The morning sun broke over the horizon, casting its golden light upon the grand colosseum of Green Hollow City. The previous day’s exhaustion had vanished, replaced by an electric, almost suffocating wave of anticipation that rippled through the thousands of spectators packing the stands. The air was thick with the scent of burning incense, crushed earth, and the raw, ambient energy of hundreds of hidden spirit beasts. Today was the day the wheat would be separated from the chaff. The chaotic free-for-all of the first round was over, leaving only eight elite disciples standing in the brackets.In the center of the massive stone arena, Elder Luo Zhen stood with his hands folded behind his back, his sharp eyes scanning the crowd. As the bell at the top of the academy tower chimed three times, signaling the commencement of the second round, Luo Zhen took a single step forward. Though his movement was light, a powerful ripple of pale green essence erupted from beneath his boots, carrying

The grand colosseum held its breath as the dust from Gu Shiyan’s brutal display was swept away by the arena attendants. The lingering scent of scorched stone and sulfur still hung thick in the air, a grim reminder of the gap between the Baby Beast Realm and those who had crossed the threshold into the Spirit Beast Realm. The crowd’s cheers were subdued now, tempered by an underlying tension. They had just witnessed a near-execution; now, they looked upon the final pairing of the quarter-finals with a mixture of curiosity and pity.Teng Haoran stepped onto the stage with a spring in his step, his posture radiating a loud, unearned confidence. He wore the light, wind-resistant robes typical of agile fighters, and as he walked, a crisp, silver-white beast essence began to ripple across his skin like static electricity. At the Baby Beast Realm - Mid Stage, he was widely regarded as one of the fastest disciples in his peer group. His core beast, the Wind-Falcon, was notorious for its blind

The air inside the grand colosseum of Green Hollow City had grown so thick it felt like breathing liquid iron. The casual festival atmosphere that usually accompanied the Grand Academy Competition had completely evaporated, replaced by a suffocating, heavy silence. In the spectator stands, thousands of people sat perfectly still, frozen by a mixture of morbid curiosity and genuine dread. The medical disciples were still clearing the lingering scent of burnt flesh from the arena floor after Gu Shiyan’s sadistic thrashing of Chen Ming, but no one was looking at the bloodstains anymore. Every single eye was locked onto the two figures standing at opposite ends of the staging area.Up in the VIP stands, the atmosphere was even more fractured. Chen Wenshu sat with his head buried in his hands, his shoulders trembling with a mix of grief and impotent fury, while the elders of the Gu Clan wore uniform expressions of smug, dark satisfaction. They believed the destiny of the city was being writ

The air inside the Abyssal Blood Dome was no longer translucent; it had thickened into a soup of vaporized blood, raw malice, and burning sulfur. Outside the crimson wall, the world was a chaotic nightmare of soundless motion. Lin Yuan could see the frantic, distorted faces of the academy instructors, the wild gesticulations of the clan elders, and the three Divine Beast Realm ancestors launching strike after cataclysmic strike against the barrier. Colossal golden constructs, storms of light, and mountain-shattering palms slammed into the exterior over and over again, but the demonic scripts merely pulsed with dark glee, absorbing the kinetic energy and converting it into a tighter, heavier pressure within the cage. To the masters outside, the stage was a slaughterhouse locked from the inside. They were utterly, entirely helpless. Inside, Lin Yuan stood alone. His breathing was a ragged, scraping sound in his throat. The glowing emerald gauntlets formed by his turtle beast's runic in

The skewering doors of the assembly hall closed behind the fifteen disciples as they filed out into the blinding midday sun. The air outside was warm, but compared to the suffocating, iron-heavy atmosphere of Master Teng Lianhua’s gravitational array, it felt like a brief reprieve. Yet, no one was celebrating. The ominous promise of the long trial lingering over the disciples like a gathering storm cloud.Lin Yuan walked at the back of the crowd, his steps light and unhurried. Inside his aperture, the newly refined leaf-green essence pool settled comfortably at twenty-six percent. The microscopic calibrations he had forced his body to make during the Flash-Point Skirmish had ironed out the residual turbulence from his sudden breakthrough to the Mid Stage of the Spirit Beast Realm. He could feel the quality of his energy; it was no longer just a loose mass of spiritual power, but a highly compressed, responsive force coiled tightly around his body.As they crossed the central courtyard