Chapter 62: Golden Snake Secret Technique
Translator: Simple MTL Editor: Simple MTL
Lin An had thought about losing on purpose to save his strength and wait for Li Kuang to win so that he could challenge him.
However, Li Kuang was actually defeated by a local camp member before Lin An could even enter the arena.
Lin An had noticed the local camp member in various battles during the previous two days. Surprisingly, he always defeated his opponents by a small margin. When Lin An asked the other camp members about the lucky cultivator, he learned that his name was Feng Hen.
Feng Hen and Li Kuang had been placed in the same group, but Lin An hadn’t noticed this because he had been thinking about a plan to avenge his junior Jiuxiao Sect disciples. He had only noticed Feng Hen on the stage during his battle with Li Kuang defeated.
As expected, Feng Hen had won by a small margin.
Lin An couldn’t help but pay more attention to the seemingly lucky camp member.
Since Li Kuang had lost, Lin An had to defeat the other opponents in his bracket. Then, in order to get another chance to enter the Dragon G.o.d Illusionary Realm, Li Kuang would definitely challenge him.
Out of the remaining compet.i.tors, Lin An was the only disciple still in the initial level of the golden core stage. He seemed to be the weakest compet.i.tor in the tournament, so Li Kuang would definitely choose him.
However, Lin An would have to make his battles appear compet.i.tive. Even though he couldn’t lose, he couldn’t win too easily either. He would have to avoid using all of his trump cards in his fights.
If he won too easily, then Li Kuang would be scared, and he wouldn’t challenge Lin An.
Additionally, if Lin An exposed his secret techniques, then Li Kuang would be on guard, and it would be difficult to kill him and avenge Lan Qi and Junior Brother Zhou.
Once his turn arrived, Lin An walked calmly into the arena. His opponent was a thin and feeble-looking man, but what surprised Lin An was that he was only at the intermediate level of the golden core stage.
Despite his average cultivation level, he had defeated many cultivators who were at the peak of the golden core stage to enter the ultimate rounds of the major compet.i.tion. Lin An immediately concluded that there had to be something special about his opponent.
He would have to figure out the man’s special skills in order to avoid an upset.
The compet.i.tion began, and after both parties bowed to each other, the thin man raised his hand. In an instant, two blazing golden rays that looked like two golden snakes emanated from the man’s hand and spun toward Lin An.
Lin An hurriedly activated the protection of the Eastern Empire Bell and the morality demon sealing technique. He then used his palms, which were covered in golden rays, to grab at the two golden snakes.
However, Lin An was shocked by the nature of the attack.
While his left hand grabbed the golden snake-shaped ray, his right hand grasped at thin air. The golden snake pa.s.sed through Lin An’s right hand like a phantom and bit him, but it didn’t cause any damage.
‘Is this a phantom attack?’ Lin An wondered.
After Lin An crushed the golden snake in his left hand, the thin man attacked again. In an instant, three identical golden snakes rushed out from his hand and flew menacingly toward Lin An.
As the three golden snakes rushed towards him, Lin An understood that he was in trouble.
After the first round of confrontation, he already knew that there would be a phantom among the three golden snakes. However, there was also a possibility that all the golden snakes were real.
Therefore, an opponent had to figure out how to differentiate the real golden snakes from the phantom ghost snakes even though they had the same form.
If they couldn’t adapt and differentiate between the real snakes and the phantom snakes, then they would have to intercept all the three golden snakes. If only one of them was real, then the other two attacks wouldn’t have any effect.
However, from the pattern of his attacks, it seemed that the thin man would continue releasing more snakes. If he released nine golden snakes, then an opponent would have to use up more energy to intercept all the nine snakes.
As the number of golden snakes continued to increase, the thin man’s opponent would have to exert more energy to defend himself, and eventually, one of the real snakes would successfully launch a sneak attack under the cover of the other fake snakes.
This would not only increase the investment of defensive magic power from a rival, but it would also cause them to invest too much energy and become bored. In the end, the thin man would eventually win.
Lin An had finally figured out the ability that the thin man had relied on to defeat so many experts and enter the tournament’s finals.
Fortunately, the thin man’s moves were useless against Lin An.
He was naturally immune to such probability problems because he had the success rate system.
Instantly, a virtual screen popped up in front of Lin An’s eyes and a.n.a.lyzed each of the oncoming golden snakes.
[The probability of winning the battle against golden snake number one is 98%.]
[The probability of winning the battle against golden snake number two is 2%.]
[The probability of winning the battle against golden snake number three is 2%.]
After obtaining the probabilities, Lin An immediately gave up on his defense against the other two golden snakes.
He drew out his Nine Nether Weeping Blood Sword and slashed at the first golden snake. After cutting the snake in half, Lin An tightened his grip on the sword and charged at the skinny man.
Once the other two golden snakes touched Lin An’s body, they turned into phantoms and disappeared.
When the thin man saw that Lin An had easily identified the real golden snake, he was immediately startled.
However, he a.s.sumed that Lin An had just been lucky. After calming down, he ignited his palms again and released nine golden snakes.
At the same time, the success rate system’s virtual screen quickly marked out each golden snake.
[The probability of winning the battle against golden snake number one is 98%.]
[The probability of winning the battle against golden snake number two is 4%.]
[The probability of winning the battle against golden snake number three is 4%.]
…
[The probability of winning the battle against golden snake number nine is 98%.]
Of the nine golden snakes released, two were real, and seven were fake. Lin An’s charging figure didn’t slow down.
He immediately cut the first golden snake in front of him into two halves, and to the thin man’s surprise, he didn’t bother to defend against the remaining seven golden snakes.
Instead, he waited until the ninth golden snake arrived before he raised his sword to block it. With a flip of his wrist, Lin An cut off the snake’s head.
Before the thin man could launch another attack, Lin An was already standing in front of him.
Suddenly, the nascent soul stage elder referee quickly entered the arena and blocked the tip of Lin An’s sword, which was inches away from the thin man’s forehead.
At the same time, he announced, “Lin An wins this round!”
If the thin man had realized that Lin An had figured out his spell and given up on using the golden snake secret technique, he would not have lost the match so easily.
However, his proud spell had been broken by an early stage golden core cultivator, which made it hard for him to accept reality.
Seeing that Lin An had easily fought through the nine golden snakes, the skinny man had been extremely shocked, which was why he had failed to react to Lin An’s sword in time.
In order to protect him, the referee had stopped the match and saved Lin An a lot of energy.
The peak-stage golden core cultivators who had suffered defeat because of the golden snakes were all surprised.
Finally, one cultivator couldn’t help but ask Lin An how he had differentiated the real golden snakes from the phantom snakes.
When he heard the question, Lin An put his hands behind his back and replied calmly, “I was just lucky.”
After Lin An had exited the arena, the scheduled fights took place one after the other. Among the purple-clothed disciples, only Li Kuang had lost his battle. The other five cultivators all advanced to the next round.
In the other groups, n.o.body challenged the winners from the previous rounds. However, Lin An’s side had a long line of people who wanted to challenge him.
Since Lin An was only at the initial level of the golden core stage, the other cultivators felt that choosing him was equivalent to winning.
Another reason was that, in the cultivators’ views, Lin An’s victory had a lot to do with luck.
The cultivators were skeptical about Lin An’s skills. He was yet to show his ability and convince the ma.s.ses that he was worthy of entering the Dragon G.o.d Illusionary Realm.