An assessment that was supposed to last a full day and night was altered by Wei Jingcheng, who slashed its duration by three-quarters.

Now, the entire assessment was incredibly compressed. Crises rained down one after another, and every second seemed to hide a lethal threat.

This incident reaffirmed for everyone the distinctive style of Sword Cultivators.

Decisive, sharp, and efficient.

But for the disciples undergoing the assessment, this "efficiency" was a miserable experience.

Jiang Yue had the urge to curse someone out.

"Weren’t they supposed to increase the difficulty this evening? How is there a monster this strong right at the start?!"

The wound on his chest had drained the color from Jiang Yue’s face, and the hand gripping his sword trembled uncontrollably. The flying swords circling him wobbled, looking as if they might clatter to the ground at any second.

Under the monster’s assault, he was a candle in the wind, liable to be extinguished at any moment.

This filled him with grief and indignation.

’Damn it, the sect lied to me! If I hadn’t been misled, I wouldn’t have been so careless... This is bad!’

The misleading information from the sect made Jiang Yue’s composure shatter, and he cursed under his breath.

But just as he was distracted by his silent cursing, the monster in front of him suddenly vanished. His heart leaped, and he instinctively slashed his sword behind him.

"HSSS..."

But the wound on his body forced him to stop halfway through the turn, and a look of misery crossed his face.

’It’s over...’

He already had a premonition of disaster. And indeed... he was right.

Half-turned, all he could do was watch as a black-scaled claw, reeking of a foul stench, shot toward his chest.

The claw was so close he could almost see the cold light glinting on its tip... SPLAT!

Just as Jiang Yue thought he was about to die, a water droplet from out of nowhere slammed into the monster, bursting into a fine spray on impact.

...

Jiang Yue noticed this, but he didn’t think such a soft, weak-looking water droplet could change anything.

Just as he was thinking this, the claw stopped mid-lunge. The Shadow monster’s body had frozen solid.

"Huh?!"

Before Jiang Yue could react, there was a loud BOOM! The monster’s hide exploded as if a bomb had been detonated inside it.

???

The scene left Jiang Yue utterly baffled, until a familiar voice spoke beside him, and he finally began to understand.

"Jiang, are you alright?"

"Zhong Ming... what was that just now? I’m fine."

*Cough, cough...*

He tried to say he was fine, but his injuries sent him into a coughing fit.

Seeing this, Zhong Ming waved a hand to those behind him. "Find a stretcher," he ordered the Longxi Peak disciples. "And bring Jiang Yue with us."

"Yes."

With the order given, Zhong Ming tapped his toe. The Magical Robe woven from flowing water began to glow with an ethereal blue light, and a pale white mist materialized at his feet, lifting his body.

Thus, with the aid of the Longxi Magical Robe, Zhong Ming once again floated in the air, scanning the area below for any sign of other Longxi Peak disciples.

As he searched, he led the group toward the City Lord’s Mansion, the tallest building in the ruined town.

It was their designated meeting point; heading there would make it easier to find the others.

And it was true.

Along the way, he soon encountered several more people from Longxi Peak. Among them was Xue Yao, who, like him, had stepped up. With her exceptional strength, she had already gathered a large group of disciples from both Longxi Peak and Cuixiang Mountain.

...

"Bastards!"

BOOM!

While Zhong Ming was gathering his allies, Yan Chen, who had also been ambushed, was seething with rage on the other side of the city.

He himself was unharmed. Thanks to his high-grade Magical Treasure, the Radiant Sun Mirror, he had detected and killed the Shadow monster the moment it got near.

What truly infuriated him was Molten Fire Peak’s ranking.

Dropping from first to fifth was, for someone as proud as him, more humiliating than suffering a grievous wound.

The current rankings perfectly illustrated why Sword Cultivators and Body Cultivators were regarded as combat specialists.

Real combat wasn’t a stage duel; it was full of unexpected situations and crises.

When suddenly ambushed, Sword Cultivators were agile, their sense of danger almost instinctual. This allowed them to evade most surprise attacks.

Body Cultivators, on the other hand, were physically powerful, able to weather blows with their iron-like bodies.

The Pill Cultivators had it the worst. Since most of their power came from Elixir Pills, they had no time to take them or wait for their effects to activate during an ambush.

As a result, they had plummeted to seventh place.

In eighth place was Profound Stone Peak, which specialized in Beast Taming. Their fate was even more tragic. After all, even in a Holy Grail War, everyone knows to kill the Master first.

The subsequent rankings for Little Bamboo Peak, Molten Fire Peak, and Dharma Seal Peak were also dismal.

Little Bamboo Peak needed to set up formations to display their true strength, but this was a battle of ambushes and sudden encounters. It gave them no room to operate. Their ranking was only decent because they had few members, meaning fewer points were deducted for losses.

But with so few members left, they had no chance of making a comeback.

As for Dharma Seal Peak, their Magic Techniques required time to form hand seals and chant incantations. Getting ambushed at close range by an Assassin was a tragedy.

—Powerful Magic Cultivators did have many automatically-triggered Magic Techniques, but some of the strongest ones still required hand seals, incantations, and time to gather Magical Power. This made ordinary Magic Cultivators no match for Sword Cultivators at all.