Chapter 198: Rivalries Ignite: The Pinnacle Contention
Jin Yulong didn't wait for Elder Xie Ning's approval. He strode toward the Qi Measuring Stele with the confidence of someone who had rehearsed this moment so many times it had stopped feeling like a performance and started feeling like inevitability—blonde hair catching the midday sun like a crown he hadn't asked for but had decided to keep.
The air still buzzed with the exchange between him and Mo Qingxue. Now it crackled with something different. Something quieter and more focused.
Anticipation.
Elder Xie Ning, having already dealt with Su Lei's unconventional result and the banter of the Imperial Capital's finest, could only watch as Jin Yulong placed his hand on the cold, ancient stone with the easy grace of someone who already knew what was coming.
The waiting ground fell silent.
Spectators held their breath. The Elders watched with quiet attention. Above, the three Grandmasters narrowed their eyes with curiosity. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, Su Tianhao watched with the quiet amusement of someone watching a child stack stones too high.
The first stele lit.
5th level Martial Adept.
The silence held. Not a breath. Not a murmur. Every eye moved to the second stele without anyone deciding to.
8 star talent.
The reaction was immediate. The crowd erupted—loud, unrestrained, heavy with disbelief. For a moment everyone forgot whose ground they were standing on.
The noise carried across the mountain. On the other side of the Ashenveil Peak, servant disciples paused in whatever they were doing, ears perking up. Excitement and curiosity washed over the slope like a tide.
"Hahahaha!"
Huo Changfeng's laughter boomed. "Good, good." He nodded with genuine appreciation.
Bai Tianhu cracked a smile—rare and brief, like sunlight through a break in storm clouds. "That brat Jin Aoshi is already a prodigy, but his cousin is even more formidable."
"I never thought the Jin family would have another monster," Duan Fei said, frowning slightly—not with displeasure, but with the expression of someone quietly updating their assessments.
---
Below, Elder Xie Ning glanced at Jin Yulong with a complicated look. Everyone knew his cousin, Jin Aoshi, was one of the top talents of the Jadeclaw Peak. It was only natural to assume Jin Yulong would follow the same path. If he did, the Silverblade Peak would have one more monster to account for on the other side.
Elder Xuan, meanwhile, watched the scene from above with a serene expression and one hand slowly stroking his beard.
"Heh," he murmured to himself. "Just wait until you see Bing'er's talent."
His eyes drifted to the waiting ground—only Su Tianhao and Wang Bing remained—and landed on Su Tianhao's particularly amused face.
"...I'm afraid no one is ready for him either."
The third stele lit.
17.
Jin Yulong's grin arrived immediately. He turned to Mo Qingxue, arms crossing with deliberate theatre, and mimicked her voice.
"Can you beat that?"
Mo Qingxue glared. But even she couldn't pretend she wasn't surprised. Eight stars wasn't just rare—it was the kind of talent that carved names into history. Most people born with that grade had eventually outgrown the boundaries of Longzhou Country entirely, becoming legends that the nation still told stories about.
"Bro, that was amazing!"
A booming voice cut through the crowd with the enthusiasm of someone who hadn't read the room—or had, and decided the room was wrong.
Xiao Fenghua.
He sauntered over and draped an arm around Jin Yulong's neck as if they had been friends for years.
"You really are talented," he said, voice dropping into something that somehow managed to sound both sincere and pitying simultaneously. "But you shouldn't work so hard. You're younger than me—why carry all that burden?"
Jin Yulong slapped the arm off without ceremony.
"What do you know?" he said, piercing green eyes narrowing. Then he shrugged, letting out an exaggerated sigh. "You don't carry the weight of ambition. So you can never know the thrill of it."
He raised his chin. "What better feeling than walking out of this examination as the best? The honour I've brought my family—"
He turned back to Xiao Fenghua, preparing to continue.
What he found made his mouth twitch.
Xiao Fenghua had sat down on the ground. Not stood. Sat—casually, lazily, back propped on one hand while the other tilted the jade wine gourd over his lips in a steady, unhurried stream. His eyes were closed. His expression carried the specific peace of someone savouring something genuinely good.
"Are you mocking me?" Jin Yulong said flatly.
"Hmm?"
One hazel eye opened and found Jin Yulong with apparent genuine confusion.
"You were saying something?"
Jin Yulong turned away with gritted teeth.
"You don't even know what it feels like to want to be first at anything."
Mo Qingxue glanced at Xiao Fenghua with a wry smile and shook her head slowly. She had seen it. Everyone had. The moment Jin Yulong's speech turned to ambition was the exact moment Xiao Fenghua had lost interest entirely.
Su Tianhao watched the jade wine gourd sway. Then he looked at Xiao Fenghua's face. He didn't smile—but something in his posture eased.
---
High above in the clouds, Lu Ruyi's brows drew together with something approaching irritation.
"What's all that for? It's just the 5th level."
She snorted. The smug satisfaction on Jin Yulong's face grated at her in a way she couldn't quite name. To her he was still a frog at the bottom of a well who hadn't yet understood the depth of the water above him.
Then, as if in agreement to Lu Ruyi's thoughts, Wang Bing's voice cut through the crowd—calm, unhurried, melodious. Drawing every remaining eye.
"There are still two people left in this examination. Isn't it a little early to be claiming first?"
Jin Yulong froze.
He turned to her.
Snow-white hair. Autumn eyes. Jade-like skin. An ethereal aura that announced itself without effort and lingered without apology. Everything about her figure radiated the kind of nobility and power that stays with a person for years after the moment passes.
But it wasn't Wang Bing that unsettled him.
It was the young man standing beside her.
Long black hair. Golden eyes that held an unfathomable depth—the kind that seemed to pull something loose inside whoever looked too long. A physique sculpted like the heavens had made it deliberately. And an aura that refused to be read no matter how hard he tried.
