Chapter 28 (2/2)
Finally, the road came to a head. However, just as they exited, they were completely stunned.
What had emerged before their eyes… was an immense arena!
It was an arena of pure stone. If a person who had watched the old anime Dragon Ball were here, they would have the exact same feeling. This was because the venue was nearly the same in appearance as the World Martial Arts Tournament!***
The sole difference was that there were azure talismans carved on every stone on the initial row of walls in between the arena and the viewing stands. The entire composition was a tremendous array closely encircling the gigantic arena! On the ceiling, there were four large characters that were several hundred meters in length. They were extremely eye-catching!
Unrivaled Beneath the Heavens!****
The present location was completely different from the clamor and order of the region of the branch above. Each stone was seeped in a heavy ancient air, so far that quite a few stones had moss climbing up on the sides. It seemed like two extremes. An ordinary channel without anything extraordinary in particular had connected the past and the present. Above was the domain of science and technology, and below was the world of cultivation!
There weren’t any other flashy ornamentals. Only slabs of uniformly-aligned stones like they had been measured with a ruler. There existed only a single major irregularity and that was the end of the subterranean arena couldn’t be seen. It could be imagined that if a compet.i.tion was held here, and the stands were packed with people, a strike would cause mountains to collapse and seas to bellow; how blood boiling would the roar of the crowd be!
s.p.a.cious, tremendous, and large, it in itself was enough to make the hearts of men tremble.
“Shocking, isn’t it?” Although Zuo Lun had come here on many occasions, he still immersed himself at this moment in the extraordinarily gigantic arena. His voice held a trace of hoa.r.s.e fanaticism: “At the beginning of the nation’s founding, the modern day Heavens Law was formally established. There was a mountain in Nantong, one without name, and there was a Core Formation master named Floatingcloud. With his hand as the tip of a spear and his wrist like a halberd, in the s.p.a.ce of a night, he transformed this nameless mountain with a snap of his fingers into a cascade of several millions of stones that were a meter in length and half a meter in width. Against the upstream river current, the millions of stones slinked through the bottom of the river bed without the influence of men by their own accord. They traveled nonstop to Fengyi as if there was a person conducting them and constructed this ‘Unrivaled Beneath the Heavens’ martial stage.”
He spoke as if he was reciting scripture or chanting psalms. Coupled with the enormous arena, it made a person unable to help but to let themselves be taken in by this fantastical scene.
He seemed to have become drunk on Daomaster Floatingcloud’s magnificent accomplishment, and after a long time, sighed deeply: “China’s twenty-four martial stages have come completely from the hands of a Core Formation master. Unrivaled beneath the heavens doesn’t speak of the top ten, but certainly of the top fifteen.”
His mood seemed to have infected everyone. As everyone’s eyes looked at the four ma.s.sive characters of ‘Unrivaled Beneath the Heavens’, they faintly flickered to a degree.
Xu Yangyi pursed his lips and seemed to have seen an elderly man of outstanding bearing set apart from the ma.s.ses wearing what might’ve been a tunic, Tang suit, or possibly a changpao. With a pa.s.sing move, the colossal mountain blew apart into rubble like a blade had hacked into it. Afterwards, the several million stones traversed across the sky and submerged themselves at the bottom of the river, crossing the Yangtze for few thousand miles. Against the upward current, from north to west, they constructed the extremely tyrannical characters of unrivaled beneath the heavens!
How domineering was this?
How imposing was this?
How leisurely was this?
Accompanied by clouds and water, made neighbor to the void and sky. A spirit different from that of the ma.s.ses.*****
“A life like this… Are there still any other pursuits?”
He tightly clenched his fist, thirsting for the other’s strength. At this moment, he had never been more impa.s.sioned!
A few minutes later, Zuo Lun returned from his reverie and gently made a move with his left hand. A red paper crane split from one into ten, and following his leisured motion, slowly moved away ten stones on the martial stage that were so seamlessly fit together that nearly any artificial vestiges couldn’t be seen, revealing ten pitch-black gates.
Followingly, the paper crane flew into the pockets of the ten students, and Zuo Lun laughed: “These are your room cards. Don’t lose them.”
“In these five days, you may make your arrangements by yourselves. However, the graduation ceremony will officially begin five days later. Nantong Province has sixty people graduating this year. It is necessary all of them be on this stage.”
He finished speaking and walked away, not even turning his head back.
Xu Yangyi’s gaze faintly flickered. He glanced silently at Chu Zhaonan.
Zuo Lun hadn’t mentioned the matter of the Qualifier.
The other hadn’t spoke of such an important affair. He didn’t find it to be odd and even thought that all was as should be.
Which cultivator wasn’t striving against the heavens? A journey of heavenly defiance? A cultivator that relaxed at any time was afraid that someday a great accomplishment would be difficult to come by. Although they hadn’t seen true Foundation Establishment seniors, they could imagine that regardless of which one, not to speak of reigning supreme be it past or present, was at least of great willpower and a mighty lifetime of perseverance. As for a Core Formation master, such a realm couldn’t be reaching with determination. Neither in fate nor fortune could one be lacking.
These ten people held the splendid reputation as “The Ill.u.s.trious’ of the Contemporary Era”!
Thus, he came by this inevitable inference: it wasn’t said in order to observe them.
“Is someone watching…?” He narrowed his eyes and quietly swept his gaze over the gigantic martial stage that had no end in sight.
“Who is it? CSIB? Featherwood Guard? Bountiful Treasures Pavilion?” He stuffed his hand in his pants pocket walked towards the direction that the paper crane guided: “It can be considered a painstaking process in order to select the true elite.”
“The Qualifier is the graduation ceremony’s true climax!”
* 盖棺定论 aka don’t pa.s.s judgement on people until it was over. I reeaaally wanted to translate this as “It wasn’t over until the fat lady sang”
** 既生瑜，何生亮啊 - I translated this as “to be born brilliant, why are there others who s.h.i.+ne as bright. This is a chinese idiom made famous by Zhou Yu during the three kingdoms period. It is in reference to Zhou Yu lamenting that while his talents and skills are excellent, his rival Zhuge Liang rivaled and surpa.s.sed him. He is conflicted because he thinks himself to be all the heavens require, but boom Zhuge Liang comes and ruins his party. Kinda hard to put this in context in the story because it is almost like waxing poetry
*** These Dragon ball references though. I had troubles picking up on Dragon Ball as an “idea” vs a “thing” LOL
**** 天下独步 - Unrivaled Beneath the Heavens/Outstanding in the whole world, etc. Many ways to translate this.
***** 相伴云和水，为邻虚与空。一灵真性在，不与众心同 Is a line used by w.a.n.g Chongyang, one of the seven immortals from Chinese history. He says these four lines as he leaves behind the mortal world. If what I translated it as is unclear, I will tell it straight up here. He is pretty much saying that he has surpa.s.sed this world i.e accompanied by clouds and water and neighbor to the void/sky. The latter part of the verse clears things up by distinctly separating him from other people.
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