Lei Lin also shifted his attention to another screen.
Above a verdant forest, Lombarton — disguised as the green-robed George — had crossed paths with Heilong by chance.
These two wizards were both the most favored dark horses, contenders for the championship, and immediately drew everyone's attention.
In this brief time, many wizards had already been eliminated, and the vacating of their slots meant the screens had expanded considerably.
……
Inside the secret realm.
"Green-robed George?" Heilong looked at the strange youth in the green wizard robe before him.
"Forget it — accumulating points one by one is too much trouble. I was planning to harvest them all at the very end, but since it's you, I'll reluctantly take them now!"
Lombarton gazed at Heilong, and a savage grin spread across his face.
With his goal drawing ever closer, he no longer needed to maintain such a careful disguise, and the other's status as a prodigy only deepened the disgust of the commoner-born Lombarton.
"You seem to hate me?" Heilong's brow furrowed. "But it doesn't matter. Anyone who stands in my way will die!"
"Hehe! You?" Lombarton cackled grotesquely, releasing part of the restraints on himself.
Cold! Powerful!
A berserk wave of spiritual power swept outward like a hurricane.
"First-rank pinnacle?" The perpetually icy expression on Heilong's face cracked instantly.
And Lombarton's sudden eruption immediately sent shockwaves through the onlookers outside the arena.
"First-rank pinnacle? I recall the green-robed George is only forty-five this year?" An elderly judge wearing reading glasses asked a wizard behind him. "Fanuo, when did you reach this level?"
The wizard called Fanuo was a white-bearded elder whose face flushed with shame. "I'm ashamed to say it took me seventy years of bitter cultivation on the Frost Throne to reach this level at the age of one hundred and fifteen…"
"If he achieved this through self-study, then this George truly is a genius!"
The judge adjusted his glasses. "Go investigate him. If there are no red flags, consider recruiting him into our school…"
Lei Lin, seated on the tribunal as well, noticed many of his colleagues issuing the same orders and couldn't help but smile inwardly.
A few days earlier, they might have uncovered Lombarton's true background — but now? By the time their investigation concluded, Lombarton would likely have already achieved his objective. What good would knowing do then?
"You've already reached the first-rank pinnacle!" Heilong could no longer maintain his aloof composure and blurted out.
"That's the expression! That's the expression!" Lombarton laughed uproariously. "I want everyone who looked down on me to know just how wrong they were!!!"
He laughed wildly, a pathological flush rising to his cheeks.
"You're insane!" Heilong's voice turned cold as numerous silver-white light blades materialized from within his robes, slicing through the surrounding air.
"Go!" Heilong pointed at Lombarton, and the blades coalesced into a dense net that hurtled toward him. Meanwhile, Heilong himself transformed into a dark shadow and vanished into thin air.
"Overestimating yourself!" Lombarton snorted coldly, and a layer of green mist surged outward.
Ssss!
The silver-white light blades that plunged into the mist immediately corroded, dissolving into the air piece by piece.
"Come here!" Lombarton's right hand phased into the very fabric of the air.
Then, a dark shadow was forcibly "pulled" out of the spatial rift.
Heilong's face was filled with disbelief. "Impossible! This concealment technique was my mentor's exclusive skill — how could you…"
"The overwhelming life energy on your body already gave you away!" Lombarton said with undisguised contempt.
Heilong collapsed, as if this revelation had dealt him a devastating blow.
"Kid, you're lucky! If we'd met earlier, you'd already be a corpse. But now?" Lombarton suppressed the urge to drain his opponent into a desiccated husk using Life Siphon.
He was still inside the secret realm, under the watchful eyes of the wizards outside!
Concealing his strength could still be attributed to extraordinary talent or some inherited legacy. After all, the Dark Extreme District was vast, and fortuitous encounters were hardly unusual.
But if the dark elves' exclusive advanced meditation method, Life Siphon, were exposed, the entire competition would be halted immediately — and he would be hunted down by numerous second-rank wizards working together.
"But just letting you go like this… it really grates on me!"
Lombarton grabbed Heilong with one hand, and a sudden smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.
That smile made Heilong's hair stand on end. He wanted to activate his escape rune immediately, but it was already too late!
An ink-green light blade instantly sliced across Heilong's forehead, and the corrosive force that invaded his consciousness drew out a piercing shriek.
"Aaah…" Amid his screams, Heilong's body was enveloped in a pillar of light and teleported out.
