately for him, Zhu Xuanwei was a mighty figure at the Immortal Ascension Realm. Even if the person standing here was merely a clone, teaching him a lesson was a matter of seconds.
Before Wu Yong's mocking laughter could even fade, a streak of sword qi instantly shattered his dantian.
“Bark like a dog again, and I will slay you with one strike.” Zhu Xuanwei cast a calm glance at Wu Yong, who was lying on the ground howling like a dead dog in agony, before returning her gaze to the storybook in her hand.
She had promised Ye Lin to uphold justice today. Now that Wu Yong actually claimed he wanted to cripple Ye Lin's cultivation, she naturally took action.
Seeing this scene, everyone present was collectively dumbfounded. The outer disciples of Great Yan Cultivation Academy could not believe their eyes—how could an elder from a Yellow-grade Cultivation Academy possess such terrifying strength, and be just as recklessly bold as Ye Lin?
Since when did Yellow-grade Cultivation Academies possess such deep foundations?
As for the principals and elders of the other Yellow-grade Cultivation Academies, they also looked at Zhu Xuanwei, Jiang Lingyuan, and the others from Tianyuan Academy with utter astonishment and complex emotions.
With such a terrifyingly powerful expert presiding over them, plus an invincible genius like Ye Lin, Tianyuan Cultivation Academy was truly about to rise.
Among the crowd, True Monarch Qingyu felt the most conflicted. At this moment, he felt like a complete clown.
Earlier, when he saw Ye Lin's overwhelming, unmatched strength crushing the entire field, he could still comfort himself that he was a Nascent Soul Stage expert, and that Qingyu Academy was still stronger than Jiang Lingyuan's Tianyuan Academy no matter what.
Yet after witnessing Zhu Xuanwei's unfathomable strength, he felt that all his previous actions had become a joke.
In the crowd, as the Second Elder of the Outer Academy, Baili Xuan frowned when she saw Wu Yong's dantian crippled, but in the end, she did not dare question Zhu Xuanwei.
First, she could not see through the other party's cultivation. Second, for someone to blatantly cripple Wu Yong like this, her background had to be extraordinary.
Before fully understanding Zhu Xuanwei's origins, she would never meddle in such matters.
“Someone, carry Deacon Wu down for treatment.”
With a wave of her hand, she had someone take away the unconscious Wu Yong, then stared silently at the scenes on the light screen in the sky.
As for the other Deacon, Ji Yang, he was purely there to go with the flow. After all, the Second Ancestor of their Ji family highly praised Ye Lin. He was too busy looking for ways to help Ye Lin, so why would he speak up for Wu Yong?
Within the light screen in the sky, Ye Lin's points auction was also drawing to a close.
After a round of bidding, almost all spirit stones on every team had been drained by him.
Because they had no choice—having no points meant completely failing the promotion assessment, so in the end, everyone could only grit their teeth and bid frantically.
“Very good. Everything you did today was for the sake of the promotion assessment. The you of tomorrow will surely thank your sacrifices today.”
After finishing the auction, Ye Lin waved to the crowd, then led Qi Changqing and the others through the teleportation formation to return to the outer academy square of Great Yan Cultivation Academy.
“Sigh, the most painful thing in life is having your money easily earned away by someone else while being completely powerless to stop it.”
Watching Ye Lin and his group leave, the geniuses couldn't help but pucker their lips in frustration.
But that was as far as it went. Venting behind his back was fine, but none of them would ever dare speak ill of Ye Lin to his face.
After all, this was a person who didn't even care about Outer Academy Deacons, and who was treated with such favor by the Ji family, one of the three major families. He was bound to become a legendary figure in the future.
Unless someone had a mental problem, no one would ever provoke such a person.
“Buzz, buzz, buzz!”
As rays of light flashed, the geniuses returned one after another to the outer academy square of Great Yan Academy.
The moment they returned to the square, the geniuses who had been suppressed to the point of suffocating by Ye Lin alone immediately began rubbing their hands in anticipation once again.
In the first trial, the gap between them had not widened by much. If they wanted to squeeze into the top twenty, it would depend on the second round: the Immortal-Ascending Staircase.
Of course, everyone knew who would take first place—it would definitely be Ye Lin.
However, for ranks two through twenty, they would go all out to fight for them.
“Although a minor mishap occurred along the way, congratulations to all of you for obtaining points.”
“For the upcoming Immortal-Ascending Staircase, I hope you will perform beyond your usual limits and achieve satisfactory results.”
Seeing the geniuses return, Second Elder Baili Xuan, as the overall person in charge, first congratulated everyone.
Then, holding her elder token, she recited a mysterious incantation in her mouth.
“Immortal-Ascending Staircase, manifest!”
Following her loud shout, space in the sky shattered like a mirror in an instant.
Then, a sacred, illusory white jade staircase extended down from the shattered sky all the way to the ground.
Viewed from afar, the staircase was profoundly mysterious, indeed giving off a sense of mystery fitting a stairway to immortality.
This staircase naturally originated from the Main Academy, a method specifically established to select geniuses, and was fundamentally a true immortal artifact.
As long as one possessed the special token and incantation, they could summon the phantom staircase to test the geniuses.
“Begin!”
Seeing that the Immortal-Ascending Staircase had manifested, Baili Xuan turned to address the geniuses.
Hearing her voice, the other geniuses did not move immediately, but instead turned their gazes collectively toward Ye Lin.
“Alright then, I won't stand on ceremony.” Seeing everyone looking over, Ye Lin did not hesitate for a second and was the first to step onto the Immortal-Ascending Staircase.
As he began climbing, the other geniuses scrambled to follow.
At first, everyone's speed was roughly the same, as the pressure on the initial steps was only modest.
However, upon reaching the thirtieth step, some began to break into a sweat. Upon reaching the sixtieth step, some were already unable to move.
By the time they reached the hundredth step, more than half of the participants were pressed down on the spot, unable to advance.
Those who could continue moving past the hundredth step were without exception cultivators of High-grade aptitude or better. Both their Dao Hearts and endurance were far superior to the other geniuses.
Yet what drove people to true despair was the black-robed youth running at the very front, who looked as though he was under no pressure whatsoever.
“Just how does he cultivate? Every step of this Immortal-Ascending Staircase carries tests of gravity and Dao Heart. How can he move even faster than me?”
Climbing the stairs at extreme speed in second place, Lin Luoxian, the reborn Immortal Emperor, murmured inwardly in utter shock.
She had a terrifyingly strong Dao Heart because she was a reborn Immortal Emperor. But Ye Lin was just an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old youth—how could he possibly possess such a terrifying Dao Heart?
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