Chapter 18: Sensational Opening Ceremony Speech

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

It was early in the morning, yet tens of thousands of students had already assembled on White Jade Plaza.

Although most of them were prodigies from sects all over the Kingdom of the Nine States, in the face of the yearly free-for-all battle held by the university, their expressions were far from relaxed.

Most of the students quietly cast their sight towards those with whom they normally had conflict.

These students with whom they usually had disputes with were most likely going to be their enemies during this event.

After all, this was a rare opportunity to pummel someone fair and square. Presumably, they wouldn’t let this opportunity slip by…

The homeroom teachers of each class were now marking off their students, and An Lin’s homeroom teacher, Sword Immortal Ling Xiao, was also present.

As usual, a sword hung from their homeroom teacher’s waist, and his white robes were fluttering about.

His graceful and dashing figure attracted the gaze of many female students, even those from the neighboring classes.

Apart from their homeroom teacher, Class One’s supremely talented and renowned students—Xuanyuan Cheng and Su Qianyun—also attracted strong attention.

It was as if they were blessed by the heavens; one was too handsome for friends, the other was too beautiful for friends.

Putting aside their appearance, their aptitude was also extraordinary, and they had already reached the Spirit Nurturing rank at such a young age. This caused countless prodigies to feel envious and jealous at the same time.

An Lin also arrived at the White Jade Plaza early in the morning. What greeted him was a sea of students and countless fresh faces.

Due to the massive size of the university, he never really had a concept of what fifty thousand students meant. Now that all fifty thousand of them were gathered in the one place, he was able to understand and appreciate just how stunning such a scene was.

The atmosphere produced by the fifty thousand students was enough to make him feel as if he were amidst a boundless and raging sea.

After some time, a crisp and pleasant voice sounded out from the heart of the White Jade Plaza.

“The students have all been marked off now. Next, please welcome Vice-Principal Yu Hua to the stage to deliver his speech for the opening ceremony of the free-for-all battle event.”

An Lin knew that Vice-Principal Yu Hua was already a Celestial Immortal in the Return to Void stage and had also heard that he held the power in The United University of Cultivation. It could be said that he was an acting principal who did everything the principal should have done.

As for the principal of The United University of Cultivation, An Lin had never caught a single glimpse of him in his few months at the university.

He had heard that their principal was constantly away from university and was traveling around. Some unlucky students never once saw their great principal in their entire university lives and could only gaze reverently at pictures of him.

With his thick black eyebrows and thick black mustache, Vice-Principal Yu Hua’s appearance was extremely amusing.

For some reason, when An Lin saw Vice-Principal Yu Hua, he started to visualize him dressed in a red and blue overall. He looked exactly like Mario!

Although Vice-Principal Yu Hua’s appearance was amusing, his speech for the opening ceremony was especially stirring.

His hands were clasped behind his back as he stood in the sky—this was a skill that could only be performed by Celestial Immortals.

Once one became a Celestial Immortal, they would have the power to manipulate space. Standing in the sky was just one simple application of this power.

Vice-Principal Yu Hua’s voice wasn’t loud, yet every single one of his words appeared to penetrate through the air and travel directly into the ears of all fifty thousand students, reaching right to their souls.

This kind of skill was already beyond that of simply transmitting one’s voice into another’s ears and had utilized the ability of ‘imparting teachings and heavenly bestowal’. As a result, a sense of ‘natural law’ and ‘dao’ was contained in his words.

In fact, the content of Vice-Principal Yu Hua’s speech was extremely uninteresting. If a normal person delivered such a speech, they would probably put countless students to sleep.

Yet, when such content was delivered from Vice-Principal Yu Hua’s mouth, every sentence was stirring and resounded in one’s ears. Not a single person was drowsy, and it felt as if everything he said was extremely reasonable.

Imagine for instance, that someone told you not to drink boiling water, as that would burn your tongue.

Once you hear this, you will definitely slap them without hesitation and think to yourself, ‘No f*cking shit!’

However, if it was Vice-Principal Yu Hua who told you not to drink boiling water, as that would burn your tongue, you would feel a sense of sudden realization:

The temperature of boiling water is more than sixty-degrees hotter than that of the oral cavity. If one was to directly drink it, the tissues in one’s tongue would be damaged by the high temperature.

Then, sensory receptors in the tongue would generate and send pain signals directly to the central nervous system. Afterwards, the central nervous system which has received the signals would cause the person to feel a burning sensation on their tongue.

