Chapter 3766 — The Newcomers' Challenge

And the content of this assessment stage bore considerable resemblance to the newcomer assessments of years past: it was the Newcomers' Challenge Tournament, a name familiar to every ear.

Unlike the challenge tournaments of previous years, which were purely a matter of clashing strength against strength for rank, this Newcomers' Challenge Tournament stage would not only be scored separately within each of the Three-Tiered Pavilions, but, in order to link up comprehensively with the other assessment stages, would especially emphasize a point-based system.

In this Newcomers' Challenge Tournament stage, each newcomer's current cultivation cave dwelling served as their initial ranking, and the cave dwellings together with their corresponding points served as the spoils of each round of the tournament, awarded in real time to the victor. Naturally, those who lost a challenge would likewise suffer the corresponding penalty in real time.

Take Qingyun Pavilion: below the mountain there were fifteen cave dwellings in all, numbered Mountain-Low No. 1 through No. 15, and each cave dwelling carried its corresponding challenge points. Mountain-Low No. 1 was worth fifteen points, No. 2 fourteen points, No. 3 thirteen points, and so on down the line, until the last, Mountain-Low No. 10, was worth a single point.

Each time, whether issuing a challenge of one's own accord or accepting one, the newcomer had to stake the challenge points corresponding to his cultivation cave dwelling. If the challenger won, he would gain the opponent's challenge points and take over the opponent's cultivation cave dwelling; if he lost, he would forfeit his own challenge points, and his cave dwelling would remain unchanged.

Of course, only those in lower-ranked cave dwellings were entitled to challenge those in higher-ranked ones, and the latter could not refuse. Those in higher-ranked cave dwellings, by contrast, could not initiate challenges against those ranked below them.

To take a simple example: Wei Zhao now held Mountain-Low No. 14, so he could only challenge the newcomers in the thirteen cave dwellings ahead of him, and could not initiate a challenge against Meng Zhou, who resided in Mountain-Low No. 15.

And if he did issue a challenge to one of the newcomers in those thirteen cave dwellings ahead, suppose, for instance, the opponent were Li Zhengming of Mountain-Low No. 2.

Then in the challenge match between the two, the challenge points Wei Zhao had to put up would be the two points corresponding to his Mountain-Low No. 14 cave dwelling, while Li Zhengming, because his cave dwelling ranked higher than Wei Zhao's, could not refuse and moreover had to put up the fourteen challenge points corresponding to his Mountain-Low No. 2 cave dwelling.

If Wei Zhao won, he would gain the opponent's fourteen challenge points and take over the opponent's Mountain-Low No. 2 cave dwelling, while Li Zhengming, not to mention having fourteen challenge points deducted, would from then on have to move into Mountain-Low No. 14 and dwell there until his next challenge against someone.

Conversely, if Li Zhengming won, he would gain the opponent's two challenge points and remain in Mountain-Low No. 2 unchanged, while Wei Zhao would have two challenge points deducted and go on struggling in Mountain-Low No. 14.

Beyond all this, the most crucial point was this: in the fourth stage, apart from the challenge points each newcomer would be granted in the first round of the tournament according to the differing rank of his cave dwelling, all the remaining points used would come from the previous assessment stages.

That is to say, Wei Zhao's initial score before the tournament began would be the two points corresponding to his Mountain-Low No. 14 cave dwelling, plus the one hundred and five points he had earned in the two preceding assessment stages. Added together, that made one hundred and seven points.

Whether his score rose or fell thereafter would depend entirely on how he performed in the tournament to come.

Still, not every newcomer was as well-capitalized as Wei Zhao. One had to know that the total scores of the vast majority of Qingyun Pavilion's newcomers across the previous two stages were generally only some ten or twenty points, and even with the initial points granted for the tournament stage, they generally did not exceed thirty points.

With so few points as their gambling capital, if their strength fell short, or if they failed to pick their opponents wisely, then perhaps after only a few rounds of the tournament, those points would be lost entirely.

In that case, no matter how low the rank of the cave dwelling they occupied, they would lose the right to initiate challenges; and if others came to challenge them and they lost yet again, the challengers would duly gain the challenge points and the cave dwelling, while their own points could only be driven down into the negative.

Any newcomer who sank to the level of negative points had essentially said farewell to the Three-Tiered Pavilion, for this was simply an indelible stain. Even if in days to come they succeeded in establishing their foundation, the Three-Tiered Pavilion would absolutely never accept such a newcomer. After all, word of it would be a disgrace to speak of.

Beyond that, this tournament stage, like the spirit-herb trial stage, was a war of endurance, set to last a full two months.

On every day whose final digit was three, six, or nine, each newcomer had one opportunity to issue a challenge and one opportunity to accept a challenge. And if multiple people issued challenges to the same person, the one who issued the challenge first would obtain the right to challenge, and the challenged party could not refuse.

The other challengers could only be regarded as having issued invalid challenges, and were free to go challenge other targets.

Thus, over the two months to come, there would be eighteen rounds of the tournament in total.

Though not everyone would necessarily take part in every round, the assessment points meant more to the newcomers than a direct bearing on the final rewards; more critically, they would directly influence the Three-Tiered Pavilion's evaluation of them, bearing on their future prospects. It would not be an exaggeration to call these assessment points the very root of their lives.

In such an atmosphere, any newcomer would absolutely never let slip any opportunity to gain points, and the tournament stage was precisely the perfect means of bringing this competition to its most white-hot intensity.

Unless a newcomer had utterly given up all hope, those lagging in the rankings would inevitably seize every chance to challenge, and the hardship of the tournament process could well be imagined. And remember, this was not one match or two, but a full two months of it.

What was more, besides the tournament, they also had to tend to the cultivation of their spirit-herb seeds; otherwise, even if they achieved notable results in the tournament, their scores would ultimately be dragged down by those withered spirit-herb seeds, and they might even have points deducted in the end, in which case all their painstaking efforts would be swept away like water down a drain.

So between the tournament and the cultivation of spirit-herb seeds, everyone was bound to strike a balance; the only difference was whether one leaned a little more toward the tournament or a little more toward the spirit-herb seeds.

After all, they were not Wei Zhao; each person's reserves of true qi were limited, and once depleted, it took a great deal of time to recover.

If they went at the tournament too hard, the true-qi supply to their spirit-herb seeds would fall short and the seeds would wither; conversely, they would easily end up with no competitive edge in the tournament and have their points plundered by others.

(.)RU