Su Tianhao.
He had noticed him during the elimination round—standing still while everyone around him bent and strained and struggled, entirely untouched. That image had stayed.
His heart quickened. 'She's right. It's not over.'
In that moment, he made a mistake. He looked at Su Tianhao as the only threat, never sparing Wang Bing a second thought.
He couldn't have been more wrong.
---
All heads turned.
Thousands of eyes landed on Su Tianhao and Wang Bing simultaneously. The two seemed oddly detached from the world around them—but there was a quiet, dangerous confidence in both of them that bred the particular kind of curiosity that doesn't look away.
"Finally."
Lu Ruyi sat straighter, crystalline blue eyes glowing with intense focus as they locked on Su Tianhao's figure.
The intensity was so sharp, so precise that he felt it—on his back, through layers of distance and cloud and noise.
He turned sharply. His golden eyes seemed to cut through the sky and find hers.
Lu Ruyi's heart skipped a beat. For a fleeting moment it was like being looked at by something ancient. Su Tianhao couldn't actually see her—the distance was simply too great. But to Lu Ruyi, it felt like those eyes had passed straight through her.
Wang Bing noticed him staring and tugged his sleeve.
"What is it?" she asked, following his gaze—but finding only clouds and sky.
"Nothing," Su Tianhao said, turning away. His brows drew together quietly. "Strange. I could have sworn someone was watching me."
Just then, Elder Gu Lie's voice cut through the crowd.
"Of course the examination isn't over. There may still be a surprise or two."
As he spoke, his eyes found Su Tianhao with a look that held a thousand meanings. Then they moved to Wang Bing.
"You go first."
Wang Bing's smile was radiant and immediate—the kind that catches light and throws it back differently than it arrived. Somewhere in the crowd, several young men forgot what they had been thinking about.
Nearby, a familiar pale face ducked quietly behind taller figures.
Liang Chenfei.
He had passed—Su Tianhao had already read his cultivation at 7th level Martial Disciple at their first meeting, and with four-star talent at seventeen, it was only natural. But Liang Chenfei wasn't thinking about his result right now. He was thinking about the things he had said outside the gates to a man who turned out to be on first-name terms with a Martial Grandmaster.
'Better to stay invisible,' he decided, pressing further into the crowd.
---
Among the top talents, the watching was different.
Jin Yulong, Mo Qingxue, and the other Martial Adept-level prodigies observed Wang Bing with unblinking eyes. Su Lei and the rest of the Su family members were no less curious—this girl who had stood beside Su Tianhao all day, talking to him like an equal, laughing with him like it was nothing, now stepping forward to be tested.
Xiao Fenghua wasn't thinking about results. He saw a beauty and chose, simply and without complication, to appreciate it.
"Place your hand on the first stele," Elder Xie Ning said, her smile carrying unusual warmth.
"Hmm," Wang Bing hummed cheerfully. Her soft, cold palm touched the Qi Measuring Stele.
The array symbols blazed.
7th level Martial Adept Realm.
No voice. No comment. No shout.
Only silence.
Wang Bing smiled—quietly pleased—and moved to the second stele.
The Aptitude Rating Stele flared.
One star. Two. Three. Four—
Nine.
Nine-star talent.
The silence stretched on as if the crowd's collective mind was still trying to decide whether to believe what it had just seen. Then it broke—all at once, completely, irreversibly.
"HEAVENS! NINE STARS! NINE-STAR TALENT!!!"
The words tore through the air like the sound of a dying star collapsing in on itself.
But it wasn't over.
Wang Bing placed her hand on the third stele.
16.
Elder Xie Ning's eyes went wide.
Across the waiting ground, jaws dropped without ceremony.
"A-Am I dreaming? Pinch me so I know I'm not dreaming!" A young noble shouted in disbelief.
His companion obliged immediately.
"Ouch! Not dreaming. Definitely not dreaming."
---
High above, Lu Ruyi sat very still.
She looked at Wang Bing. Then she looked at Su Tianhao.
'Did he know?'
His face held obvious surprise. The answer was clear.
He hadn't known.
He had known her age and her cultivation, but her talent grade had been a secret even from him.
Lu Ruyi exhaled slowly through her nose. "Who would have thought Wang Bing carried something like that hidden inside her." She shook her head faintly. "Truly unbelievable."
Qiongqi nodded. Even for a Jade Winged Eagle, the implications of nine-star talent were clear. That was the pinnacle of human potential—not just rare. Unprecedented.
Jin Yulong's composure cracked. His eyes widened with something that looked uncomfortably close to horror, like a man who had just realised the hill he'd stood on was not, in fact, the highest ground available.
Mo Qingxue's expression stilled. Her sharp gaze moved to Wang Bing and stayed there, complex emotions shifting behind her eyes too quickly to name.
Chen Mu exhaled—long and quiet. Then his eyes steadied with the particular kind of respect that feeds resolve rather than diminishing it.
"One more genius. One more prodigy." A pause. "But I will do my best to stand beside them."
Su Lei's hand tightened on his sword hilt. 'I have to grow stronger. Faster. I will not be left behind.'
Even Xiao Fenghua's expression had gone somewhere rare—still, focused, the lazy warmth replaced for just a moment by something much older and more serious behind his hazel eyes.
---
Elder Xuan's lips curled.
He could already feel the glances being thrown his way from the representatives of other upper-rank third-rate forces gathered in the sky around him. He had been waiting for this moment all morning and it had arrived exactly as he had known it would.
He was about to allow himself the satisfaction of voicing it aloud—
Suddenly, a voice drifted through the air. Low but heavy. Alluring yet composed. Calm and full of quiet promise.
Duan Fei's.
"Would you be my disciple?"