Unparalleled Double Harmony

Chapter 480 The War Begins

The day of the competition has arrived in the blink of an eye.

This morning, the sky was clear and the breeze was gentle.

A few miles outside Cangzhou City, at the gate of the Baquan Sect, a huge and luxurious arena has been erected.

The audience seats, commentary seats, rest areas, dining areas, etc. that are compatible with this arena have already been arranged around it. From a distance, this area, which was originally a plain at the foot of the mountain, is now as lively as a small village.

Even with thousands of guests, order was maintained at the scene.

Obviously, in order to "not fall behind", the Baquan Sect and the Murong Family have put their all into preparing for this "Zhengxiong Cup". After all, the eyes of the entire martial arts world are now on this, and who would want to look weak in comparison with the other "co-organizer"?
"Dear guests, dear colleagues, welcome to the competition venue of this year's 'Zhengxiong Cup'. Our competition is about to begin. Friends who are here to watch the game, please take your seats as soon as possible. Relevant personnel and players of the participating parties, please go to the players' rest area as soon as possible and wait...Dear guests, dear colleagues..."

As the time of Si was approaching, the voices of the Niu brothers suddenly rang out in this place that was as lively as a market, and they repeated the above passage aloud.

Of course, the two of them were shouting with the "loudspeaker" made by Huang Donglai. The sound amplification effect was very good and not very strenuous.

But even so, they shouted for about ten minutes, and finally with the help of other staff responsible for maintaining order on the scene, they got the audience basically in place.

There is no way. There are too many people coming, and most of them are rough people. It is more difficult to "drive" these people to where they should go than to drive a group of cattle.

After most of the audience were seated, gongs and drums began to be played beside the stage, attracting everyone's attention. Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai also took this opportunity to sit on the commentary podium.

When this short "opening music" stopped, Huang Donglai's voice sounded at the right time: "Dear colleagues, welcome to the venue of the 'Zhengxiong Cup'. I am Huang Donglai, the commentator of this competition."

"I am Sun Yixie." Sun Yixie continued.

This set of words is very familiar to the two of them, but it is still quite new to most people at the scene who have never watched a "commentary-filled game".

"As announced before the competition, the winner of this competition will be awarded the right to host the next 'Young Heroes Conference', as well as a prize, the 'Silkworm Seeking Ring' provided by us; the rules of the competition have been written down in detail and displayed on the billboards in the southwest corner of the venue. You can check them out at any time. If you still have any questions after reading them, you can ask the staff next to the billboards..."

Here Huang Donglai specifically mentioned "If there is anything unclear after reading it...", which was actually spoken to the illiterate people present.

This was also one of the experiences they gained when they held the "Dragon Head Cup" last time - as far as the entire Dazhen is concerned, because the regime has lasted long enough and is quite prosperous, its illiteracy rate has basically reached the lowest level that the ancient feudal dynasties could achieve, but even so, it is still quite high; what's more... those heroes who hang out in the rivers and lakes or in the green forests belong to a group with a high proportion of "illiterate" and "semi-illiterate". You can basically assume that on average one out of every two of them has difficulty recognizing words, so you have to take this into consideration when doing things.

"Then before today's competition begins..." Sun Yixie seemed to want to quickly finish Huang Donglai's topic, so he took over the conversation at a fast pace, "We still have to introduce the two co-organizers of our competition... Master Huo of the Tyrant Fist Sect, and Mr. Murong, the head of the Murong family."

As Sun Yixie spoke, Huo Ming and Murong Shu both appeared on the stage.

Both of them were local heroes with extraordinary bearings. Just by standing there without saying anything, they made the noisy scene a little quieter.

However, because they did not have a "microphone" like Sun and Huang to assist in speaking, and at the moment they just wanted the two financial sponsors to "show their faces" and say hello, so the two of them just clasped their fists and bowed to the audience on the stage, and did not speak.

"Let us once again thank Baquan Sect and Murong Family for their strong support for this competition. What we will announce next is the match schedule for the 'ring competition part' of this competition." Before the atmosphere became awkward, Huang Donglai moved the process to the next step and guided the audience to pay attention to the match schedule.