And then you would exclaim, ‘It’s Vice-Principal Yu Hua after all!’

‘Everything makes sense and every sentence is like gospel!’

…

Just like that, all fifty thousand students were intoxicated as they listened to Vice-Principal Yu Hua speak for two hours.

When An Lin regained his senses, he briefly summed up the two-hour long speech:

The free-for-all battle event would run for three days and be held at the Forest of One-Thousand Peaks, which had an area of a few hundred square kilometers.

During the event, participants had to operate individually, while not using elixirs nor seals.

A total of one hundred and eight teachers would be responsible for monitoring the area. Once they found any student that was breaking the rules, they would immediately disqualify the student and send them to the university detention facility to undergo one month of labor reform.

The objective of this event was to: ‘Allow students to realize the ruthless nature of the cultivation world earlier through the process of ‘pummeling’ and ‘being pummeled’ by other students; allow students to experience the universal law of ‘last one standing is king’; spur students to work harder and earnestly raise their cultivation rank.’

After summing up the main points, an expression of admiration spread over An Lin’s face.

He couldn’t believe that Vice-Principal Yu Hua managed to deliver a two-hour speech just to explain such little content.

More frighteningly, he was actually feeling hyped up during the entire speech!

“It seems that the vice-principal has amazing skill in delivering speeches,” An Lin exclaimed softly.

Xu Xiaolan nodded emphatically in agreement when she heard An Lin’s remark.

After the vice-principal finished his speech, Sword Immortal Ling Xiao handed a golden seal to every student in his class and told them to place the seal tightly onto their bodies.

This seal was the fabled Defeat Judgement Seal. Before the event ended, the only way for students to leave the battlefield was if this seal activated.

Once all the students finished putting on the Defeat Judgement Seal, Vice-Principal Yu Hua opened his mouth again. His impassioned utterances once again traveled into everyone’s ears.

“I now declare The United University of Cultivation’s free-for-all battle has officially begun!

“I’ll now activate the spell formation. Soon, every student will be teleported to our university’s Number Three Forbidden Area—Forest of One-Thousand Peaks. Your arrival site will be randomly selected. Now, please take your time to enjoy this splendid event!”

After he finished speaking, the entire White Jade Plaza was swallowed by a white curtain of light. A gigantic and complex spell formation then appeared on the ground and started operating quickly.

An Lin felt a rush of dizziness before his vision became dark and he passed out.

…

After an unknown length of time, he finally started to slowly regain his consciousness.

When he opened his eyes, he was greeted by the sight of numerous mountain peaks that pierced through the clouds like sharp swords.

Surrounding the mountain peaks was a stretch of yellow land.

There was barely any greenery on this piece of land and the ground was mostly covered in crushed stone, giving off a bleak and desolate feel.

An Lin stood up from the ground and looked towards the sky. He discovered that in the sky, there was a dim blue barrier.

That must be the boundary delimiting the competition area. Students were only allowed to operate within these boundaries.

Right at this moment, a jingle sounded in An Lin’s mind.

This familiar feeling… it’s the system!

An Lin quickly opened the God of War System and eagerly looked towards the interface.

Huh? It’s the ‘Special Missions’ section that’s lit up?

On all the previous occasions that An Lin had looked through the God of War System, this ‘Special Missions’ section was grey. Who would’ve thought that it would suddenly light up now?

A string of text immediately appeared before his eyes when he curiously opened the special missions’ section:

“Detected that host has entered the Forest of One-Thousand Peaks. Assigning mission:

“In this event, the host must successfully become a member of the updated Immortal Rankings Board.

“Mission Success: One raffle for the Magic Treasure lottery.

“Mission Failure: Ten days of continuous diarrhea (severity equivalent to that of ingesting the Mountain Soul-Essence).

“Note: This mission cannot be rejected.”

An Lin stared blankly at the special mission before him. For some reason, tears started to well up in his eyes.

Become a member of the updated Immortal Rankings Board?

Battling with fifty thousand other prodigies for a position in the top one-hundred? I won’t be able to achieve this even if I fight to the death!

Ten days of continuous diarrhea?

That’s even more terrible!

Having experienced three days of continuous diarrhea before, An Lin was fully aware of just how frightening this kind of diarrhea was.

Have him experience ten days of continuous diarrhea?

Why not just tell him to die…