Techniques and Dao

Chapter 16 The Battle of Candlelight (2)

Tai Shang Xiao Jun patted Hua Sheng: "Quick! Find the nearest candle and extinguish it!"

Immediately, Hua Sheng saw a throng of people around him, and heard only a constant whooshing sound. He instantly leaped into the air, lunging towards the nearest candle. Just as he was about to touch the glass dome, he was shoved aside with a bang, flying several meters away. In an instant, he was surrounded by figures rushing forward at breakneck speed, making it impossible to distinguish one from another.

Hua Sheng was about to call out to Tai Shang Xiao Jun, but then she realized that she only needed to extinguish one candle to guarantee her advancement. There were many candles on the mountain, so she might as well just pick one at random.

Just then, he noticed a candle nearby and was overjoyed. He immediately grabbed the glass dome and lifted it up. But as soon as the dome left the candle, the flame was extinguished by a whoosh of wind.

"Oops!"

Hua Sheng had a bad feeling. Looking up, he saw that the number of candles in the air was decreasing rapidly, like a countdown, and more than a thousand had already disappeared. The number of the trial participants, however, remained unchanged, as if it were engraved in the air.

In other words, whether intentionally or unintentionally, none of the thousands of disciples who participated actually won and left the arena.

It seems that either someone deliberately reduced the number of candles, or everyone encountered the same situation as them when the candles were blown out by the strong wind.

Hua Sheng turned his head and looked around, finding not a single candle burning nearby. The nearest light was several hundred meters up a mountain. He immediately made hand seals and chanted an incantation, quickly flying up the mountain. He had only flown less than a hundred meters when he heard a deafening roar of a tiger coming from afar.

"Oh no! It's Tiger Spirit!" someone shouted from the side.

Hua Sheng reacted immediately, quickly covering his ears. Immediately following was a tremendous earthquake, with sand and stones flying everywhere. A wave of sound, like a tidal wave, assaulted him, making his scalp tingle. Before he could even recover from the shock, a series of cracking sounds echoed throughout the mountains and fields.

Hua Sheng instantly realized that the continuous explosions were the sound of the glass dome covering the entire Guangji Mountain being shattered.

Then, a scene that left Hua Sheng speechless appeared: in a mere second, the entire Guangji Mountain turned pitch black, just like a city that had suddenly lost power.

At a glance, all the candles had gone out!

The pitch blackness before my eyes, like a flame of hope, was instantly extinguished by the cold wind.

"Is it... over?"

The match was over in just over ten seconds? Hua Sheng was practically frozen in place. He hadn't even had time to extinguish the candle, and it seemed like he hadn't even had time to compete with the other disciples, yet he was already facing elimination.

But he immediately realized what was happening and looked unwillingly at the fire characters in mid-air.
"Trial participants: 3,722."

More than twenty disciples have already advanced! Hua Sheng then looked at the remaining candles.

Count of candles: 117

Hua Sheng's heart, which had been hanging in suspense, instantly relaxed. But she was still surprised that the tiger spirit's roar had shattered more than three thousand glass covers.

"In other words, even if not a single lamp goes out, at most only one in thirty disciples might advance?" he thought to himself. He really had to risk his life from now on!

Judging from this number, there should be more than a hundred candles left on the mountain, but it looks completely dark right now. Where are these hundred candles?
Hua Sheng could not find any firelight around her, but the figures in the darkness flew towards the mountaintop.

"That's it! There's no trace of candlelight down the mountain. This mountain is so high that it must be hidden by the clouds!" After thinking this, Hua Sheng immediately rode a flying cloud and flew up the mountain.

As he flew away, he carefully looked around, afraid of missing anything.

The clouds at the mountaintop were thick, and as they ascended, the mountain fog grew denser, reducing visibility to just a few meters. Worried about not being able to see the candlelight on the mountain, Hua Sheng landed in the mountain forest.

A thick fog enveloped the mountains and forests. Although the occasional sounds of bustling crowds could be heard, not a single person could be seen. Hua Shengshen trudged up the mountain forest, struggling to cover about half a mile. Suddenly, an idea struck him. He leaped about a meter off the ground and then swiftly darted through the jungle.

Suddenly, a faint light flashed in Hua Sheng's peripheral vision. He immediately stopped and took a few steps back on his cloud. Looking closely, he saw a candle hidden in the grass two or three meters to his right.

What incredible luck! If it weren't for the fog, the candlelight would have been spotted by passersby long ago. Hua Sheng secretly rejoiced and immediately landed on the ground, running towards the direction of the candlelight.

Just as the candlelight was within reach, Hua Sheng felt the back of his collar being lifted up. Before he could struggle, he felt himself being thrown away by a brute force.

Fortunately, he hadn't slacked off in his training these past few days, and Hua Sheng was quite skilled with his feet. He adjusted his posture in mid-air, kicked off a thick tree branch with his hind leg, and landed steadily on the ground. Only then did he realize that the person who had grabbed him was a male disciple who was nine feet tall and had a burly build.

