Sea Cultivation: Giant Ships and Heavy Artillery Knock on the Door to All Races

Chapter 65: The Third Level of Assessment: The Power of Protecting the Dao
"Next up is the third level of the assessment: the ability to protect the Dao!"

What is the ability to protect the Tao?

In a broad sense, all the power and means that I can use are the power to protect the Tao, even if they are borrowed.

In a narrow sense, the ability to protect the way is personal combat effectiveness.

If you have high combat power, you can protect yourself!
However, the combat effectiveness of the foundation-building seed assessment is not a battle against other candidates. Everyone's attributes in all aspects are completely mismatched, and there is no point in determining a winner or loser.

Therefore, the content of this assessment is to fight against puppets of the same level, and still challenge various types of puppets of the same level in the illusion array.

"Sword cultivators, magic cultivators, body cultivators, poison cultivators..."

"Fire Iguana Monster, Wind Wolf Monster, King Kong Ape Monster..."

"One-on-one killing battle, one-on-two engaging battle, one-on-three escape battle, one-on-four survival battle..."

"Sea warfare, swamp warfare, jungle warfare..."

In order to give full play to everyone's personal advantages and avoid weaknesses, Huanzhen provides a large number of combinable challenge projects.

In the eyes of the foundation-building cultivators, the challenge difficulty of each project is similar, but in the eyes of different candidates, there is a big difference.

Therefore, everyone has the power to choose their own opponents and can give full play to their strengths.

“Whoever designed this assessment was really thoughtful.”

People's fighting abilities vary, and in this assessment everyone has the opportunity to fully demonstrate their strongest form.

However, it is not just one battle, but ten different battles are selected to ensure that the combat level of the examinee can be fully measured.

The only purpose of the assessment is screening, not difficulty. The purpose is to sort out the order according to combat proficiency.

Although Lin Qianfan is young, he has personally experienced a lot of battles. What he is best at is bullying the weak, using the majority to bully the minority, and bullying weak monsters, but this is not allowed here.

Secondly, what he is best at is fighting with human cultivators. In the past four years, Lin Qianfan has fought with almost all the cultivators of the sixth and seventh levels of Qi Refining in Yanglong Bay, and basically defeated them all.

So Lin Qianfan was full of confidence and challenged his opponent directly.

"war!"

Lin Qianfan’s first opponent was a sword-wielding cultivator, whose attributes were the same as Lin Qianfan’s. Both were gold-attribute sword cultivators, equivalent to a weakened version of himself.

The methods were similar, but the strength was overwhelming. Lin Qianfan relied solely on his superior one-on-one ability and swordsmanship skills to defeat him in less than ten rounds and killed him directly.

An expert will know if there is one as soon as he takes action.

"I'm at the early seventh level of Qi Refining, and I have the average combat level of aristocratic family. It might be difficult for others, but it's not challenging at all for me."

It's not that Lin Qianfan is arrogant. In the past four years, he has experienced at least nearly a thousand battles, of which no more than one-third were battles with monsters, and the other two-thirds were sparring with cultivators.

These sparring-type battles are mostly based on challenging one small realm upwards. When one is at the fifth level of Qi Refining, one will challenge all those at the sixth level, and when one is at the sixth level of Qi Refining, one will challenge most of those at the seventh level.

Although he had only exchanged a few moves with the starlings after reaching the seventh level of Qi Refining, these phantom puppets of average level were indeed vulnerable.

"Let's get another one who uses a gun."

Over the years, he had challenged Bage dozens of times, but each time he was just looking for trouble. Lin Qianfan was improving, and so was Bage. Seeing Lin Qianfan desperately trying to catch up, Bage became very nervous. Although the gap between the two sides was narrowing, he had never won a direct fight, so Lin Qianfan placed great importance on spearmanship.

"It's too simple. The difference between it and the starling is too big."

The disadvantage of a sword against a spear is only reflected in the Qi Refining Realm, because the fighting style of Qi Refining Realm cultivators has not completely separated from that of mortal warriors, and they mainly rely on close combat, so an inch longer is an inch stronger.

But this disadvantage will be eliminated as the realm becomes higher and higher, especially after reaching the Foundation Establishment Realm, everyone will be able to fly into the sky and into the sea and fight at a distance. Who will compete with you in close combat and skills?

By then, the type of spiritual weapon would not be so important.

"Let's try a fire monk..."

After figuring out the strength of the illusion, Lin Qianfan, whose combat power far exceeded that of ordinary people, was confident and began to look for some challenging battles to enrich himself.

Anyway, as long as you win all ten games, you can get excellent results. There is no need to force yourself to be the first in this ranking. It is not a good thing to be too prominent. After all, there is no extra benefit in being the first in everything.

Ten incense sticks later, Lin Qianfan, who was still in good spirits, completed the trial, won all ten games, and broke out of the formation.

"I didn't expect this one-on-four survival battle to be so exciting. Luckily, I have good agility and many tricks."

Lin Qianfan also tried one-on-two, one-on-three and one-on-four combats.

In order to challenge his own limits, Lin Qianfan treated the original tug-of-war, escape battle and survival battle as annihilation battles.

The enemies simulated in the illusion know how to cooperate with each other. Although their individual strength is average, the difficulty will increase exponentially with each additional person cooperating with each other.

One against two is easy, but one against three is a bit difficult. If you want to win without getting hurt, you need to pull away and find opportunities to avoid the enemy's attack.

When it was one against four, the opponent's offense and defense coordination was almost seamless. He had to escape while finding flaws to counterattack. In the end, when the timer was up, Lin Qianfan had only killed three people.

After winning all ten games, Lin Qianfan went out to fight. At this time, there were already quite a few people standing outside, but their expressions were different.

Although this level is not about who is faster, Lin Qianfan knows that he is not the first in this level. For example, both Myna and Lin Qianyu have good fighting ability. They came out before Lin Qianfan, so their ranking must be higher.

The assessment criteria for this level are:
Only those who win all ten battles are considered excellent, which means they can cope with various combat environments and their strength far exceeds that of their peers.

Nine wins and one draw can only be considered average. Winning and drawing are two completely different concepts. Killing the target in a kill battle is considered a win, while in a one-on-one battle, even if you can defeat the opponent but fail to kill the opponent within the specified time, it can only be considered a draw.

Failure to kill means poor combat effectiveness. Once you fight an enemy with all your strength in the wild, even if you have made a mortal enemy, if you are unable to completely kill the enemy, it will cause endless troubles. Therefore, nine wins and one draw is the extreme concession of "medium".

Those who have a mixture of wins and draws but are not defeated are only considered qualified. Even the most extreme and worst case of drawing ten games still represents a person's ability to survive.

Anyone killed by the illusion puppet will be eliminated, even if he has won nine games cleanly and lost only one.

What's the point of pursuing the path if you're killed by an average opponent whom you chose yourself?

With this level of skill, if they go out, they may not even be able to defeat independent cultivators with incomplete inheritance, so those who died in battle in the illusion will be directly eliminated.

We only have one life, and the family's protection is ultimately limited. The title of a descendant of a Jindan family is not useful in many places, so the ability to protect oneself is a very important indicator.

Only the absolutely strong ones in the same realm, or at least those who can protect their own safety in adversity, are qualified to advance to the next major realm.

"Qianfan, come here~"

(End of this chapter)