High Martial: I Grind Professions

[Provincial Second Mock Exam: Martial Dao Skills Assessment Mode—]

Beneath the text, countless tiny runes scrolled and shifted at high speed, like a spinning lottery wheel, tugging at the heartstrings of every student below.

"What will it be?"

"Please don’t let it be survival mode!"

"A free-for-all? Or one-on-one duels?"

"..."

A tense atmosphere spread as countless pairs of eyes stared intently at the scrolling screen of light.

The scrolling lasted for a little over ten seconds, but it felt as long as a century.

Finally, the light screen froze!

The massive text instantly became crystal clear, carrying a cruel implication:

—ARENA BATTLE ROYALE!

"Hiss—"

"We’re done for!"

"How could it be a battle royale!"

"This is way too dependent on luck!"

The moment they saw the mode, a massive uproar erupted across the square.

Many faces instantly turned pale, their hearts sinking like stones.

An arena battle royale meant immense uncertainty and a huge element of luck. No matter how strong you were, you could still be ganged up on or eliminated by the aftershocks of a battle between experts.

The giant screen of light immediately began displaying the detailed rules for this battle royale. At the same time, a grand, emotionless mechanical voice rang in everyone’s ears, clearly explaining the rules:

This Martial Dao Skills Assessment will use the [Arena Battle Royale] mode.

The rules are as follows:

Groups and Batches: All participating students from Jiangnan Province (approximately 500,000) will be randomly divided into fifty batches. Each batch will be sent to twenty separate, super-sized virtual arenas.

Individual Arena Rules:

Five hundred students will be randomly placed into each super-sized arena at once.

All students will start with the same number of points.

Students may attack and kill one another. Killing an opponent will immediately grant you half of that opponent’s current points. The one killed will lose half of their own current points.

There are no safe zones in the arena. Combat will continue until the number of remaining students in the arena drops to ten, or the maximum time limit (10 minutes) is reached.

Advancement Rules:

At the end of each round, the top ten students by points in each arena will advance to the next stage.

After all fifty batches are complete, a total of 10,000 students will advance.

Second Round Battle Royale:

The ten thousand advancing students will be placed into twenty new super-sized virtual arenas at once, again with 500 people per arena.

The aforementioned individual arena rules will be repeated to determine the top ten from each new arena.

At the end of this round, a total of 200 students will advance.

Final Battle:

The final two hundred experts will all be teleported to a single, ultimate arena.

A final battle royale will take place in this arena until only one person remains!

The final rankings will be determined by a comprehensive evaluation of elimination order and total points.

The moment the rules were announced, without giving anyone time to react, the hundreds of thousands of students in the massive square—along with all the leaders, representatives, and observers on the main platform—all dissolved into countless streams of light and vanished without a trace.

The square, which had been bustling with noise and activity just moments before, was instantly empty, leaving behind only the cold structure of the virtual space.

As for Li Wen, his vision blurred. His body was enveloped and pulled by an irresistible force. The next second, he found himself in an even more vast, seemingly endless expanse.

There was no main platform here, only countless floating platforms and a massive, ring-like structure barely visible in the distance, like the prototype of a super-colosseum built for millions.

The space around him flickered continuously as densely packed figures rapidly materialized.

The true slaughter was about to begin on this even more massive virtual battlefield.

Heads bobbed in a sea of people, a cacophony of voices rising all around!

"My God... I thought five or six thousand people was a lot, but now I see it clearly. All the prodigies of Jiangnan Province are here!"

Deng Yuefei’s face was a little pale, his voice trembling. "Brother Xue, later... we’d better not... better not get matched with any of those monsters."

Xue Jun was normally one of the top students at Third Middle School, but now, his usual confidence had vanished, replaced by a solemn expression and a hint of imperceptible nervousness.

He gave a bitter smile. "In Bluestone County, we might be able to act tough, but among the younger generation of the entire Jiangnan Province... there are countless people stronger than us. The first provincial mock exam’s format at least let us avoid top experts by attacking virtual targets, but now..."

He glanced around the vast virtual space, then looked toward the specks of human figures that instantly filled the giant arenas.

"This is a battle royale, and the arenas are only so big. There’s no escaping it! Forget about running into a Force Realm master—if we even meet someone at the Unity Realm, I’m afraid we wouldn’t last more than a few seconds before being eliminated."

A sense of panic spread like invisible ripples among the remaining students of Bluestone Third Middle School.

Even Huang Hao, ranked second among their group, pressed his lips together, his eyes filled with wariness toward the unknown powerful enemies.

Although his skill realm had reached a state of great accomplishment in a top-tier technique and was not far from perfection... below the Force Realm, all are but ants!

Especially in an arena with limited space, if they were unlucky enough to run into one of those monsters, a single detached blade-gleam or fist-aura imbued with Force sweeping past would probably be enough to instantly clear out a huge area.

Those like them, who hadn’t even fully mastered a technique to perfection, were practically just walking points.

"Look how calm Brother Wen is," someone whispered, and everyone’s gaze instantly focused on Li Wen.

His expression was calm and unfazed, as if this shocking gathering of five hundred thousand students and the brutal battle royale mode were nothing more than a routine afternoon training session.

The powerful aura of the Force Realm emanated from him, creating a stark contrast with the students around him, as if they existed on completely different planes.

Huang Hao took a deep breath, suppressing the tremor in his heart, and said half-jokingly, half-seriously:

"Brother Wen, if we get lucky and end up in the same arena, you have to carry me!"

Several nearby classmates from the Flying Star Class, including Deng Yuefei and Xue Jun, also stared at Li Wen with wide, hopeful eyes filled with longing and expectation.