"You mere mortal, get out of here!" the male disciple shouted aggressively. "Trying to compete with our immortal race? Be careful you don't break your leg."

Being looked down upon by the immortals ignited a surge of anger in Hua Sheng's heart.

"Ice Condensation Spell! So be it!" Hua Sheng shouted, and the surrounding thick fog immediately condensed into water vapor, which then instantly froze into hailstones that shot out from Hua Sheng's palm.

Unexpectedly, the burly male disciple didn't dodge at all, but instead fiercely punched the hailstones. With a deafening boom, the hailstones scattered as if hitting an impenetrable wall. "This little trick, you think you can deal with me?" The male disciple was about to laugh when he suddenly realized that Hua Sheng had vanished. Before he could even look for him, Hua Sheng's voice came from behind him.

"Earth-遁术!"

The male disciple suddenly felt his footing give way and plummeted downwards, his entire body buried in the mud except for his head. It turned out that Hua Sheng had used an earth-遁术 (earth-遁术 is a type of magic or technique) to bury the male disciple in the mud beneath him, causing him to lose his footing and be instantly buried.

The male disciple glared angrily at Hua Sheng, who was squatting beside him, about to speak. Suddenly, the male disciple reached out from the soil and grabbed Hua Sheng by the throat. He roared, "You think this trick can trap the immortals!"

Then the soil around the male disciple began to rumble and churn, and the male disciple was thrown into the air. But Hua Sheng did not struggle at all, as if she had been choked unconscious by the male disciple.

Just as the male disciple was about to make a few sarcastic remarks to Hua Sheng, his expression suddenly changed, and he shouted, "Illusion! Show your true form!"

Suddenly, the flower that the male disciple had grabbed revealed its true form – just half a tree trunk. The male disciple looked again, and saw that the real flower had already lunged at the candle flame on the ground.

The male disciple cried out, "Oh no!" But it was too late to rush over and snatch it, because Hua Sheng was less than half a step away from the candlelight.

But in the blink of an eye, Hua Sheng was suddenly kicked away and fell heavily to the ground.

Hua Sheng, who had just landed on the ground, flipped over and jumped up. She was only half a step away from success, and she was filled with regret. She blamed herself for not paying attention, and for another unexpected obstacle appearing out of nowhere.

Upon closer inspection, he realized it was a rather frail female disciple. The disciple revealed half of her original form: a pair of raccoon ears on her head and a ring-shaped, spotted tail. She appeared to be a raccoon spirit.

"You two grown men, stop arguing. Now that I, a weak woman, have come, you'd better give way!" The raccoon fairy twisted her body, trying to remove the glass cover.

The male disciple, of course, would not give way, and roared, "There can only be one winner in the trial! Wait until the game is over before you give way!" With that, he pounced on him.

The fox spirit moved with lightning speed, turning around to avoid the male disciple and almost simultaneously appearing behind him with a gentle push. The male disciple was propelled away by the force of the push, crashing through two large trees before finally landing on the ground with a thunderous crash, after which four or five more trees collapsed.

The fox spirit chuckled and said, "Look at you, acting like a bull. You're a disgrace to all the gods."

She then stretched and walked to the candlelight. Turning to look at Hanamori beside her, she said, "I'm sorry!"

After saying that, she reached out to take the glass cover, but as soon as she got close, there was a whoosh, and the raccoon fairy spirit suddenly disappeared.

Hua Sheng was so astonished by this sight that he couldn't close his mouth. He searched everywhere, but there was no trace of the raccoon fairy. It had indeed vanished into thin air. Looking at the candle flame again, it was still flickering inside the glass dome.

"Wasn't it said that the players would only leave after the candles were extinguished? How could they just disappear like that?" Hua Sheng muttered to himself.

Just then, the male disciple who had been thrown several feet away ran back, shouting angrily, "Where did that raccoon go?"

Hua Sheng shook his head.

"What tricks are they playing now!" The male disciple turned around and looked around, but couldn't find the raccoon fairy anywhere. Then he saw Hua Sheng sitting on the ground in the distance, and the candlelight right next to her feet. He reached out and tried to remove the glass cover.

Hua Sheng hurriedly shouted, "Wait!"

"Stop thinking nonsense. This candle is mine!" The male disciple didn't slow down his hand speed at all.

Just as they were about to touch the glass barrier, suddenly, with a whoosh, the male disciple, like the fox spirit from before, vanished into thin air.

Suddenly, the surroundings became quiet.

Seeing the two suddenly disappear into thin air, a chill ran down Hua Sheng's spine.

He slowly got up and confirmed that the two people had really disappeared.

The candlelight on the ground flickered slightly, appearing utterly ordinary.

Hua Sheng dared not try it lightly, but instead approached the candlelight to observe carefully.

Suddenly, a voice came from behind.

"If you move your face just a little closer, you can go back to sleep earlier."

(End of this chapter)