Chương 90: Newcomers Tournament I - Drawing Lots.

"Hear that? It's time for the tournament to start!" Gang Bo said with a smile on his face looking down at Shu He.

Shu He merely nodded.

'32 participants… so with me, Gang Bo, Mei Ling, Bai Lian and Tai Hui plus the two others that's 7 of the 11 that entered the sect recently, that also means 25 older disciples' He looked around and saw the glimmering eyes of those he was unfamiliar with, a desperation hidden in the depths.

"I heard the what the Sect Master said to you, you need to win?" Shu He looked up at his bulk of a friend with a subtle smile.

"Yup, Master can be pretty brutal if I fail to meet her expectations, so I need to win this" He replied, slightly shivering from some memories he quickly recalled before shoving them to the back of his mind.

"Why? I suppose you want to win as well right?" He stared at Shu He expectantly.

"…I want to win" Shu He returned his stare.

"Then we'll be meeting in the finals then! I hope you've worked hard; I've been put through hell for the sake of it in the past few months after all ahahahaha" He began laughing as he patted Shu He's back causing him to stumble a little.

'What the hell?! He's not just taller he's also stronger!' Shu He panicked as he struggled to retain his footing before glaring back at his friend.

Gang Bo walked off towards the centre of the arena, they had been called over to draw the lots.

"Hoh, I didn't get much time to talk to him before, but that fellow seems like he'll be fun" Tai Hui passed by following along while murmuring, a gleeful smile spread across his face.

"Just because he got chosen as a direct disciple…" Another person passed, one of the other two that had entered the sect with them.

"Let's go Shu He" Bai Lian walked up to him while watching Mei Ling run off ahead.

"Right…" Shu He shook off the throbbing pain that came from Gang Bo's palm slapping his back and started walking over to the centre.

Soon the procession of 32 disciples formed a moving crowd that congregated around two stone stands that had been formed, atop each stand was a cage, and inside the cage were little birds flapping around.

Except they very clearly weren't living birds, they were the colour of white and were clearly made of some sort of paper.

'Origami Birds? Shikigami?' Shu He stared at them with a bit of confusion as he hadn't expected a clash of culture.

He activated his sight to get a better look at them, although it was hard to get a good look because they were flittering around constantly he could see their bodies lined with flowing lines and a core of Qi, similar to the formations he had seen before bit a bit simpler.

'No that's not right' He focused on the 'core' he had seen before and became quite amazed at the sight he witnessed; the core not only held Qi, but it was also a much more detailed collection of formation engravings in a small sphere.

'Another piece of technology I haven't seen before!' He became excited at the sight of it, if he were to make an assumption the core likely acted as a power bank and CPU for the simpler formations on the paper around it.

"Welcome, all of our participants!" The elder that greeted them was yet another unfamiliar elder to Shu He, he wasn't surprised at this point though since he had long since learned the scale of the sect.

This elder had medium length hazel hair that was held in a short tail at the back of his head and blue eyes with stubble covering his face, he had an enthusiastic expression on his face.

"I'm Mu Kai and I'll be your judge for the main stage of the tournament, I'm very pleased to see you all here today; Especially those of your that are new to the sect! This will be your first event in the sect so please look forward to it and those in the future!" He enthusiastically spoke while glancing between the several new disciples in the group.

Shu He could see a lot of the older disciples being impatient and unenthused because of his attitude, some tapping their feet or fiddling with stuff in their pockets.

"As you know, the preliminaries just ended a little while ago, in that we selected participants for the main stage from our older disciples through a knockout challenge, simple 1 v 1 matches where the loser is disqualified until we had a suitable number of participants for the main stage, luckily enough we ended up with a nice and round 32 participants which will make everything go smoothly".

Shu He listened as he took a better look at some of the older disciples, he could see some of them with scuffs on their clothes and skin, some with frayed threads and minor tears.

'So they have that disadvantage as well' He thought.

They had already fought once or more, they likely recovered their Qi with pills, and they wouldn't have any significant wounds because of the formation, however they still had physical and mental exhaustion even if it was only a slight amount.

"Now then, I'd like you all to split in to two lines, one for our older disciples over on the left and new disciples on the right, stand in front of these two pillars here."

He signalled to the two stand with cages on and everyone did so, the disparity in number between new and old disciples became apparent with one line more than three times longer than the other.

"Alright, some of you may have seen these before but for those that haven't these little critters in the cages are called Familiars, they are created using Familiar Charms and are widely used by cultivators for various tasks such as delivering messages, espionage and assistance in battle, the form you're seeing here is just one of the many possible" He explained as he pulled out a paper charm, it had a diagram of lines drawn on it with a small black sphere embedded in the centre.

Shu He used his sight to observe the actions of Mu Kai, he saw Qi being funnelled into the black core and before long it spread to the other circuit like lines, the paper then automatically folded like an invisible hand was bending it before it formed a small bird identical to the ones in the cage that floated next to him.

