Once you took one nameplate away from others, you would get 300 points.
Once you lost your nameplate, you would be eliminated from the assessment.
If you killed a rival, you would pay for it with your life. It meant that in this assessment, no one dared to kill people unless he didn't want his life.
The assessment would last six hours. At the end of it, the winners and losers would be determined according to the final point of each trainee.
In the end, one of the two competitive camps would be dissolved; the top 30 trainees would stay while the rest would be eliminated.
All of these were rules of this monthly assessment.
In this assessment, Camp 39 and Camp 40 had a total of 63 trainees, but only 30 of them would stay, i.e., that more than half of the trainees would leave Bloodthirsty Camp forever after the assessment.
Cruelty was inevitable, but no one was willing to be eliminated.
…
Lin Xun did not leave the swamp.
He returned to the place where he hid before. The girl whose throat had been slit was gone, but traces of the combat were still there.
Any trainee passing through here would have noticed from these clues that there had been deadly raids.
Lin Xun did not destroy these marks, but carefully erased his own footprints and marks one by one, and then lurked there.
Traps might fail after used once, but sometimes it could easily make people relax their vigilance.
Lin Xun was not going to look for rivals hit or miss. Within three hundred miles of Scorpion Ridge, the terrain was varied and danger was everywhere. Any active attack would make it easy to expose one’s trail.
He would rather stay where he was and wait!
This assessment would last six hours. Now nearly two hours had passed, and there were still about four hours left. Whether it was to hold on to the end, or to save more physical strength, awaiting the arrival of weary enemies was undoubtedly the best choice.
It was absolutely foolish to launch an attack rashly.
Lin Xun was clear that those who could hold on till now in Bloodthirsty Camp were absolutely overmatches, and to fight with these clever trainees, you needed not only combat effectiveness, but also wits, strategies and bravery.
Similarly, Lin Xun was also very clear about own combat effectiveness. Although the cultivation of the seventh level of Martial Realm gave him enough spiritual power to match the peak overmatches on the ninth level of Martial Realm, this was not an advantage.
Today, almost more than half of the trainees in Scorpion Ridge had reached the peak of the ninth level of Martial Realm. People like Ning Meng, Shi Yu and Qi Can had been improving themselves in this realm for many years, and you could imagine how terrible their power was.
And on the cultivation of martial arts, Lin Xun could only rank at the medium level even he had practiced Marching Boxing and Six-word Saberplay to the realm of Mastery.
He couldn't do anything about it. Other trainees all had powerful backing. Since they were young, they had begun to practice the ancestral secret skills or arts specially prepared for them, and the power of such marital arts could hardly be imagined.
Compared with them, Lin Xun had no other choice but Marching Boxing of Mastery and Six-word Saberplay which were not remarkable, but the power of the two skills in Mastery was definitely not weak.
Perhaps the only thing that gave Lin Xun an edge was his very strong soul perception and the Greenwave Saber in his hand.
Just like the Explosive-flame Saber, the Greenwave Saber was also a kind of popular spiritual weapons on low grade of Human-rank.
However, different from the Greenwave Sabers on the market, the Greenwave Saber refined by Lin Xun himself was 20% more powerful!
There was the case of Explosive-flame Sabers refined by Lin Xun in the past. Later, the Explosive-flame Sabers refined by Lin Xun got a new name "Flaming Spirit Sabers".
Now, the situation of this Greenwave Saber was roughly the same as that of Explosive-flame Sabers refined by Lin.
However, in terms of the attribute, Greenwave Saber belonged to water, which was different from Explosive-flame Saber’s fire attribute. Each had its own merits.
The reason why Lin Xun chose Greenwave Saber instead of Flaming Spirit Saber was that after many battles, he found the fierce Flaming Spirit Saber was not suitable for his fighting style.
While Greenwave Saber could let him give full play to his combat effectiveness at will.
The water is unstable and changeable. It can exist in such forms as mist or waterfall, or freeze and exist in the form of ice; it can gather into boundless ocean, great rivers running, or storm whirlpools engulfing everything!
As the saying goes, the greatest virtue is like water. If small, water will be silent; while huge, it will be turbulent; with both hard attribute and soft attribute, water can accommodate all things!
This kind of spirit and style was consistent with Lin Xun’s character--he was as tenacious as the dripping water wearing away a stone sometimes, as silent as dead water, and capricious and devastating when he was fighting against the enemy!
Lin Xun’s choice could also be seen as a kind of progress on the path of cultivation. He had begun to choose his own fighting style and path consciously.
…
As time passed by, there was nothing but miasma and mist in the swamp.
The taste of lurking in bog was absolutely uncomfortable. There was even tremendous pressure on breath, so every once in a while, he must take a breath.
If he had the cultivation of Gang Spirit Realm, he might use the internal breath to adjust the running of Qi in the whole body.
