Their whole battle went on for a while. Many spectators sat down and started to cultivate. They wanted to at least spend their time productive and not waste their time watching a boring fight.
Only Vown and Ryu did not start cultivating. The teachers and seniors were at first also confused with what Zayn was doing, but they noticed his improvements in dodging and attacking. He started off as someone who never fought before and improved to an amateur in fighting. Most cultivators needed weeks, even months, to improve like that. Because of Zayn's radical improvement, the teachers and seniors brushed it off as Zayn only testing the other student and also began to ignore this fight. Only Vown knew that Zayn had zero battle experience at all and that his improvement happened all in this fight. But after experiencing Zayn in action for days he was not even surprised by this kind of radical improvement.
The battle continued for an hour before the other student decided to give up. He stopped attacking, declared his loss and walked shamefully away. No one knew why he endured the fight for so long. Zayn was the only one surprised by this development. He really got into learning how to fight and actually improved a lot.
Zayn was declared the winner of the P Group. He then left the arena and then joined Vown and Ryu again. Ryu immediately asked out of curiosity. "Why did you fight like that?"
"Well…ehm I was trying to-"
"I instructed him to do that. He needs to spend his time on the fights as productive as possible, so I wanted him to learn the basics of fighting. Unfortunately, his opponent gave up and Zayn could not learn everything I instructed him to learn." Vown knew it was hard to explain for Zayn what he did there, so Vown took the responsibility for Zayn's action.
"Wait, does that mean his improvement was real?!?" Ryu after comprehending what Vown just told him was amazed. Zayn really was not lacking in anything around cultivation, he was just too young.
They continued to talk and started giving pointers to Zayn. Zayn really used the pointers to even further improve what he just learned. The Infinite Star also gave a few pointers and helped Zayn a lot with that.
After Zayn's fight, everyone stopped their cultivation and were excited about the next rounds. The preliminary rounds ended and now the Eight-Finals began. The Eight-Finals were far more exciting than the preliminary rounds. In the preliminary rounds, 10 people were fighting at the same time and it was mostly chaos in the arena, but now only one on ones would be held. The crowd could concentrate on one fight and see the strongest first graders fighting against each other.
The arena was cleaned and prepared for the next rounds. Then a teacher entered the arena.
"Many of you know who I am, but for those who don't know me, I am Teacher Leaf. I will be the referee for the remaining part of the tournament. Normally, we wouldn't use a referee for the tournament as it would be kept in order by itself, but by the request of many others, we had to establish a set of new rules, in order to restrain someone. And I will be the judge!"
Even though Teacher Bolt did not tell who he was talking about, the teacher and seniors knew, heck everyone knew. All of them shifted their gaze towards Zayn and stared him down. When Zayn noticed that everyone was shifting their gaze he also started to shift his gaze towards their goal, but he soon noticed that they were staring in his directions. He embarrassedly laughed it off.
"We've added a time limit of 10 minutes for a round as a rule and also no unneccesary crippling of his opponents!"
"All right. For the first fight of the Eight-Finals, the winner of A Group will fight against the winner of B Group. Come up and enter the arena!"
The crowd was in an uproar. They were excited about this fight. From the preliminary rounds, they knew each winner of each group. And in this fight, the two strongest first graders were facing off. It would be a fight which would write the future of the academy because those two cultivators would become the academy's future and now the stronger one would be decided. Both of them had the 6-Star Body Refinement Realm Cultivation. The estimated winner for this fight was Flint, because of his background and his available resources he had a huge advantage against his opponent. This fight was the highlight of the tournament and it should have been in the finals, but the crowd did not complain.
The two contestants entered the arena from the two ends of the arena and walked up to each other. They then bowed to the teacher and then to each other.
Zayn immediately recognized one of the two contestants. It was Flint, the one who lost against him and gifted him the Fire Fist. Flint also saw Zayn and immediately looked down on him. His arrogance still persisted even though he lost against Zayn. Flint gazed towards Zayn only for a second, then he completely ignored his existence and concentrated on his fight. The other contestant was also a young boy, around Flint's age. He wore the ordinary academy uniform and carried a sword with him. His most noticeable feature was his green hair. On earth, Zayn saw many people who colored their hair, but you could nearly always recognize that it was colored only from the looks of it. But the young boy's green hair seemed far too natural. Zayn presumed that people in this world were born with many different hair colors.
After bowing the teacher announced the fight as started. Both contestants gazed each other down, trying to read any possible attack. Because of Flint's arrogant nature, he stayed in his gaze for a few seconds and then disregarded it and charged towards the green-haired boy. The green-haired boy read the attack and dodged it towards the side and immediately counter-attacked. Flint predicted this scenario and let his body fall. Using the force of gravity, Flint turned his body around and sent his leg flying towards his opponent. This move caught his opponent off guard and hit him. In the last second, he could only use his right arm to block it. The force sent him a few steps back. The green-haired boy was impressed, he could not suppress his smile.
"Good one! You got me with that one. But, how about we get straight to the serious part and don't waste time around?"
After saying that the green-haired boy unsheathed his swords. A green jade-like sword appeared out of the sheath. It had a snake engraved on it with many mystical inscriptions.
"Serious? You intend to already end the fight? Well, if you want to lose so badly!" Flint also got serious. The qi around him changed in a blink of a second. Around him many tiny fire particles appeared and surrounded him, making it look like an aura.
"The Snake Tongue and the Fire Qi from the Burning Heart cultivation technique!" Someone commented from the crowd. After saying that the crowd screamed in excitement. Everyone cheering for their contestant.
"What's the Snake Tongue and the Fire Qi?" Zayn whispered to Vown.
"Nothing special at all. The Snake Tongue is the green-haired boy's weapon. It is said that it was forged by a 1-Star Blacksmith. He probably found it in a mystical realm or so. The Fire Qi is a special kind of qi where the qi was either formed through the element of fire or adopted into it. Fire Qi can only be cultivated with a special cultivation technique. Many families and sects have their own cultivation technique with their own unique aspects to the world of cultivation. Take the Thunder Head Academy for an example, the founder, the Thunder Head Sect has also a cultivation technique with Thunder Qi as their unique aspect." Vown truthfully explained everything and told him that it was only something ordinary. The crowd was only far too inexperienced to have seen things like that.
After powering up, both Flint and the green-haired boy clashed for a few times. Their clash was only for a fragment of a second and was for many first graders far too fast to see it. This happened again and again.
"Kid, we have a problem!" The Infinite Star urgently told Zayn.
"What is it?"
"You see the Flame boy there?"
"Yeah?"
"He will be far harder to fight against than you imagined. He is currently in the 6-Star Body Refinement Realm, but his progress is suppressed by himself. He could enter the 7-Star Body Refinement Realm at any moment, he wants to!"
"What?!?"