"What!"
The host was shocked!
Although a refiner made a living with their hands, it didn't mean that they couldn't refine if they were missing one or two fingers.
According to the legends, there were many masters of refining with only nine fingers.
However, what they were missing was definitely not their thumbs!
Without thumbs, they wouldn't even be able to hold a saber or a sword. A refiner would be useless!
This Li Yao had defeated the heir of the Luo family of East Brightness, who was best known for his hand speed, without using his thumbs at all?
The host gave it a try. He clasped his thumb in his palm and used his other eight fingers to touch the things on the table. He barely managed to raise the glass of water shakily, but in a moment of carelessness, it fell to the ground and his shoes were wet.
The host was dumbfounded. "How — how do you fix it?"
Bi Luoling mumbled to herself, "He defeated the heir of the Luo family of East Brightness easily even though he hid his thumbs. If he had tried his best, he would have been able to get within 55 points easily.
"But why did he do that? Was he hiding his strength? That wasn't necessary! Master Dustless? "
Bi Luoling was somewhat confused.
Master Dustless stared at Li Yao's hands for a long time. Then he shook his head and said solemnly, "He wasn't hiding his strength. He was stimulating his fighting will!"
"Stimulating his fighting will?"
"That's right, Luo Ling. You were last year's third place, so you must have some experience. In a big competition, you can't enter your best state right from the start. You have to meet one or two strong opponents and fight with all your strength. Only when you're excited and crazy can you erupt with the strongest fighting spirit. You will enter the peak state where you can forget about everything around you!
"It's like an expert of martial arts. If he is asked to fight a three-year-old child, he will never be spirited!
"Maybe. For Li Yao, an opponent such as Luo Dong is no different from a three-year-old. He cannot summon the slightest fighting will in him at all!
"If he can't unleash the strongest fighting will, he will be at a disadvantage if he runs into a real expert.
"He purposely hid his two thumbs, not to show off. He just wanted to increase the difficulty and break the limit. Unleash the strongest 'Battle Intent'! "
The host was dumbfounded. "A real expert? Even the descendant of the Luo Family of East Brightness was not a 'real expert' in the eyes of this contestant Li Yao? Then who was his target? Could it be? "
Master Dustless murmured, "I've been immersed in the path of refining for over a hundred years, but I've never seen such a strange newcomer. Such strange hands … Take a closer look at his hands and compare them with the other contestants. See if there's any difference. "
The host brought up a few light beams and displayed the pictures of the hands of many experts of refining. Even Mo Tianshui's and Huangpu Xiaoya's hands were in the pictures.
The hands of most experts of refining were either as translucent as jade, as smooth as silk, or as hard as iron. Some were even emitting a vague glow. Her nimble fingers were filled with a breathtaking beauty.
Only Li Yao's hands looked no different from an ordinary person's. There were some small wounds scattered on the back of his hand, and there were a few calluses on his palm. There were even some barbs on his fingernails!
The host blinked and said, "His hands seem to be quite ordinary. There's nothing strange about it."
Bi Luoling looked at her sparkling hands. She said solemnly, "That's the problem, no matter how you look at it. They should be the hands of a low-level Cultivator, or even an ordinary person. But he is clearly an expert of refining who crushed the descendant of the Luo family of East Brightness easily. I can't tell his background, heritage, or school from his hands at all. I really wonder how he trained himself! "
"I suggest …"
Master Dustless said, "In the next round, besides Mo Tianshui and Huangpu Xiaoya, we can switch the camera lens to this contestant Li Yao more often. I'd like to see what other astounding performances he has!"
…
"What? You've lost? You've lost to that Li Yao?"
In the contestant's lounge, the 320 contestants who had advanced to the next round were having a brief adjustment.
Long Yunxin, who had won the match easily, soaked her hands in her secret lotion and watched the replay of the match to appreciate the exquisite skills of the two aces, only to be interrupted by Luo Dong's message.
On the light beam, Luo Dong was crying miserably, as if his soul had left his body. To this moment, he still didn't understand how he had lost the match.
"Damn it. I've seen a ghost in broad daylight. The guy's movements were not very elegant. Even his fingers were somewhat stiff. At first, I was laughing in my heart, thinking that his movements were completely deformed because of his lack of experience in competitions and his nervousness!
"But as it turned out, he completed all the maintenance without me knowing it with his deformed movements and stiff fingers!
"You didn't see his eyes. His terrifying eyes! They were like two furnaces that were burning with black fire and were about to swallow all the sabers and swords in his eyes!
"Horrifying. Too horrifying. Later, I didn't even dare to look at him in the eyes. The moment I looked into his eyes, I felt that my soul was melting inside a bottomless furnace!
"It was a mess. My rhythm was completely messed up. I lost the match without knowing what was going on!
"Hehe. What's so strange about seeing a ghost in broad daylight? There are at least eight hundred spectral Cultivators watching the match right now, if not a thousand!"
Long Yunxin sniffed and said mercilessly, "Maybe the guy does have some tricks up his sleeve. But getting to the bottom of it, it's because you are too weak! I've been saving your face in front of other people, but I'm going to criticize you behind your back. You've been living too comfortably. Over the past year, a lot of gossip about you have been exposed in the media! Your hands must've been numb from all the touching, haven't they? "
Not giving the guy a chance to argue, Long Yunxin cut off the communication directly. Taking a deep breath, she resumed her tranquil state.