Soon a burst of tiny footsteps approached, which was instantly sensed by Lin Xun. He roused himself and got ready to attack.
At the edge of the swamp, a dumpy swarthy lad was standing, with small eyes. He looked unimpressive.
He was slightly out of breath, as if he had run for a while. Soon after standing at the edge of the swamp, he noticed that there was a bloody fight just now.
“It’s a good place to ambush.”
With his eyes rolling, the dumpy lad thought for a second, and then smiled, “Everyone can tell it’s a good place to ambush. But no one would have expected that there could be another ambush here after a bloody fight…”
His voice was small, but Lin Xun instantly sensed what he had said. A fit of worry rose in Lin Xun’s heart and Lin wondered whether the lad was so smart that his ambush had been seen through.
Boom!
Just as this idea passed through Lin Xun’s mind, Lin heard a harsh sound filling the air.
A strong sense of danger came to him, so he immediately rushed out from the mud and made a sudden dodge aside with no hesitation.
Bang!
A dazzling cold light, which was dangerously close to his shoulder, flew into the mud, exploded and left a big pit on the ground, and muddy water splashed over 30 meters away.
Lin Xun felt a chill of horror in the heart. If his reaction was slower, he would have been seriously wounded, even not immediately killed.
Until that moment, he could see clearly that the dumpy lad was holding a short black crossbow. Its surface was covered with complicated spiritual tattoos like petals in scary blood red.
Bloody Armor-piercing Crossbow!
It was an empire-made spiritual weapon; each Bloody Armor-piercing Crossbow could hold 12 specially-made spiritual arrows with horrible antipersonnel force, and was powerful enough to penetrate ordinary spiritual armors!
What made it more horrible was its portable size, which was just as wide as a child’s arm, and about 16cm long. People didn’t even need to use spirit energy, but to pull the trigger to release its awesome power.
A Bloody Armor-piercing Crossbow like this could sell for 800 imperial silver coins in the market!
“Eh, friend, your reaction was so quick!” the dumpy lad smirked, and then he put away the crossbow and took out a tulwaur.
It was Whalebone Spirit Saber, which was fiercer in nature than ordinary sabers. The wound caused by this saber would be torn, with many cracks which could never easily heal.
Bang!
With no hesitation, the dumpy lad rushed to Lin Xun.
Though the lad was smiling and he was very short and fat, his movement was as fast as lightning, which was extremely horrible.
Lin Xun hummed with coldness, and, with the Greenwave Saber in his hand, rushed up to his enemy.
As the ambush had failed, now both had to fight at close quarters, which required courage, aggressive manner and high fighting techniques.
Lin Xun was never a coward.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The two guys began to fight fiercely in the swamp, just as two hungry wolves fought for the last chance to survive.
Soon, Lin Xun realized that the dumpy lad had reached the peak on the ninth level of Martial Realm, with a treacherous and ruthless fighting style; he was indeed a formidable adversary.
Especially his way of using the saber, mysterious and devious, was definitely a superb fighting technique, which made the blade able to move flexibly like a poisonous snake hissing.
This lad must be an overmatch in the Camp 40!
The more powerful enemy Lin Xun encountered, the more willing to fight he became. Ever since the day of reaching the seventh level of Martial Realm, Lin hadn’t got the chance to fully display his ability.
As for the fight with Shin Wenbin yesterday, it was a unilaterally overwhelming tease, not a real live-or-die competition.
Go!
Lin Xun’s handsome face was calm and intent, and his black eyes brightened at the moment. He focused on performing the essence of “Six-word Saberplay” with Greenwave Saber.
But, after a moment of fighting, the dumpy lad suddenly jumped out of the fight, and then said, “Friend, we stop, okay? If we continue to fight, we will both get injured and be taken advantage of by others”.
Lin Xun didn’t reply and continued attacking. He couldn’t confirm whether the dumpy lad was serious or not. He must fight, in order to avoid any more accidents.
“Fuck!”
The dumpy lad cursed loudly and turned around to run away. His dumpy body was so quick that he ran dozens of meters away in a second.
Until then, Lin Xun was sure that the lad really didn’t intend to continue the fight, because the distance was beyond the bowshot of Bloody Armor-piercing Crossbow.
“Friend, your saberplay is not bad. After the monthly test, we will surely have a chance to fight again!”
The dumpy lad shouted and disappeared quickly.
“Fight? Next time I will kill you first, you Fatty!”
Lin Xun snorted with contempt, but he was also relieved. He knew every well that if they continued fighting, they both could get hurt and others would take advantage of them.
“It seems that I need to find another place to ambush.”
Lin Xun took a glance at the swamp; he knew that it was meaningless to hide there again.
However, Lin Xun still couldn’t understand how the dumpy lad found him out.