Lombarton pulled out his talisman, and seeing the number had surged to thirty, displayed a satisfied smile. He closed his eyes briefly to savor the moment before heading off in another direction.
Bang!
Outside the secret realm, Heilong's body slammed heavily to the ground, black blood streaming from his eyes, ears, mouth, and nose.
"It's spiritual damage! Get Master Duozek here quickly!" The healing wizard who arrived took one look and immediately shook his head.
"A shattered consciousness sea? There's no hope of recovery?"
Moments later, Duozek stood before the tribunal, reporting to Lei Lin and the other committee members.
"Yes, Heilong's consciousness sea has been completely destroyed by corrosive spiritual power. There is no hope of restoration. At best, I can preserve his life, but from now on, his best possible outcome is to live on as an ordinary person…"
Duozek's face was somber.
Heilong was indeed a genius, but he had failed to realize that even the most dazzling prodigy could fall before reaching their potential!
Still, his long life had shown him too many such cases. He sighed and moved on.
Lei Lin and the other committee members discussed it briefly before putting the matter out of their minds.
Fatalities were an accepted quota in the finals! All that had happened was one wizard being crippled — hardly worth noting.
What truly interested them was the method by which Lombarton had gravely wounded Heilong before the teleportation.
"It appears to be a combined magical technique, destroying the consciousness sea structure through an instantaneous surge of energy particles…"
A glint of light flashed through Lei Lin's eyes.
Faintly, he seemed to sense it. After the fall of so many geniuses on this tournament ground, the power of destiny that shrouded this place had reached its peak density.
The surging River of Destiny was like a massive powder keg — it only needed one final spark to explode spectacularly.
"I didn't expect the three of them to meet as well. Now this is going to be interesting!"
Almost immediately, Lei Lin's attention shifted to a screen at the edge of the display.
"By the guidance of destiny!"
Three voices rang out simultaneously, some male, some female.
Ailin, Venas, and Aosni — these three prodigies of the Holy Light Candle, artificially created by Lei Lin — had finally gathered together.
Wizards who had been closely following these three would notice that since entering the secret realm, they had not engaged a single wizard in combat, instead continuously pressing onward.
Moreover, whenever they were about to encounter an enemy, they would always predict it in advance and steer clear.
In this eerie manner, the three had traversed most of the secret realm and finally met on a stretch of grassland.
"This is our first time meeting in person! Allow me to introduce myself — I am Aosni!"
Aosni wore a pleasant smile, his gaze sweeping over Venas and Ailin, lingering in particular on Ailin's ring and the multicolored necklace around Venas's neck.
"Ailin!" "Venas!"
"Do you intend to repent for your actions?" Ailin asked, subtly standing shoulder to shoulder with Venas.
While there was a competitive rivalry between them, he and Venas still belonged to the human faction and harbored no goodwill toward Aosni of the dark elf camp.
"I merely have a habit of viewing things from different perspectives!" Aosni smiled, clearly unwilling to say more.
After all, a large number of wizards were watching from outside — how could he dare reveal his true identity?
"Then die!"
One moment he was speaking calmly; the next, Ailin launched his attack without hesitation.
A silver Cross Sword hilt appeared in his hand — only a third the length of a normal Cross Sword, stripped of its blade and tip — but a wave of razor-sharp energy was already radiating from it.
A streak of light tore through the sky, trailing ripples in its wake as it slashed toward Aosni.
But Aosni dodged as if he had anticipated it all along, an excited look crossing his face as he stared at the hilt in Ailin's hand.
"So you made one too! Then I have no reason to hide anything!"
A slender, silver-white blade tip materialized before Aosni. Its sharpness actually seemed to surpass the attack Ailin had unleashed.
"Go!" Aosni pointed at Ailin, and a torrent of silver light immediately shot from the blade tip.
The invisible ripples collided with the silver light, then quickly dispersed as if nothing had happened.
But the surrounding grass had suddenly been reduced in height, the cuts impossibly smooth, as if swept through and severed by a flash of light in an instant.
"That's it! No schemes or stratagems can work against us! The only thing that matters is sheer, unadulterated power!"
Aosni roared, the blade tip flying into his hand as it unleashed a barrage of light.
Seeing this, Venas sighed, drew a silver-white blade section from her back, and joined Ailin in their assault on Aosni.
"Hm?"
The wizards outside the arena let out several exclamations of surprise.
"These three mid-tier Magical Items have all reached the pinnacle of their grade. Moreover… I have a feeling the hilt, blade, and tip could actually be combined into a single, far more powerful Magical Item?"