Huo Ming and Murong Shu also took the opportunity to leave the ring when their younger brothers brought up the signboard with the match schedule.

"This matchup table is allocated based on the 'school score' each team received before the game, as well as the 'question scores' of the contestants. The relevant details can also be found on the rules board."

The two points Huang Donglai mentioned here are what they mentioned before as “outside the competition”.

First of all, the "sect scoring" he mentioned is evaluated by twelve representatives of high-ranking sects, such as Shaolin, Wudang, Beggars' Sect, etc. Although they did not sign up for the competition, and do not have disciples to act as "mercenaries", but for such a big martial arts event, they must send someone of high seniority to lead the team to take a look, right?
Sun Huang just took advantage of all these guys who could be used... Aren't you a powerful sect, respected, and well-reputed? Then we can invite twelve sects that didn't participate in the competition to each send a representative to be a free "scorer" for me, isn't that just right? If the scores are released and we offend anyone, it won't be our fault.

So, under the "guidance" of Sun Huang, these twelve "judges" referred to a bunch of conditions, such as the human resources, financial resources, reputation, and contribution to the martial arts world of each registered sect, and gave a score according to their own understanding. Finally, they summarized the scores and came up with a so-called "sect score."

As for the "answers" of the contestants, it was basically Huang Donglai replicating the model of the "literary test" that Shen Youran had organized for the Young Heroes Association, adding some of his own understanding and coming up with a simplified version, which was basically to test whether there were any mentally retarded or illiterate contestants.

The school score is combined with the contestant's answer score, and the final score is the basis for the battle table.

Anyway, the final ranking is... those sects with high initial scores can get a bye in the first few rounds of the competition. After all, they have gained this advantage through the strength of their sect.

"We will also hang this table next to the ring later, and update it when a contestant is eliminated, so everyone can see it at any time." Huang Donglai added after the matchup table was displayed on the stage for a while.

Then, Sun Yixie continued, "Because the number of sects that signed up for this competition exceeded expectations, the schedule is very tight, so we should hurry up and start the competition without further delay."

When the staff on the stage heard what Sun Yixie said, they realized that it was time to move on to the next process, so they carried the signboard off the stage again.

bang——

Then, a gong sounded.

Before the sound had died down, another person appeared on the ring: this person was probably in his early forties, and although he was not tall and his appearance was not impressive, his lean and capable physique and steps, his calm expression and temperament... anyone could tell at a glance that he was a martial artist and a veteran.

"The first person to come on stage is the referee for this morning's match," Huang Donglai introduced. "This time we are fortunate to have Senior Wen Taiqi, nicknamed 'Thunderbolt Hand', take on this important task."

“I hope all the contestants can uphold the principles of fair competition and not offending each other, and not make things difficult for Senior Wen,” Sun Yixie continued.

The two of them were introducing themselves in a very normal tone, but the audience below the stage began to whisper and talk among themselves, because the concept of "referee" was very unfamiliar to these martial artists.

Although they understand the word "referee" and what this position means, in the perception of most people, a competition between martial arts masters does not require such a person to supervise, or in other words, all the audience in the audience can be referees.

But whatever happens, as long as the referee doesn't cause trouble, no one will object to it.

"Then we will invite the two teams for the first match to come on stage." Huang Donglai quickly read out the match list, "This match will be between the representative of Jinling Sword Palace, 'Defeat Dragon Sword' Dugu Yong, and the representative of Cangzhou Fuling Sect, 'White Whirlwind' Kuang Sheng."

Seeing this, some people must be wondering, why did the Sword King Mansion also participate in the competition? And it was Dugu Yong who played instead of his father. What's more strange is why he was the first to play?

This is actually not complicated to explain - the father and son are here, their Sword King Mansion meets the entry criteria, and Dugu Yong himself is a martial arts fanatic who likes to compete with masters, so there is no harm in signing up for fun.

For Dugu Yong, "enjoying the process of the game" is the key, winning or not doesn't matter.

