"Relax, I'm just going to take a look around. I won't get in their way."
This was a lie.
Arthur was going in to show off his strength.
He wanted every student to know it.
Set aside the benefits he could bring them. On raw strength alone, he was more than worthy of being class president.
He wanted to make sure no one ever entertained any other thoughts again.
Hearing this, Wu Changkong's brow furrowed. "You'd better be."
He stepped into the simulation device. The process was much like the Spirit Ascension Platform's, and in the blink of an eye, Arthur found himself inside the simulated space.
A dense forest stretched before him.
The moment Arthur's feet touched the ground, his Spirit Power, honed to the level of the Spirit Abyss Realm, surged outward like a tide, blanketing the entire forest in an instant.
This forest was far smaller than the one simulated by the Spirit Ascension Platform.
The presence of all one hundred and one students shone in his awareness like scattered starlight, each one distinct.
Na'er and Gu Yue's presences burned the brightest. One carried the overbearing might of a dragon, standing in a clearing on the eastern edge of the forest. T
he other drew on the elemental forces of heaven and earth, lying in wait at the edge of a valley to the west.
Most of the other students had clustered into small groups scattered across the forest: some quickly familiarizing themselves with the terrain, others murmuring over tactics, and a handful of lone, powerful students carefully scouting the surroundings, searching for the right moment to strike.
All of it unfolded clearly in Arthur's mind.
There was no need to hide.
Behind Na'er, four ten-thousand-year soul rings rose into being. The shadow of a golden dragon blotted out the sky, and it let out a roar toward the heavens.
The sound rang through the entire forest.
Every eye turned toward it.
"Oh my god," Yang Nianxia stared at the distant dragon. "I have to fight that?"
Yang Nianxia instinctively shrank back behind Tang Wulin, his voice trembling. "Tang Wulin, that's Na'er?"
Tang Wulin, dragged into a team by Yang Nianxia, nodded helplessly. "That's right. I told you from the start, I didn't want to fight her."
"You... you were right." Yang Nianxia's words trailed off into mumbling. What had he done to deserve sharing the Genius Rankings with a monster like that?
Na'er made no effort to hide her strength, and while it stunned everyone, it also made her the obvious target for a focused assault.
But that was fine. Na'er would crush everything in her path.
In an unspoken understanding, the students began converging on Na'er's position one after another, keeping their distance from each other.
Everyone knew one thing: take down the strongest one first, together.
Before long, more than ten students had already arrived.
They exchanged a glance, then released their martial souls in unison, soul rings flaring and interweaving with light.
There was a control-type Nether Vine, a speed-and-attack-type Sky Eagle, a support-type White Crane.
They formed a ring around her, and their soul skills poured down on Na'er like a storm.
Thick vines lashed out and coiled toward her, sharp talons tore through the air, a bear's paw crashed down with savage force, and behind them, healing light flickered, ready to lend support at any moment.
Na'er's eyes turned sharp, and the sky-blotting shadow of the dragon plunged down at once.
"All of you at once? Saves time, I suppose."
Her voice fell, cool and clear. Instead of retreating, she pressed forward, walking straight into the crowd.
The lead student had just raised a heavily armored fist when the dragon shadow's talon closed over his skull and pinned it in place.
That seemingly illusory claw carried power of the utmost extremity.
With a sharp crack, his martial soul manifestation collapsed instantly, and he was slammed into the ground. Amid the dust, only his twitching limbs remained visible.
The student controlling the Nether Vine had only just begun to burst from the earth.
Dark purple vines, lined with barbs, carried the reek of venom.
Na'er flicked a finger.
A flash of golden light sliced clean through the Nether Vine at its root, the severed end smoking gold, then swept on with unmatched force into the crowd.
Three students failed to dodge in time. Grazed at the shoulder, they were sent flying dozens of meters, crashing through several ancient trees before slamming into the ground.
They struggled to rise, only to find their limbs had already gone numb. All they could do was watch as the system marked them eliminated.
Na'er moved through them as though through empty ground, and nothing stood in her way.
She shattered one student's dream of becoming a soul master with a single punch, not even bothering to use a soul skill. On raw physical strength alone, she crushed the rest of them.
Some were swatted away by dragon claws, others knocked senseless by the dragon's roaring presence.
The unluckiest ones were simply flattened by the dragon's body itself.
In moments, the entire clearing was littered with fallen bodies, wails, the crack of breaking bones, and the splintering of trees all mixing together into a scene too gruesome to look at.
In just a few breaths, the more than ten students who had swarmed her were utterly routed.
More students arrived after that, and the sight before them made them shudder involuntarily.
Yang Nianxia finally caught up as well. He glanced around at the other students, and a thought struck him: maybe there was a chance after all.
Under Tang Wulin's horrified gaze, Yang Nianxia shouted, "Brothers, no matter how strong she is, she's still just a Soul Ancestor! With this many of us working together, she might not drain her soul power before we take her down!"
"Charge! Wear down her soul power!" Someone shouted, and no one knew who, and the crowd surged toward Na'er like a tide, soul skills raining down.
Of course, not everyone actually joined in.
Some who had charged halfway suddenly peeled off and fled, cursing the others as fools in their hearts.
Wear down her soul power? How naive.
One look at Na'er told you she was a raw stat monster who fought with pure physical strength.
Get hit by that dragon once, and you'd learn your lesson fast.
But they hadn't run far before they crossed paths with Gu Yue, who was strolling toward them at an unhurried pace.
Gu Yue walked through scattered light filtering down between the trees, her skirt brushing the grass without a speck of dust clinging to it.
Elemental light in every color drifted slowly around her.
Her brows carried a distant, cool detachment, like an immortal untouched by the mortal world, and every step she took landed with an air of transcendence.
The students who had turned back ran straight into her. Before they could react, Gu Yue's power erupted around her and engulfed them all.
"Converge."
Her red lips parted, her voice light and clear, elemental light of every color weaving together.
There were no elaborate techniques, only a pure torrent of elements.
The elemental light gathered instantly into a swirling vortex, a raging wind sweeping up earth, flame, frost, and lightning all at once, and hurled itself outward.
BOOM!
The retreating students didn't even have time to summon their martial souls before the elemental torrent swallowed them whole.
They didn't even feel pain. They were eliminated instantly and ejected from the simulated space.
Having dealt with them, Gu Yue's gaze never wavered. She continued on toward the eastern edge of the forest, the elemental glow around her fading away as though she had merely brushed off a few specks of dust a moment ago.
Meanwhile, Na'er was still taking down opponents one punch at a time, like swatting children.
She had just raised a hand to pin down the head of a student who'd charged her head-on, while her other hand casually rose to block an incoming fist.
"Oh?" Na'er let out a soft sound of surprise. That punch had actually carried some real force behind it.
She turned to look.
It was a female student, tall and slender.
Auburn hair fell in large waves down her back, and her features were striking.
Wu Sidou.
Several others stood behind her: Luo Guixing, Xu Yucheng, Zheng Yiran, all names from the Youth Genius Rankings.
"Now this is interesting." Na'er casually flung aside the student she'd been holding by the head.
She stretched, arms overhead.
"Warm-up's over," she said. "I hope you can keep me entertained a little longer."
The already-eliminated students, watching from outside the simulation, all buried their faces in their hands at once.