After drawing a heavy circle on the intelligence record, the smile on Mo Fan's face resembled an old hunter who had just laid out the perfect trap.
Since the target for his "wrap-up scene" was locked, the path ahead was much clearer.
Time flew by amidst the booming of spells and the clashing of weapons on the martial arena. For those outer court disciples giving it their all, every match was a walk before the gates of hell.
But for Mo Fan, this was just a step-by-step dungeon clearing process.
The Round of 32 to 16 elimination match arrived as scheduled.
No suspense.
On the arena stage, facing a late-stage Qi Condensation cultivator who tried to bury him alive with Earth-attribute spells, Mo Fan repeated his old trick.
Like an unreasonable Iron-Clad Rhino, he let those sharp earth spikes and flying rocks smash onto his body. Relying on the covertly activated [ Skeletal Armament ] and his consummate Qi Condensation peak physique, he forcibly tanked the entire spell bombardment.
Waiting for the fatal opening when the opponent ran out of spiritual energy and prepared to pull out a Qi-Replenishing Pill, his left hand hidden in the wide sleeve squeezed the empty air.
The invisible [ Touch of Grave Chill ] descended with precision.
As the opponent fell into that despairing neurological stun, Mo Fan's signature coarse-cloth-wrapped long rod arrived right on time, bringing a mournful sonic boom.
BANG!
A muffled thud.
That Earth mage was like a batted baseball, tracing a beautiful parabola in the air. He flew directly over the heads of the crowd and smashed heavily onto the bluestone slabs outside the arena, fainting cleanly and neatly.
"Lu Xiaoqi, wins!"
With the referee deacon's loud declaration, a wave of sound even more fanatical than inner sect True Legacy duels erupted below the stage.
Successfully advanced to the Top 16!
At this moment, labels like "Servant Lu Xiaoqi," "One-Punch Man," and "Humanoid Spirit Beast" had thoroughly detonated the entire outer court.
He became the biggest and most unreasonable dark horse of this tournament.
Those bookmakers who set up underground betting pools on the periphery were making money hand over fist, while simultaneously worrying so much their hair was falling out.
Because the odds on Mo Fan winning the championship had been forcibly bought down to a staggering level by those crazed gamblers.
Deep into the night.
In the secluded hut in the servant quarters, the oil lamp flickered.
The noise outside had nothing to do with Mo Fan. He sat cross-legged on the bed, using the dim yellow light to carefully flip through the copy of Seeded Players Intelligence Record, whose edges were already curled from his constant turning.
"Tomorrow's Round of 16 to 8 is a tough battle."
Mo Fan's fingertip stopped on tomorrow's matchup chart: Lu Xiaoqi VS Zhao Long.
It truly was a narrow path for enemies to meet. Tomorrow's opponent was exactly the 3rd-ranked seeded player on the intelligence list, the orthodox dual cultivator of spells and body he had secretly observed during the preliminaries—Zhao Long.
The outside world had hyped this match to the heavens, dubbing it the "Battle for the Strongest Body Cultivator of the Outer Court," pulling the gimmicks to the max.
But in Mo Fan's eyes, this so-called focus match was just meh.
Although Zhao Long cultivated the orthodox Wood Body Art and had a tragic and bloody combat style, Mo Fan knew very well that the guy's physical strength and recovery could never compare to his own monster body.
His body had been tempered repeatedly by corpse poison and the System's "HP-gating exploit."
Not to mention, he was holding several highly inhumane underworld skills.
"As long as I defeat Zhao Long, I'll secure my spot in the Top 8 and get the inner sect disciple identity token. My ultimate goal will be achieved."
Mo Fan tapped his fingers lightly on the tabletop, his gaze continuing to flip back along the intelligence record.
Next came the main event—how could he lose reasonably and without looking fake right under the eyelids of a bunch of big shots?
When he flipped to the last few pages of the intelligence record and saw the introduction to the special rules for the quarterfinals, his eyes lit up abruptly.
