Noah started his training by kicking at a certain speed five times and gradually increasing the speed, still kicking always five times. He unconciously kicked faster than he should have a lot of times but as he trained more and more, his control got better and better. He was not at the level of a master, but with the aid of his Qi and his own efforts, he was already at the level of a rookie.
His trained for a week, and it was finally time for the competition. The outer sect disciples were called to the arena, and yes, the sect had a arena. It was where they normally hosted competitions or if some disciples wanted to fight, they could duel here. Doing it anywhere else was forbidden, and killing the opponent was too, even though young masters normally ignore the last rule,"accidental" deaths were a thing after all.
Noah got the place where they told that the participants should go, and the worker there said that everyone that was going to join the competition should write their name on a wooden board and put it in the pot. There was two pots near him, one filled with blank wooden boards and a empty one. Noah grabbed one of them, wrote "Long Ding" in mandarin with his Qi and put it into the empty pot.
The worker said that they were free to watch the competition and the elder that was the judge would call their name when it was their turn. Noah thought that it was very unorganized, and that if someone didn't sit to watch the whole competition he would lose the fight by ausency, but he not cared that much about it though.
Noah calmly found a seat into the audience to watch, and got one where he would't stand out by being alone but people wouldn't sit beside him. For him sitting very close to unknow people was awkward and a bother.
Soon the audience was filled with people and there were constant sounds of talking, everyone was hyped for the fights. They were betting on who would win, who would lose, there was even some weird group of guys that made a bet of how many fights Xiao Long would last before losing.
A disciple Noah never saw but he felt that he was a bit stronger than average approached that group and asked if he could bet too, and when they agreed his bet was that Xiao Long would get fisrt place. The guys laughed thinking it was a joke but he said it wasn't, and he bet a large amount of Spirit Stones into Xiao Long, earning disbelieving stares from them. They mocked for being crazy but the guy just smiled confidently.
Watching that scene Noah was sure that the guy was some sort of friend character of the protagonist, either the almost a lackey type or the friendly rival type. If it was the fisrt, he would be forgotten soon and if it was the latter he would keep reappering like a undying cockroach, always getting random powerups out from nowhere.
The judge Elder shouted that the competition had begun from now on, and Noah redirected his attention. The first fights were unimportant ones, the type that the author doesn't even bother to write about in novels. After a good amount of boring matches, the Elder called a name that made the audience murmur.
"Disciple Xiao Long!!" The Elder read the wooden board and shouted.