"They work just like that, see?" He then had it fly around him before landing in his palm, as he extracted the Qi from it, it unfolded back into a charm once more.

'So it's not one time use either, convenient' Shu He nodded in approval as he watched with fascination.

"Anyway, soon I will open these cages and they'll swarm your respective groups, all you need to do is pick one out of the air! It will unfold and have a number on it, you just need to bring it to me afterwards." He explained, the new disciples all nodded while the older disciples didn't say anything, clearly they had experienced this before.

"First, the bigger group" Mu Kai walked on over to the left cage and opened the large door, the moment he did the familiars changed direction and flew out of the new opening, circling the group of older disciples.

None of them rushed to pick them out of the air, they merely stood still and snatched one that came near them before walking over to Mu Kai who took a look at the number before writing the person's name down.

Before long they were all done, so he walked over to the right cage.

"All right new disciples don't be scared just grab them whenever you feel".

The little birds flew out and started circling the seven of them, without hesitation Tai Hui snapped up the first one followed by Gang Bo and Mei Ling.

'No hesitation… well I guess it doesn't matter who we face if we want to win in the end.' Shu He shrugged to himself and snatched the one nearest him.

'16, exactly half, huh…' He stared at his number for a second before he walked over to Mu Kai.

"Shu He right?"

Shu He nodded, not too surprised his name had been memorised by Mu Kai, he was one of the new disciples after all.

"Okay, that's fine" Mu Kai said so Shu He walked off to the side, the new and old disciples seem to have automatically returned to two separate groups this time.

They waited for a few minutes before Mu Kai spoke again.

"Okay, will all the participants return to the waiting area please" And so they did.

"Hey Shu He, what number did you get?" Gang Bo asked as they sat down to wait.

"Does it really matter?" Shu He shook his head.

"I'm just curious!" Gang Bo crossed his arms while frowning.

Shu He sighed before he gave in "16".

Gang Bo laughed "We're really fated to meet in the finals then, I got 32".

"Really? What a coincidence…" Shu He was slightly surprised, but it wasn't a large enough coincidence to call it fate, at least to him.

The tournament is a classic knockout tournament, with 32 participants there will be 16 aside in group A and group B, meaning someone from group A won't meet with anyone from group B until the finals.

Shu He had drawn 16 which was the bottom of A, while Gang Bo had drawn 32, the bottom of B so they wouldn't meet until the end.

"All right everyone! The brackets have been decided! If you take a look up above you'll see them!" Mu Kai shouted, his voice filling the arena as he placed his hand on a metal plate in front of him as he stood in a stand at the side of the arena.

"Up?" Shu He looked up and saw a light shining, not in the sky but on the four sides of the arena were four large metal plates he hadn't noticed before embedded in the stone, they began shining before line quickly formed into a very familiar bracket diagram filled with names.

Shu He didn't know most of the names, so he focused on the ones he did know.

1 – Tai Hui

5 – Bai Lian

10 – Jin Bao

16 – Shu He

20 – Mei Ling

32 – Gang Bo

Out of all the results, Shu He feels like he drew the worse one.

While he was facing two people he didn't know on the first and second fights, on the third fight he was facing Jin Bao the arrogant young master; He didn't really want to get involved with him, but it seems his hand had been drawn.

On top of that, his semi-final match would be against Tai Hui before he could fight with Gang Bo, out of everyone else he was the one he was worried about fighting most.

He glanced over at Tai Hui whose face was currently filled with smiles, happy to fight two people who he wanted to have a bout with.

In comparison he was Bai Lian looking slightly unsettled that she was to fight him early on.

Mei Ling was due to fight one of the other new disciples in round 3, same for Gang Bo.

Shu He stared at the brackets and realised quickly that they were clearly weighted.

'So that's why they split us in to two groups'.

At the very earliest new disciples will meet another new disciple at the 3rd round, and one of them the semi-finals which was Shu He.

"Now that the bracket is decided, let us set the stage!". Mu Kai shouted as he interfaced with the metal plate.

*RUMBLE*

"What?!" Shu He was suddenly shocked out of his thoughts as he looked around, it wasn't just him a few of the other new disciples did the same as a rumbling enveloped the arena.

Before their eyes, the many stages that were used for the preliminaries seemed to… dissolve in to the ground, disappearing from sight! All that was left was a flat plain leaving no evidence of the previous stages.

And then right after that another great rumbling began sound out, steadily but surely the ground seemed to gather and compact bit by bit forming a far bigger rectangle, decorated with precise stone slabs and four spear like pillars at the four corners.

The stage size was at least 25 meters squared, making for a much larger stage.

'Isn't that overkill?!' Shu He thought as he stared in amazement.

"Now that we have our arena, participants please prepare; We will begin the first round of battles in a few minutes!."

Shu He's heart skipped a beat; it was only dawning on him now that he really was about to participate in a duelling tournament.

He was both nervous and excited to see just how much he had improved!