After a half-month rest period, the Young Master Rankings tournament resumed.
The final ranking battles were not complicated. Among the thirty-six people who had made it onto the Young Master Rankings, each person starting from thirty-sixth place received three challenge opportunities.
The challenge order began from thirty-sixth place. Naturally, when a thirty-sixth-ranked warrior issued his first challenge, he could only jump up by three places at most.
In other words, the person ranked thirty-sixth could only challenge the thirty-fifth, thirty-fourth, or thirty-third-ranked geniuses on his first attempt.
If his first challenge succeeded, his next challenge would allow him to jump six places.
If his second challenge also succeeded, his third challenge would permit a jump of twelve places.
Of course, if he failed on his first challenge, he would lose all remaining challenge opportunities and meekly drop to the very bottom of the Young Master Rankings. No matter how the rankings above shifted afterward, it would have nothing to do with him.
Meanwhile, a higher-ranked warrior being challenged could accept at most one challenge per day.
If the challenge succeeded, the two fighters would swap rankings.
Moreover, if a defender was defeated by a lower-ranked genius, he would fall to the challenger's position, and his ranking would not change again.
This was because being defeated by a challenger counted as a loss in the Young Master Rankings rules. Once beaten, the defeated party lost even the right to initiate challenges of his own.
Like Gu Zhenshan, who had been defeated by Third Young Master Ji, and Zhuang Jie, who had been bested by Jiang Chen. Their fates were even worse — they were eliminated outright, without even making it onto the Young Master Rankings.
So if a defender could not protect his ranking, he could only slink to the back of the list and stay there.
However, the initial Young Master Rankings had factored in the internal assessments of all seven Great Emperors, so the placements were generally quite reliable.
A difference of one or two places might hold the occasional surprise, but a gap of three or even six places left virtually no room for doubt.
If someone with a three- or six-place advantage was still defeated by a lower-ranked genius, then being knocked down the rankings was nobody else's fault — they simply had to accept that they were outclassed.
From thirty-sixth place down to thirtieth, seven consecutive challenges produced no upsets. Although the first challenge allowed a jump of three places, not a single challenger succeeded.
Then the twenty-ninth-ranked genius challenged the twenty-sixth-ranked one. The battle was fiercely contested, but at last a successful upset finally occurred.
The challenger replaced the twenty-sixth-ranked fighter and advanced successfully.
Meanwhile, the original twenty-sixth-ranked genius was ruthlessly demoted to twenty-ninth, with no opportunity to challenge his way back.
Having advanced to twenty-sixth place, the newly promoted genius earned the right to continue challenging after his first success. His second challenge allowed a jump of six places.
This set everyone's minds racing.
Clearly, a wealth of opportunities lay before this fellow. Within the range of his second challenge, jumping five places would let him challenge Third Young Master Ji.
Jumping six places would let him challenge Pill King Zhen.
Compared to challenging other geniuses, going after Third Young Master Ji and Pill King Zhen — two dark horses who had stormed up from the Genius Rankings — naturally offered greater potential rewards.
Although Third Young Master Ji and Pill King Zhen had both demonstrated formidable strength in their earlier challenges, in everyone's eyes they still lacked a bit of depth. Their fame in ordinary times was not particularly great either.
On paper, at least, they seemed like viable targets.
If he could challenge either of these two and succeed, that would be an enormous achievement.
From twenty-ninth place, he could rocket all the way to twenty-first — even twentieth. Such a leap would be truly astonishing.
After all, on the Young Master Rankings, even shifting up one or two places was incredibly difficult.
"Should I challenge Third Young Master Ji, or challenge Pill King Zhen?"
This genius named Fang Yuan hailed from the Annihilation Great Emperor's lineage, and at this moment he faced a vexing dilemma.
Challenging Third Young Master Ji, in his estimation, might offer slightly better odds of winning.
Challenging Pill King Zhen, if successful, would cause more of a sensation, and the resulting ranking would be even higher.
After going back and forth, Fang Yuan finally made his decision — he would challenge Pill King Zhen! He would push the six-place jump to its absolute limit!
Ranked twenty-sixth, the maximum range of his second challenge allowed him to target as high as twentieth place.
When Jiang Chen saw that Fang Yuan had chosen to challenge him, he was not particularly surprised. After all, such challenge opportunities were rare, and his opponent naturally wanted to make the most of them.
But in his current state, Jiang Chen was not the slightest bit afraid of a fight.
His earlier defeat of Zhuang Jie had already given Jiang Chen a general sense of what the Great Emperor's direct-lineage inheritors were capable of.
Zhuang Jie, who had been ranked twentieth, had been a half-step Imperial Realm expert. He had still been one thin line away from the true Imperial Realm.
Fang Yuan was also a half-step Imperial Realm expert.
Both being half-step Imperial, there was still a difference between them. Without question, Fang Yuan's strength could not possibly exceed Zhuang Jie's.
Back when Jiang Chen had still been at the seventh level of the Saint Realm, he had been able to defeat Zhuang Jie. Now, having broken through to the eighth level, Jiang Chen did not feel that Fang Yuan stood much chance of victory.
Still, this would be a perfect opportunity to verify just how much he had gained from his breakthrough.