Chapter 11679 — Eliminated

At last, Instructor Song Junzhu slowly stirred awake.

Stretching lazily, Song Junzhu swept a glance over the crowd. "Everyone finished?"

Then Song Junzhu pointed at Nanke Zi, who was drenched in sweat. "You. Eliminated. Back where you came from."

Nanke Zi refused to give up. He hurried to plead his case. "Instructor! Instructor, I'll be done any moment now! Just give me a little more time and I'll be able to concretize my True Mandate!"

Song Junzhu did not even look at him. A casual wave of the hand.

A spatial passage immediately opened beneath Nanke Zi, swallowing him in the blink of an eye. He vanished without a trace.

The remaining crowd all felt a chill in their hearts.

Strictly speaking, Nanke Zi's aptitude and comprehension were hardly much worse than theirs. Had any of them been a little less fortunate today, it might well have been they who were eliminated.

Every last one of them was, without question, a top-tier monster in their own world.

They had only ever been the ones holding others' fates in their hands. Yet here, they had to tread with trembling care, as if on thin ice.

The gates of the Heavenly Dao Academy were truly not easy to enter.

Song Junzhu looked at Wei Zhao. "I'll give you a chance for revenge. Want it?"

Wei Zhao was briefly taken aback, then understood.

Di Liankong's earlier little maneuvers had never escaped this instructor's eyes. He had simply seen through them without calling them out.

Then again, if he had not had the World Will as his cheat this time, enabling him to bypass the divine sense shielding of Di Liankong and the others and directly spy on the experience and insights they shared among themselves, he would likely have been eliminated for real.

Song Junzhu pursed his lips toward Di Liankong. "You two. Fight."

"Huh?"

Di Liankong's eyelids twitched at once.

Nanke Zi's elimination had already been no small blow to him.

Not because he held any great loyalty or affection for Nanke Zi. The point was that failing to eliminate Wei Zhao this round meant not only that he had failed the task Di Xuanwang had given him, but also that he had lost face before the others.

If he wanted to keep the others in his fold—especially if he wanted to remain the core figure of their little clique—then Wei Zhao's existence was a massive threat to him.

And now Song Junzhu was actually making him fight Wei Zhao?

What was that supposed to mean?

The rest of the crowd all wore excited expressions.

Wei Zhao's earthshaking ten-layer True Mandate had struck them hard as well. Letting Di Liankong, with his five-layer True Mandate, test the waters—from any angle, they were happy to see it.

As for what would become of Di Liankong, they did not much care.

This little clique of theirs had, to this point, been nothing but mutual exploitation. There was no team bond to speak of.

Wei Zhao shrugged. "I'm fine with it."

Di Liankong hastily asked, "May I ask, Instructor—is this your personal whim, or part of the trial training?"

Song Junzhu regarded him with easy composure. "Is there a difference?"

Di Liankong choked on his words.

He could not see the expression beneath the other's painted mask, but he needed no imagination to know that it was anything but amiable.

Song Junzhu changed tack. "If you're unwilling, that's fine too. I'll pick someone else."

Seeing him raise a hand toward the others, Di Liankong hurriedly steeled himself. "Instructor, you misunderstand. What I meant was that, whichever it is, since you have spoken, Instructor, I will cooperate with all my strength. Not a single word of refusal."

With that, he walked over to face Wei Zhao.

"Brother Lin, since the Instructor has given the word, let us have a match. It will be a good chance to get to know each other better."

Wei Zhao looked at him with amusement. "Talking so much like a bureaucrat—seems you've held quite a few official posts in your day."

Di Liankong smiled faintly. "Merely a habit. You must forgive my making a fool of myself, Brother Lin."

As he spoke, he slowly raised his hand and settled into an offensive-defensive stance. There was not the slightest timidity in him—rather, he was full of confidence.

Wei Zhao's concretization of a ten-layer True Mandate was indeed earthshaking, but to say it could frighten Di Liankong off was going too far.

Not only Di Liankong—every last person present had, at most, merely grown a bit more wary.

Each of them was a peerless prodigy who dominated their own corner of the world. Unless someone could truly crush them outright, trying to break their spirit was pure delusion.

And Di Liankong, naturally, was even more so.

Their duel instantly drew the attention of the entire hall. Even the various higher-ups in the academic affairs headquarters building, seeing this, all perked up with interest.

After a brief standoff, Di Liankong launched the first attack.

But the moment he moved, his heart sank slightly.

Although the power of rules here could be mobilized and used, it was clearly suppressed to a considerable degree. Both the difficulty of mobilization and the might ultimately displayed were weakened by more than ninety percent compared to his original world!

Had it been anyone else, they might not even have been able to mobilize the power of rules at all.

Could this, too, be part of the gap between world tiers?

Even so, Di Liankong's surprise lasted only an instant. There was not a trace of worry in him.

After all, the suppression from the environment was fair.

It was not only him who was suppressed, but Wei Zhao across from him as well.

A snap of the fingers.

Without any visible movement from Di Liankong, a violent shockwave abruptly erupted on Wei Zhao's body.

Every eyelid in the crowd twitched.

As bystanders, they could all feel the power of that shockwave. Anywhere else, its might would likely have rivaled a tactical nuclear bomb.

But in this place, under the environmental suppression, the shockwave's power was greatly compressed.

Even so, it was still far from trivial.

Everyone watched to see how Wei Zhao would respond.

Yet Wei Zhao seemed not to have reacted at all. He simply stood there in place, letting the shockwave explode in his face.

"Aren't you overconfident?"

The crowd frowned one and all.

They did not believe Wei Zhao's strength could be so weak as to show no reaction at all. The only explanation was that he was doing it on purpose.

As the smoke and dust dispersed, the whole hall was startled.

Wei Zhao was actually completely unharmed.

Di Liankong's eyelids twitched wildly. He had not expected a single shockwave to take Wei Zhao out, but at the very least it should have done some damage, shouldn't it?

Even if not a fatal wound, surely it should have at least broken the skin?

But judging by Wei Zhao's condition, forget broken skin—the corner of his clothes had not even shifted.

The entire process was as if an invisible protective barrier had blocked it all.

The crowd immediately caught on. "Is this the effect of the True Mandate?"

The concretization of the True Mandate can withstand all harm from without.

Those were the exact words in the jade talisman.

When they had first read it, they thought it was an exaggeration, a hyperbolic description of the True Mandate's effect. But now it seemed that this was the most measured assessment of all—not the slightest exaggeration!

The key point was that, after absorbing this shockwave's damage, the True Mandate on Wei Zhao's body still had ten layers—not a single one had been lost.