The silver lining of this situation is that the mental strain he is feeling because of the possible unforeseen attacks from his enemies is also helping to refine his Dao Heart.
Instead of the fear and anxiety breaking his mind, it is polishing it, thanks to the Sky Raising Technique. So even though he doesn’t like the uncertainty of his situation at all, he can endure it indefinitely if he must.
He didn’t sleep at all. Anytime he felt sleepy, he would use the Concentration Metac. And thanks to his internal energy, his body never ran out of stamina, so it never needed to rest.
Seven days passed like this. The last day of the initiation program arrived. This day was also the day of the competition.
Everyone had a reason to be excited for today. Some were excited for the competition. But most were just happy that they would finally become bona fide disciples of the Four Directions Sect and would get to leave this place that had eaten 70% of them clean.
As usual, Muni called them over for an assembly. But he didn’t speak at this assembly. Instead of his usual long speeches, he was solemn and quiet as he led all of them out of the initiation grounds.
He led them to the main part of the sect. This is the area where the administrative buildings are.
Muni led them to a fighting arena in the main area. When they got there, there were already people waiting in the stands. These people were sitting in groups with clear demarcations between them made with empty space.
Loki saw Slav’s father, Skarg Rein, in one of the groups. He was surrounded by many other people. Three of these people were his two sons and one daughter, Simon, Serge, and Sophia.
All five members of the Reins Family looked alike. They had blond hair, piercing blue eyes, and were very handsome. With the way they carried themselves and with the way people fawned on them, they appeared to be royalty.
Just as Loki was looking at them, the four of them in the stands were looking at him. They each had their personal ways of examining him, so their behavior when they spotted him was different.
Skarg was looking at him with a calm, scrutinizing gaze. Sophia, the eldest, was looking at him with a naked, unabashed curiosity. Serge, the second oldest, was looking at Loki with an innocent smile that made him appear as if he was expressing goodwill to him.
Simon, the third child and second son, had a look of utter disdain as he looked down from his seat at Loki. As for Slav, who was together with him, he had a look of open hostility as he glared at Loki.
In response, Loki kept quiet and kept to himself. This was because he felt a faint sense of danger from Skarg and Sophia. It was a feeling he had experienced from Muni.
He didn’t want to die so soon, so he decided not to antagonize the Rein Family right in front of everyone. Besides, there was nothing to gain by doing so.
The competition started a few minutes after they arrived. Some arrangements were made to determine how the competition would proceed. When the arrangements were concluded, the competition started in earnest.
There used to be 34 of them, but two of them courted death recently by being caught red-handed for trying to kill one of their peers. So only 32 of the initial 100 remained after one year of brutal training.
These 32 were divided into four groups of 8 each. The 8 would fight each other in the first round to select the best 2. Then the best 2 from the groups will fight each other to determine the best 4.
The fight between the best four will be the quarter-finals. Next, there will be a semi-final. At the end of the day, there will be a final match to determine the overall winner.
All in all, there will be five rounds. This is the arrangement that they decided on. Loki didn’t care for it.
Actually, he wouldn’t have cared no matter the arrangement that they made for the competition. This was because he didn’t care about the competition at all.
He didn’t care about the rewards for the competition. As for the societies, he is wary of them and considers them to be poison.
He was already suspicious of the societies when Muni was waxing eloquently about the importance of societies. After all, Muni didn’t care about them.
There was no way Muni would be saying all he said because he cared about them. That meant that Muni was only extolling them about the importance of societies for selfish reasons.
Then he heard Slav say that his father, Skarg, is the leader of a society. That sealed his impression of societies as dens of wild beasts that swallow up new cultivators.
So he wasn’t interested in joining a society either. This and his lack of interest in the reward for winning the competition made him decide to forfeit the competition.
He gave up on every match instead of fighting. This surprised everyone because they thought that he was one of the best contenders for the final winner.
Even Slav frowned. He had been expecting Loki to try to humiliate him, so Loki’s decision to give up caught him off guard.
But then he thought of something which made him snicker to himself and say, "If you think you can get in our good graces by letting me win, you can forget about it."
Despite Loki’s unexpected performance, the competition continued without a pause. Meanwhile, Loki spent most of them time on a bench watching others fight.
The first person to catch his eye was Lillian. She fought using the Charm Metac and the Aphrodisiac Metac. This combination of Metacs bewitches people and makes them succumb to their lustful desires instead of fighting her.