Chapter 771: Xie Yanluo!

"Not good."

The stocky cultivator’s face paled.

He wanted to resist, but it was already too late.

That Reaper-like gaze seemed to possess terrifying magic. Once one was tainted by it, it was impossible to break free.

In an instant, the stocky cultivator’s vision went black, and he fell headfirst.

"Useless trash."

Xie Yanluo kicked the stocky cultivator off the arena, his face full of contempt. "If not for the restrictions of the rules, a piece of trash like you would have been killed by me countless times already."

As his voice fell, Xie Yanluo suddenly looked toward Li Yun.

Within his gaze, that dark and bizarre light radiated once more, staring at Li Yun like the eyes of the Grim Reaper.

"Hm?"

Li Yun sensed it immediately.

Others might not have been able to feel it, but with his soul strength, he naturally discovered that when Xie Yanluo looked over, strands of bizarre dim qi invisible to the naked eye were extending toward his pupils.

Those strands of dim qi emitted a strong burning and corrosive sensation.

In an instant, the bizarre dim qi entered his pupils and extended into his soul space, attempting to corrode his soul.

"Begone."

Li Yun gave a cold snort and immediately activated Illusion-Extinguishing Sword Pupil.

Precious swords emerged from the depths of his eyes, radiating sharp Sword Qi that directly strangled and crushed the dim qi.

"Interesting."

In the distance, Xie Yanluo laughed loudly, made a throat-slitting gesture, and then left the arena. With a leap, he returned to the side of Luo Sheng and the red-robed youth.

"That is Xie Yanluo from the Ghost-Seizing Evil Eye Clan."

Beside Li Yun, Fatty Chu leaned in with a solemn expression. "The Ghost-Seizing Evil Eye Clan is one of the Three Great Eye Technique Clans. The successors of this clan often have extremely twisted and cruel temperaments, and this Xie Yanluo is especially notorious. Li Yun, how did you provoke this guy?"

"Xie Yanluo?"

Li Yun raised an eyebrow.

He had some understanding of the Three Great Eye Technique Clans.

These three clans dominated their respective regions by relying on their bloodline eyes, and the strength of each clan was no weaker than that of a first-rate power.

Among them, the Ghost-Seizing Evil Eye Clan was the most evil of the three clans. Even the other two eye technique clans were extremely wary of them.

"It seems my display of Illusion-Extinguishing Sword Pupil made this fellow unhappy."

Li Yun shook his head and did not take Xie Yanluo to heart.

In a confrontation of soul power and soul abilities, he was the strongest within the Heavenly Core Realm thanks to his three-soul ability and Nine Tribulations Divine Eye.

Shortly after Xie Yanluo’s battle, Luo Sheng, the successor of the Saint Manifestation Eye Clan, also took the stage.

His opponent was none other than Fan Wuhen.

In this battle, Fan Wuhen displayed quite impressive strength.

Unfortunately, when facing Luo Sheng, he was still a bit too inexperienced after all. After a hard-fought battle, he was eliminated.

On the contrary, Fatty Chu actually continued his winning streak and successfully made it through all three rounds of matches, advancing to the second stage, the Group Stage.

This result was extremely surprising even to the leading elder of Myriad Manifestation Peak.

Before this, Fatty Chu’s performance had been quite average even within Myriad Manifestation Peak, barely managing to squeeze into the top ten.

No one expected him to actually enter the top hundred.

In the end, among all the newly joined disciples, only Li Yun and Fatty Chu entered the Group Stage. All the others were eliminated.

As for the veteran disciples, a total of ten entered the Group Stage.

Including Li Yun and Fatty Chu, the Profound Origin Immortal Sect had a total of twelve cultivators in the top hundred.

Among the Five Supreme Factions, this number ranked second.

As for first place, without a doubt, it belonged to the Profound Sovereign Dynasty.

The entire Profound Sovereign Dynasty had a staggering twenty people enter the top hundred and advance to the Group Stage.

Ranking third was the Myriad Demon Dao Sect with ten people advancing.

The Golden Lotus Buddhist Kingdom was slightly behind with nine people.

In comparison, Heaven Mandate Academy ranked last with only seven people advancing.

However, among the Five Supreme Factions, Heaven Mandate Academy’s foundation was the shallowest to begin with, and its strength was naturally in last place. This result was not surprising.

Aside from those factions, except for a few exceptions, every first-rate power had one or two people advance.

The remaining slots were divided among second-rate forces, third-rate forces, hidden powers, and wandering cultivators.

"The first stage of the elimination matches has ended. Next, we shall begin the second stage, the Group Stage."

The green-robed elder spoke. "In the Group Stage, all contestants will be randomly divided into ten groups, with ten contestants in each group."

"Within a group, every contestant will fight one match against each of the other nine. After all matches are over, the two contestants with the most victories in each group will advance to the final stage, the Ranking Matches, where the final standings will be determined."

"As for the other eight contestants, they will all enter the losers’ bracket and compete for the twenty-first to seventy-second rankings."

After a pause, the green-robed elder continued, "Furthermore, just like the elimination matches, the group assignments for the Group Stage will also be determined by the Destiny Compass."

"Next, we shall begin drawing the contestants for the first group."

As his words fell, ten beams of red light simultaneously descended and enveloped ten cultivators.

Whoosh!

Seeing the ten cultivators enveloped by the red light, the venue immediately erupted into commotion.

The vast majority of those ten contestants also had drastic changes in expression.

In this group, among the universally acknowledged first-tier powerhouses alone, there were Luo Zhenting and the Mo Kuang Twins.

In addition, there were two top second-tier powerhouses, the Third Knight of the Profound Sovereign Dynasty and Monk Yiming of the Golden Lotus Buddhist Kingdom.

The Third Knight was one of the six knights under Huang Tianlin.

They had followed Huang Tianlin since childhood and had grown up alongside him. Although their talent was not as monstrous as Huang Tianlin’s, all of them were top-tier geniuses.

No one knew the real names of these six knights.

It was only known that they were called the First Knight, Second Knight, Third Knight, and so on until the Sixth Knight, based on their strength.