In Tianjing City, Zhao Xing, accompanied by the Mountain Cat, Qingluan, and Tiger Flood Dragon, descended to Kaiyang Hall under countless gazes.
At that moment, Ji An was completely stunned.
"The Mountain Cat, it actually belongs to Mr. Zhao?!"
The other leaders of Seven Star Island quickly stood up and assumed defensive postures.
Only after discovering that the Mountain Cat had entered the adjacent courtyard did they finally relax.
After a while, Zhao Xing ran over to bid farewell to Ji An: "Mr. Ji, I’m afraid we may cause you trouble, so we plan to find another place to stay."
Ji An asked: "Mr. Zhao, have you already found a place?"
"Yes, it’s already set."
"Good, let’s meet again another day."
After Zhao Xing and his team left, someone beside Ji An said:
"Mr. Ji, that cat belongs to him? It’s truly extraordinary."
"Why didn’t you try to keep him?"
Ji An glanced at the speaker, who was Gu Yi, the one who had previously opposed inviting Zhao Xing to join them.
"Before, you all disagreed."
"What’s the point of saying this now?" Ji An said flatly, "Let’s continue searching for the flag."
Zhao Xing bought an estate and moved his people to a new place to settle down.
Over the next six days, he familiarized himself with the spells of the tamers within the estate.
On the eleventh day, the flag competition ended.
A large number of war beasts were eliminated.
The next day was immediately the ’survival competition’.
The Third-Rank Minister of Agriculture, Wang Xuan Yi, intervened, disturbing the heavenly time and earth advantage on Tianjing Island.
Apart from the city area, the rest of Tianjing Island was filled with horrifying phenomena.
Earth fire eruptions, extreme cold freezes, acidic rain from the sky... A cloud covered the entire Tianjing Island.
This lasted for seven days. During this period, all life on the island withered; other than human activity areas, there were no supplies available anywhere else.
Under such harsh conditions, the primordial energy consumption was enormous, and there were no supplies available at all.
When the survival competition ended, the Tiger Flood Dragon and Qingluan were both on the verge of death, their entire bodies emaciated.
The Mountain Cat no longer had its former liveliness, immediately diving to eat fish upon return.
On December eighteenth, the survival competition ended.
Within a single day, the Tiger Flood Dragon and Qingluan couldn’t recover at all.
Because on the nineteenth, the ’ice training’ would start immediately. The arena was underwater, starting from the northern outer sea of Tianjing Island, circling east, south, west, and back to the starting point.
Zhao Xing didn’t want to send Qingluan and the Tiger Flood Dragon to their deaths, so he directly had the two war beasts withdraw from the competition.
Only the Mountain Cat embarked on the third test.
Ten days later, in a sea area, the Mountain Cat broke through the ice.
It lay sprawled out on the ice, its stomach growling with hunger.
Since the Mountain Cat hadn’t undergone such training and Zhao Xing was only a novice tamer, the Mountain Cat significantly lagged behind in this round.
It returned to the starting point ranked one thousand seven hundredth.
But it didn’t get much rest time because the airborne melee would begin the very next day.
The exotic beasts couldn’t land and had to continue fighting in mid-air, which was another test of endurance and combat capability.
The last round was truly brutal.
The Frost Flying Giant Bear wielded a giant axe; the Hostile Soul Dragon wore custom dragon armor; the Emperor Crocodile and Spirit Rhinoceros, equipped with divine weapon sets, began to eliminate other war beasts in unison.
One by one, war beasts fell; then they were devoured for their essence blood by stronger war beasts.
Countless war beasts fell from the sky. The Mountain Cat smartly roamed the periphery, avoiding danger with its agile movement technique.
Two days later, three thousand war beasts passed the preliminaries.
The sea surface had turned blood red, and the Mountain Cat returned to the city, falling asleep as soon as it came back.
Seeing the blood-covered Mountain Cat, Zhao Xing cleaned it off and found that it was all other war beasts’ blood, finally putting his mind at ease.
"The Mountain Cat is not a true war beast, after all. Although it’s strong, it still lacks many things compared to genuine war beasts. It will need more training in the future."
"I also need to become a true tamer; otherwise, I’ll just be holding the Mountain Cat back."
Zhao Xing summed up his experience and decided to skip the preliminary contests for the next few years to focus on training the Mountain Cat, Xiao Tian, and the Inverted Sheep.
After returning at the end of December, the Mountain Cat’s performance drew the attention of many forces on the Purple Cloud Islands.
Many people gathered information and flocked to the Twin Dragon Horse Supervisor, looking to buy the Mountain Cat.
"Marquis Yuan Rang, name your price. The Mountain Cat is wasted in your hands anyway."
"Do you even know how to talk? Get lost!"
"Marquis Yuan Rang, I’m willing to exchange ten Fourth-Rank war beasts for your Mountain Cat. They all have divine-level third-stage bloodlines."
"Do you think my master is a fool? Show him out!"
"Marquis Yuan Rang..."
Some people wanted to buy it openly, while others had more nefarious thoughts.
On the major islands of the Purple Cloud Islands, the governmental agencies had quite high functions, and there were no lack of Fourth-Rank officials.
Since they wouldn’t sell the cat, they planned to recruit Zhao Xing instead!
He was a Sixth-Rank official, right? Promote him, transfer him to our prefecture as a Fifth-Rank official, and then the cat would be ours!
Thus, a strange scene appeared in Chongming Prefecture.
Many Standard Fourth-Rank officials went to Chongming Prefecture to lobby for Zhao Xing to be included in the promotion candidates list.
Learning about this, Zhao Xing didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
He wanted to use the Mountain Cat to break into the Dragon Court Ancient Land and get promoted. He never expected it would happen so fast.
However, Zhao Xing chose to refuse. He wanted to be promoted based on his own merits!
Why would he need to use these self-serving people to get ahead?
Besides, Zhao Xing was still preparing to break through to the Fifth Rank. To be promoted now would disrupt his plans.
So, in January of the twenty-second year of the Jingxin Calendar, Zhao Xing went to Chongming Prefecture and asked Wang Xuan Yi to block all those ill-intentioned people.
The reason was simple: he had only been here for less than two years, with just a year of outstanding political achievements, how could he be promoted to Standard Fifth Rank? It would be tantamount to ruining his future prospects.