It was just a trivial matter.
Nowadays, there were too many Cultivators who pretended to be pigs to eat tigers after reading a few legendary stories in the world of Cultivators.
However, when they pretended to be pigs, the best they could do was to eat the fat and stupid tigers. When they ran into ferocious dragons, they would be stomped into a meat pie after only one stomp!
An enormous light beam was floating in front of Long Yunxin. The names of the three hundred and twenty contestants were flashing nonstop. A new group of ten was about to be formed randomly.
The second round of the competition. Similarly, only one out of ten would advance to the next round. Only after the top 32 would they enter the elimination round.
Long Yunxin prayed to herself that she would not be in the same group as the monsters such as Mo Tianshui or Huangpu Xiaoya.
She was a seeded contestant. In the randomization algorithm, the odds that two seeded contestants would be in the same group were very low.
However, to make the competition more enjoyable and to attract more spectators … Occasionally, two seeded contestants would run into each other in advance, which would be quite thrilling.
The second round of the competition. It was a refining assignment according to the specifications.
Every contestant would be given a vertical furnace and a refining platform. Three structural designs of magical equipment would be given to them, which were a chainsword, a vibration saber, and a fiery axe, respectively.
They were three kinds of melee magical equipment. They were the most classic models, which represented the limits of rotational damage, vibration damage, and thermal damage respectively. They were the basics that every refiner had to grasp.
What they had to do was to refine three pieces of magical equipment from scratch in five hours with the same materials.
The result of the competition would be decided by the power of the three pieces of magical equipment and who had refined the three pieces of magical equipment. The one with the highest cumulative power among the ten contestants would be able to distinguish himself and enter the elimination round!
The elimination round. One-on-one competitions among the top thirty-two contestants would be the real 'Skyhill Sword Seminar'!
Beep! Beep!
The thirty-two groups had been allocated!
Long Yunxin's heart was beating fast. She stared at the surname at the top of the list. Thankfully, there was no 'Mo'. There was no 'Huangpu', either!
Taking a long breath in relief, Long Yunxin read on boldly, only to discover an unexpected name — Zhou Xiaoyu, young master of the Snowfield Sword Village!
Zhou Xiaoyu was a seeded contestant, too. He had defeated her in the Skyhill Sword Seminar last year.
She had run into the unlikely event of two seeded contestants running into each other in advance after all.
However, Long Yunxin was not scared of Zhou Xiaoyu at all.
She couldn't wait to meet him sooner. After all, he was her 'nemesis'!
"Excellent. I'm going to kick you out of the top hundred this year and avenge myself for last year!"
"Huh?"
"This Li Yao is in the same group as us, too?"
"You've been assigned to the same group as two seeded contestants. Consider yourself unlucky, my friend!"
The time of the match had come.
Long Yunxin sneered. She crossed her fingers and stepped on the teleportation array with her head held high. She appeared in a new area immediately.
Except for the experts, the competitions of refining were not very exciting. They were often tedious and boring.
In order to attract the attention of the general audience, the organizers had been trying their best to make the matches more confrontational.
In the group matches of ten contestants, every refiner had their own independent refining workshop. However, the walls were entirely transparent. Through the refraction and reflection of the glass, the operations of the other nine contestants could be seen clearly from various angles.
Also, every refining workshop was connected to each other through communication channels. When some of the 'nemeses' ran into each other, they were totally free to taunt and trash talk and deal with their competitors with psychological tactics. That would be like a comet crashing into a comet and igniting the whole audience!
The moment Long Yunxin entered the refining workshop, she saw her 'nemesis' Zhou Xiaoyu next door through the transparent wall.
Zhou Xiaoyu was wearing a black refining suit. He looked indescribably handsome. The corners of his eyes were slightly curled upward, giving him an evil charm.
"Yunxin, I didn't know that we were so lucky to meet each other again this year, and so early. Hahahaha!" Zhou Xiaoyu said with a smile. He eyed Long Yunxin as if she were a pure and innocent animal.
"Young Master Zhou, please call me 'Fellow Cultivator Long'!" Long Yunxin said coldly. She stared back at Zhou Xiaoyu.
Visible flames of light were flowing around the two of them and filled the entire refining workshop. They were like two ferocious beasts that were about to attack and staring at each other through the feeble fence.
"We're screwed. We've been assigned to the same group as two seeded contestants!"
"If there were only one of them, we could still try our luck. But there are two of them. This is truly a group of death!"
"With the two sharks here, small fries like us have no chance at all!"
"We can only try our best to get a better ranking!"
The other refiners of the same group all sighed in regret when they saw how aggressive the two of them were.
Inside a refining workshop on the opposite side of the two 'sharks' …
Li Yao sat cross-legged and stared at his hands wholeheartedly.
To be more exact, it was the thumbs of his hands.
They were the thumbs that had been cramping violently because of hunger because they had not participated in the battle just now.
His two thumbs were raised high and bent backwards. Like two cold butcher knives, they were raised inch by inch.
Li Yao raised his hands and placed the knives on the necks of Long Yunxin and Zhou Xiaoyu.
"Pa!"
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