They knew that if they could shelter under a towering tree like Li Wen, their chances of passing the first round would increase dramatically.

Faced with the pleas from his familiar classmates, the corner of Li Wen’s mouth lifted into a gentle smile. He nodded and said, "As long as we’re randomly assigned together, I’ll naturally look out for you."

That simple promise was like a stabilizing pillar, instantly soothing everyone’s anxious hearts.

The tension among the group from Bluestone Third Middle School dissipated considerably. Their faces even flushed with relief and a bit of excitement, as if they could already see themselves advancing safely under Li Wen’s protection.

Just then, the grand voice echoed through the void once more, accompanied by a giant countdown:

"Countdown: 3... 2... 1... Teleportation commencing!"

HUMMM—!

A strange fluctuation instantly filled the air.

When the grand voice announced the end of the countdown, the first batch of nearly ten thousand students vanished in an instant.

The space, which had seemed so crowded just moments ago, instantly became a little more empty.

Li Wen saw Huang Hao’s figure flicker beside him and vanish into thin air, as if wiped away by an eraser.

Following that, more and more students began disappearing from where they stood.

"Huang Hao was chosen!"

"Brother Wen, Huang Hao is in Arena Three!" someone shouted, having immediately looked up the information on their personal virtual AI assistant.

With a flicker of thought, Li Wen’s consciousness sank into the virtual assistant’s interface and instantly locked onto Huang Hao’s name. He selected "Spectate."

His vision changed abruptly!

Although it was far away, the giant Arena Three floating in the void suddenly zoomed in and magnified before Li Wen’s eyes, as if he were hovering ten meters above it. Every detail was perfectly clear.

He saw Huang Hao’s figure appear in a corner of the arena. A faint light materialized above his head, coalescing into a semi-transparent eye icon, followed by a conspicuous number: "10".

’An eye icon? Number of spectators... 10?’ Li Wen immediately understood the meaning of this feature.

The number represented that, besides him, nine other spectators were currently watching this participant, Huang Hao.

Evidently, the number was still jumping rapidly: 20... 50... 100... Finally, within a few short seconds, it stabilized at over 300.

The vast majority of them were undoubtedly his classmates from Bluestone Third Middle School. As the school’s number two, second only to Li Wen, Huang Hao was naturally a key focus of their attention.

What was more interesting was that after Li Wen locked his view onto Huang Hao, he discovered that the figures of the classmates around him had all vanished—not truly disappeared, but rather, all information unrelated to Arena Three had been "filtered out" by the system.

Only the figures of other spectators who were also locked onto Huang Hao remained around him.

These spectator figures were faint and ethereal, like transparent phantoms floating nearby.

"Brother Wen, you’re watching Huang Hao too?" The image of a slightly illusory Flying Star Class student next to him greeted Li Wen.

Although the distance seemed great, the voice reached Li Wen’s ears clearly. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

"Yeah," Li Wen nodded in response, his gaze turning to the arena.

In the arena, phantasmal weapon and armor racks appeared in front of all five hundred participants, including Huang Hao.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Huang Hao swiped his hands through the air. Two heavy, menacing alloy battle-axes with glinting, cold edges appeared in his hands, and a layer of sturdy light armor covered his body.

The other contestants also quickly selected their weapons. In an instant, the arena bristled with swords and sabers, their cold light flashing.

A murderous aura began to permeate the arena.

Five hundred elite prodigies, selected from across the province, eyed each other warily, their gazes a mixture of tension, excitement, calculation, and hostility.

"Arena battle royale, elimination begins! Time limit: ten minutes!"

The moment the restrictions were lifted, the entire arena fell into a brief, dead silence.

Everyone was like a tightly drawn bowstring, no one daring to make the first move for fear of becoming the common target.

Each person rapidly assessed the auras and weapons of the opponents around them, trying to find a relatively weak point to break through.

The entire arena settled into a strange stalemate, with only the sound of heavy breathing clearly audible.

This suffocating balance lasted for less than fifteen seconds!

"KILL—!"

A young man with a savage and fierce aura, wielding a long spear, seemed extremely confident in his own strength and was the first to break the silence.

His spear shot out like a dragon, carrying an unstoppable momentum as he ruthlessly thrust it toward a slightly built opponent beside him.

That roar was like a spark dropped into a barrel of oil.

BOOM—!!!!

At almost the same instant, a terrifyingly sharp aura that made one’s scalp tingle erupted from the center of the arena.

A dazzling white blade-gleam tore through the air!

The blade-gleam was over ten feet wide, condensed as if it were solid, and carried a sharpness that seemed capable of cutting through anything. It exploded outward at a speed that surpassed the limits of normal human perception.

PFFT! PFFT! PFFT! PFFT!

Wherever the blade-gleam passed, it was like a hot knife through butter.

Whether they tried to block with their swords and sabers, relied on their armor for defense, or were simply a little too slow to react and still stood stunned, they were all instantly swept away as if by an invisible giant scythe.

More than twenty figures dimmed and vanished in the brilliant white light, leaving behind only the specks of starlight that signified virtual death and instant elimination.

The entire arena, especially the area near where Huang Hao stood, fell into a brief vacuum of dead silence.

"Force Realm! That’s a Force Realm saber technique!"

"Oh my god, we ran into a heavy hitter who’s mastered Force right at the start!"

"We’re done for! There’s nowhere to run!!"

The remaining contestants on the arena instantly descended into chaos as panic spread like a plague.

Those who were a little farther away scrambled back toward the edges, wishing they could get as far away from that epicenter of death as possible.

The spectators, who had just been breaking out in a cold sweat for Huang Hao, all cried out in alarm.