"This... Isn't this too modern?"
Mo Fan looked at those rules, the corners of his mouth twitching uncontrollably.
To maximize the extraction of commercial value from this grand event held once every few years, to increase the viewing pleasure of the tournament, and to sell more high-priced "image stone broadcasting rights," the higher-ups of the Azure Cloud Sect had come up with an incredibly flashy operation in the tournament format:
[ The Drafting System ] and [ The Trash Talk Segment ].
The rules were simple: After the Top 8 were decided tomorrow, the sect would give the competitors a seven-day rest period. During this period, major cultivation media like Azure Cloud Daily and Outer Court Gossip Weekly would conduct frantic interviews and publicity stunts.
The most fatal part was: The Top 8 competitors had the right, through a draft order, to actively pick their opponents and issue a pre-match trash talk challenge!
If the challenged party refused, they would be drowned by the overwhelming saliva of the media the next day, even branded with titles like "coward" and "afraid to fight" by sect public opinion, unable to lift their heads in the sect ever again.
"This is literally the WWE wrestling entertainment of the cultivation world..."
Mo Fan looked at this rule, his brain spinning rapidly.
In his past life, he was a modern man nurtured by Earth's highly developed entertainment industry and idol fandom culture. He understood too well what those paparazzi wanted, and knew exactly where the excitement points of the onlookers lay.
A brilliant, even malicious open conspiracy formed instantly in his mind.
"If I just meet Shen Qiu in the arena, and then pretend I can't beat her and get kited to death... although those elders might not see any flaws, those fanatical gamblers will definitely curse me for match-fixing, and some might even suspect I hid my strength."
"But what if..."
Mo Fan's expression became extremely wretched, like an old fox scheming against a fat goose.
"What if tomorrow, after I defeat Zhao Long and successfully grab the Top 8 spot, I directly use that highly anticipated [ Trash Talk Segment ] to publicly provoke the glamorous ice queen, Shen Qiu?"
Not only provoke her, but put on an extremely arrogant, extremely vulgar posture!
"I will shamelessly declare in front of the entire sect: I want to defeat her! Conquer her! Make her, the high-and-mighty ice snow lotus of the inner sect, serve tea and pour water for me, a servant!"
Logical closed loop!
This kind of "bottom-tier crude toad not knowing death and coveting the icy female swan" drama was absolutely the top-tier viral hit loved most by the cultivation world's media!
Once this news exploded, it would absolutely detonate the public opinion of the entire Azure Cloud Sect instantly!
Given Shen Qiu's proud, aloof personality that couldn't tolerate a grain of sand in her eye, plus the fanning of the flames by the media and the instigation of her countless admirers, she could absolutely never refuse a challenge carrying such an insulting nature.
Not only would she not refuse, but she would completely go berserk in the quarterfinals.
She would use 120% of her strength, using that soft whip—which completely countered body cultivators—to ruthlessly press him against the arena floor and rub him into the dirt!
And when that time came.
When Mo Fan was beaten by Shen Qiu until he was "covered in scars, completely unable to fight back, and suffered a regretful defeat" in the quarterfinals.
The audience, the elders, and even the gamblers who lost money below the stage wouldn't feel he was match-fixing to control his score.
They would only feel deeply satisfied!
They would only feel this was the "karmic retribution of a toad wanting to eat swan meat"!
They would only feel that he, Lu Xiaoqi, was a crude, reckless brute whose brain was addled by lust and sought his own death!
And that perfect persona of "loyal, fiercely protective of his own, but brainless and lustful" would be thoroughly welded to his forehead. No higher-up would ever suspect he was hiding some world-shaking secret again.
"Perfect... Simply too perfect!"
Mo Fan's shoulders trembled with laughter under the dim moonlight. That smile was as villainous as could be, as shameless as could be.
"This wave..."
He slapped the intelligence record onto the table preciously, as if it were a cheat code book that would let him retire after achieving his goal.
"This wave is called: Unswervingly walking the path of a heel."