Beastmaster of the Ages

Chapter 3011 - Unwritten Rules

Tianming was walking along the chaotic Skyward Grandpath. It felt like he was within the body of some gigantic creature. At the very least, the smell of corpses was omnipresent amidst the starlit landscape, but it wasn't as pungent as rotting flesh; perhaps it had grown less intense after countless aeons. However, the smell still made it an attractive place for savage wildbeasts. Many were drawn to it and began proliferating there.

The moment Tianming entered the place, he saw many silhouettes of wildbeasts through the chaotic astral fog. The beasts were probably huddled together in big packs. The other participants that aspired to join Myriadpath Valley rushed into the fog to begin their slaughter.

Before Tianming managed to take a few steps, a golden light suddenly flashed above him. A golden plaque covered in radiant light descended, depicting a hundred names with a string of numbers next to them. The name at the very top had a number of around a thousand, while the name at the hundredth place had around eighty.

"So that's the Skyward Ranking." The rules to clear the Skyward Grandpath were simple. The numbers next to the names represented the points each participant had earned. Once the grand battle was over, those ranked in the top hundred would officially become disciples of Myriadpath Valley.

"This Huang Daoxiong fellow got more than a thousand points right after coming in? Looks like he's a genius affiliated with Myriadpath Valley's internal factions. He seems to have been fighting for quite a while now," Tianming muttered.

"What? They're already stronger than other people, and they also got a head start? Looks like Myriadpath Valley isn't as fair as they pretend to be," Ying Huo said.

"Well, there's nothing surprising there. They naturally want their own people to get in. As for outsiders like us, they have to slowly brainwash us to shift our allegiances from our respective mundi to Myriadpath Valley until it becomes our highest priority," Tianming said.

It was only sensible to afford benefits to one's own. Tianming had already learned the rules of the competition from Li Fan. He had to get points, and there were three ways to do it. The first entailed killing wildbeasts, which were assigned points depending on how risky and difficult it was to defeat them.

Sanctuary-class beasts were worth around ten points, give or take, while low-ether-class beasts were worth a hundred or more. Mid-ether-class beasts were considered really powerful for the participants and were worth over a thousand points. As for high-ether-class beasts, even if they existed on the Skyward Grandpath, they wouldn't be released there. They were theoretically worth more than ten thousand points and killing a single one would be enough to let one rank in the top hundred, or even the top ten.

"The ranks of the beasts are determined by their power. High-deific-class beasts, for instance, are comparable to stellaminor beastmasters and their beasts combined. However, once a cultivator becomes an astral god, wildbeasts can no longer measure up as well. Many orderans can kill low-ether-class wildbeasts, while third-level cosmic cartographers can face off against mid-ether-class ones.

"However, it’d take a cosmic cartographer with seven cosmic charts to face a high-ether-class wildbeast. There are some infinitum-class wildbeasts that truly talented cosmic cartographers are barely able to take on, but they usually have their own quirks that make them hard to kill in the first place, like the nigh-unkillable bloodline wisteria...." Wildbeasts varied in all kinds of ways. One couldn't use the same tactics to engage every wildbeast. As such, the way they were ranked also depended on a constellation of factors.

There was another way one could obtain points on the Skyward Grandpath: breaking formations. Small, specialized formations were scattered across the path. They were incredibly hazardous, and anyone that entered them and was able to break the formation would obtain points matching the level of difficulty of the formation. Should one fail, however, they would be trapped inside and unable to even kill beasts. As such, it was high risk, high reward, and luck also played a role.

Entering a top-grade formation without being aware of it posed a great risk to one's life. After all, myriadpath rings didn't have any life-preserving functions, exemplifying the attitude of Myriadpath Valley. There was no easy way on the path to martial supremacy. Those who lost their lives in the process wouldn't have amounted to much anyway.

As for the third method of gaining points, it was also the most common: defeating or killing other participants would award points! Besting an enemy would grant a third of the points of the defeated! The losing side would only be able to keep two-thirds of their points. But if one killed one's opponent, they would obtain all their points! Myriadpath rings would switch to a defeated status once enough damage was taken and automatically deal with point transfer.

"So I have to choose whether to kill the defeated opponent. I'm sure there'll be good reasons for either choice." If Tianming's guess was right, most of the people wearing black myriadpath rings would be killed without question. As for those with gold myriadpath rings, most of them would be spared after their defeat, as people simply didn't dare to antagonize their backers.

"The written rules of Myriadpath Valley may look fair, but the details are in the unwritten rules!" That degree of unfairness was clearly visible in the Skyward Ranking. Tianming had thought that the names on the ranking were gold simply as a matter of aesthetics, but he only realized later that there were black names near the end of the plaque.

"So the black names belong to geniuses from other mundi. The Skyward Ranking looks so golden because everyone that ranks in the top hundred is from Myriadpath Valley itself." Thanks to how dim the black names were, they stood out, making them easier to pick out.

Either way, the grand battle had just started, so the rankings were still volatile. Being at the top didn't mean much yet.

"Let's start hunting!" Tianming had a chance to use all three methods to gain points. "Getting first place is nothing more than ranking first for an entrance test, so it isn’t that big a deal. However, there’s rewards and opportunities to interact with people in higher places. It's crucial to do well if I want to find a good backer."

He decided that he would at least get into the top ten! "It should be fine if I use Yin Chen here in isolation."