Chapter 4300 — The Opening of the Mountain

Among the thirty-odd people on the platform, the Nascent Soul cultivators were merely the lowest tier. The Xuan Ascension cultivators, who stood above even the Nascent Soul stage, were not a few in number!

And these people came from a single academy. Eastern Continent was hailed as the strongest power on Cloud-Tier Island, and the name was well deserved indeed—truly a place where dragons lurked and tigers crouched.

Wei Zhao had been on Cloud-Tier Island for over a year and had seen no small number of top-tier cultivators, yet compared with these Xuan Ascension experts on the platform, there was still a considerable gap. Among all the people he had known or come into contact with, those truly able to rank alongside them—or rather, to hold a steady upper hand over them—numbered at most two and a half.

One was Di Xingdao. Though his nominal strength was only the peak great-perfection of the late Nascent Soul stage, he was a freak like Wei Zhao himself, one who could casually slaughter opponents above his level. Not long after recovering from his injuries, he had effortlessly defeated the early Xuan Ascension Nan Tian Liuguang with a single move—he could not be measured by common sense. Wei Zhao reckoned that even among Xuan Ascension experts, he must be a rather formidable presence.

Another was Shangguan Tianxia, the pavilion master of Chongtian Pavilion. Though Wei Zhao had never seen this top-tier magnate of the Northern Island's Three-Tier Pavilion make a move—had never even seen him unleash his aura—his intuition told him that with Shangguan Tianxia's strength, even on that platform he would surely rank among the very best.

As for the remaining half, that was the ghostly thing now lodged within the jade pendant's space. Wei Zhao had never seen its strength either, but it was, after all, a top elder of the spirit beast clan, a pillar-like existence among them; at its peak it should be no inferior to these people. Otherwise, if even it could not match them, the spirit beast clan would long ago have been wiped out by human forces rather than surviving to this day.

Only, the ghostly thing was now nothing but a broken remnant of a primordial spirit. So no matter how extraordinary it had once been, at present it could at most count as half.

Apart from these two and a half, among all the people Wei Zhao knew there was no one else who could rival these Xuan Ascension experts. After all, any Xuan Ascension expert, even placed on the Central Island, would already rank as a top-tier master—hardly common goods to be found on every street corner.

And now, on the platform alone, there were no fewer than seven Xuan Ascension experts. Yet even that was not the most outrageous part. What truly made Wei Zhao's eyelids twitch was the three seated dead center, whose auras were far more vast and profound than those of the entire crowd of Xuan Ascension experts!

In other words, these three were transcendent beings standing above the Xuan Ascension stage—and as for what realm lay beyond Xuan Ascension, Wei Zhao had never even heard tell of it.

Wei Zhao watched in secret alarm. No wonder so many people yearned for Eastern Continent and longed to be chosen by this Morning Star Yellow-Tier Cultivator Academy. With top-tier experts above the Xuan Ascension stage holding court here, it was nothing short of a living signboard.

Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao exchanged a glance. There was no way forward, so they could only follow the crowd's unwritten rule and sit down behind everyone else. There was nowhere else to go at the moment anyway; they might as well join the spectacle, and listen to the chatter around them while they were at it—consider it a broadening of horizons.

"Dean Ling Yuanqing actually came in person this year?" Sure enough, the two had barely sat down when a man in a yellow hat in the front row exclaimed in disbelief.

"Impossible, surely? However much he values this recruitment, as the dean himself, there's no way he'd turn out in person, is there? You must have looked wrong," someone beside him immediately questioned.

"Looked wrong? You think I'm blind? Do you really think I'd spout nonsense about something like this? Look—that white-robed elder in the academy robe, right in the middle, with the air of an immortal about him—that's Dean Ling Yuanqing!" The man in the yellow hat was utterly certain.

Wei Zhao looked over without betraying a thing. The elder the man pointed to was indeed one of the three he had been watching so closely—a transcendent being above the Xuan Ascension experts.

"Hiss, his aura does look the part, but it could just as well be a vice dean or the like. I've heard people say the vice deans of the Morning Star Yellow-Tier Cultivator Academy are all monsters of no small strength, hardly much below the dean himself..." The people around him were still not entirely convinced.

"What do you know! The one in the middle is Dean Ling Yuanqing, no question about it. As for the vice deans you mentioned—see those two sitting beside him? Those are the vice deans!" The man in the yellow hat spoke with a look of scorn.

The two vice deans he pointed to were precisely the other two top-tier experts above the Xuan Ascension stage, apart from the elder at the center.

Wei Zhao nodded inwardly. It seemed the man in the yellow hat was probably right. Even for the legendary Morning Star Yellow-Tier Cultivator Academy of Eastern Continent, if strength reached such a level and even the vice deans did not qualify, that would be too astounding for words.

"Fine, fine, fine, so you're well-informed, are you? But come to think of it, Dean Ling Yuanqing and the two vice deans beside him—big shots of that caliber are dragons that show a head but never a tail. How does a young fellow like you know them so clearly?"

"Exactly. You've never even been to Eastern Continent, so how could you recognize these masters?"

"Right, right. Recognizing those two vice deans would be one thing—they've shown themselves during past recruitments, so it's no wonder. But this Dean Ling Yuanqing you speak of has never appeared before, has he? Have you seen him somewhere?"

The people nearby all asked curiously. None of them were first-timers at the Eastern Continent Academy trials; they had all heard the great names of legendary figures like Dean Ling Yuanqing, but they had never seen them, still less could they have confidently matched faces to names the way the man in the yellow hat did.

"Heh heh, that's where you're all ignorant. Of course I've never seen big shots like that either, but have you forgotten? I have a cousin who's an expert in this sort of jianghu news. I once had the good fortune to see, at his place, portraits of some top-tier experts of the Opening Mountain stage from Eastern Continent—and among them was this Dean Ling Yuanqing!" The man in the yellow hat boasted smugly to the crowd.

"Oh, you mean that distant cousin of yours who calls himself the jianghu's Know-It-All. No wonder, no wonder. If he knows these big shots, that's really not strange at all." Only then did everyone finally understand, and it seemed this Know-It-All cousin was a figure of considerable fame as well.

"Now you all ought to believe me! Though come to think of it, with the academy trials causing such a stir, there's no reason my cousin wouldn't come join the fun. How come I haven't seen him this time..." The man in the yellow hat went on gloating, though a note of puzzlement crept in. (A call for monthly votes from mobile readers—those of you on mobile can vote! If we make the top ten, there are rewards. Please support Yuren!) (To be continued) R655