As for Dugu Sheng’s idea… Since his silly son still didn’t understand his and Lao Gao’s intentions, even Gao Yadian had figured it out, but Dugu Yong still didn’t… So it was a good thing for his son to stay in Cangzhou to fight in the ring; the best thing would be for his son to get some minor injuries in the ring, and then let him go to Lao Gao’s house to recuperate for a while after the fight, and take this opportunity to let his future daughter-in-law take care of him…

Anyway, the old man didn't really think about winning the game, and he himself had no interest in competing for the Silkworm Ring or the hosting rights. If Dugu Yong wanted to fight, then let him fight.

As for why Dugu Yong was the first to go up... our book implies that he was not illiterate or mentally retarded, he did it on purpose.

Dugu Yong pondered: Our Sword Palace has a good reputation in the martial arts world, and its "sect rating" is at least at an upper-middle level. If I answer the questions well in the "question answering" section, I might be ranked directly into the "top 16". Even if I make it to the finals, I can only play four games at most... and the people I meet may have already been exhausted in the previous rounds. If I fight with full energy, it will be an unfair victory.

With this in mind, the direction of his answer naturally turned to "not speaking human language".

So he ended up getting a "point deduction" for answering questions that was even more shocking than handing in a blank paper, and successfully made it to the farthest corner of the competition list...

So you can also imagine what level the opponent who can compete with him in this position is.

This "Fuling Sect" seems to have a very elegant name, but in fact, if you think about it a little, you can see that this sect used to be a tomb robber...

To put it bluntly, their founder was a tomb robber. He changed his career because he accidentally dug up an ancient martial arts secret book while robbing a grave.

But as the saying goes, a hero is not judged by his origin. No matter what their ancestors did in the past, they turned over a new leaf later and their sect has been passed down for so many years. Now that they can pass the registration, it means that they still have certain strength, just not much.

And this "White Whirlwind" Kuang Sheng is currently the top master of Cangzhou Fuling Sect, and also the leader of this sect.

This man was not very old, about thirty-five or thirty-six years old like Dugu Yong, and he used a pair of hooks.

This "hook" is the one in swords, spears, halberds, axes, hooks and forks. This kind of weapon evolved from the ancient weapon dagger. Its shape is like a sword but curved. Most of the moves are light and strange, and are good at restraining. From the nature of the weapon, it happens to be the nemesis of the "straight sword".

Kuang Sheng was born with a pale complexion, and when he wielded the pair of silver-white hooks, they were as powerful as a whirlwind, hence the name "White Whirlwind".

Originally in terms of hard power, Kuang Sheng is definitely no match for the Dragon-Defeating Sword, but considering the restraint of the weapon, the scene may not be one-sided.

“You two, please understand the rules. We are here to compete with each other, and the one with better skills will win. Don’t hurt the harmony. If anyone has bad intentions and wants to destroy someone’s family or demolish someone’s ancestral hall... I will not sit idly by.” After the two contestants came on stage, Wen Taiqi walked between them and greeted them.

"clear."

"Please rest assured, senior."

Dugu Yong and Kuang Sheng also responded politely.

"please."

"please."

Then the two of them walked to the center of the stage, stood at both ends, and got ready.

Wen Taiqi also retreated to a suitable distance, and after a brief pause, he shouted, "Start!"

The shout ended and the figure moved.

The first person to initiate the attack was Kuang Sheng.

Kuang Sheng knew very well that his martial arts skills were not as good as Dugu Yong's, so if he played it safe, he would have basically no chance. If he wanted to win, he had to quickly and unexpectedly defeat his opponent while he was still unstable and hadn't figured out his strategy.

And he really lived up to the name of "White Tornado". He approached Dugu Yong rapidly like a bright silver light. With the double hooks in his hands, he launched a very tricky attack from both sides of his opponent's torso.

If both of these hits landed, Dugu Yong's ribs and shoulders would probably have had a piece of flesh cut off.

At this moment, Dugu Yong was thinking: "Did I go a little too far when answering the questions..."