52: Chapter 52 Advancement

The moment the final water-type Naga was torn apart by the joint efforts of three scarred Marrow-Eating Demon Hounds, the water-type pressure across the entire arena completely dissipated!

The enemy's five hundred and fifty S-grade Nagas and two hundred and forty A-grade Six-Armed Battle Maidens were completely wiped out!

The tragic arena instantly fell silent, leaving only scattered water light and lingering demonic aura phantoms all over the ground, along with hundreds of Marrow-Eating Demon Hounds standing with low health and their fierce might still intact.

Su Mingzhe's face turned abruptly pale, his eyes filled with disbelief and extreme shock.

He held S-grade top-tier familiars, making a full effort without holding back, and forcefully blasted apart the majority of Lin Ye's hound legion, yet in the end, he still suffered defeat!

The top-tier group battle with the shortest duration and highest quality had actually been lost to a boy from an F-minus-grade Divine Kingdom!

The referee was stunned for a moment, then loudly announced the result, which resounded through the entire venue!

"Su Mingzhe's familiars are completely wiped out, the battle is over! Lin Ye wins! Successfully advancing to the next round!"

Boom!

The whole venue completely erupted, and the earth-shaking cheers and gasps surged straight to the dome!

"He won! Lin Ye turned the tables through a bloody battle, crushing the S-grade genius!"

"Sacrificing the majority of his hounds in exchange for completely annihilating the opponent! This daring, this tactic, and this combat power are simply outrageous!"

"An F-minus-grade Divine Kingdom crushing an S-grade genius! Starting today, no one will ever dare call Lin Ye a trash god again! He is the most terrifying dark horse in Cangnan City!"

Ye Feng clenched his fists tightly, his face as gloomy as water, and the dread and jealousy in his heart climbed completely to the peak.

Even an S-grade genius going all out couldn't do anything to Lin Ye, could his own Thunderstorm Berserk Rhino really counter the opponent's demonic aura?

At this moment, for the first time, a deep sense of unease sprouted in the depths of his heart.

Lin Ye raised his hand to lightly summon them, and the pitch-black demonic aura completely withdrew. The surviving Marrow-Eating Demon Hounds turned into streaks of light and plunged into the Divine Kingdom passage, which closed instantly. He completely severed his soul connection and pulled himself out of the combat state.

He raised his gaze to scan the rest of the arenas in the competition grounds. The matches of the other contestants were still progressing fiercely; the sounds of spell roaring, weapon collisions, and familiar roars rose and fell one after another, and the entire tournament remained boiling hot.

Deep in his heart, he was rapidly reviewing the bloody battle with Su Mingzhe just now, calmly analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, and shortcomings of his own combat power.

The advantages of this battle were extremely intuitive. The human-sea cluster tactic of thousands of Marrow-Eating Demon Hounds had an extremely high fault tolerance rate. Even with heavy losses, they could still rely on sheer quantity to grind high-grade familiars to death and turn the tables against the wind.

However, the shortcomings were equally fatal and had already been completely exposed.

The Marrow-Eating Demon Hounds under his command were uniformly mass-produced combat forces, extremely lacking in high-end, top-tier combat power.

The sole commander-grade Marrow-Eating Demon Hound in the entire field barely possessed the ability to fight across tiers, but it was a single pillar that could not prop up a collapsing structure and could not support the entire battle situation. If not for relying on a three-on-one human-sea encirclement and trading lives for injuries just now, it would have been completely impossible to grind down Su Mingzhe's S-grade Naga legion.

Lin Ye's gaze was deep and solemn, and his heart was exceptionally clear.

This human-sea life-filling combat style was still viable in the city-level soul simulation league. Anyway, the destruction of familiars was all virtual data with no origin loss and no real casualties, allowing for reckless consumption and all-out slaughter.

But once stepping onto the State Competition stage to initiate real Divine Kingdom duels, this set of tactics would completely fail.

By then, if familiars died in battle, it would be a true demise, and the Divine Kingdom's origin would be damaged synchronously. If they still relied on the lives of the Marrow-Eating Demon Hounds to forcefully fill in against opponents, they wouldn't last a few rounds at all.

Without high-end combat power to hold down the fort, relying solely on mass-produced low-tier familiars to pile up numbers made it impossible to rush into the forefront of the State Competition. Let alone the top three in Quanzhou, even entering the top ten in Quanzhou could be considered an extravagant hope.

"I must accelerate evolution."

Lin Ye whispered inwardly, a flash of urgency crossing his eyes.

"There are still two days of rest time, and the time for another evolution is almost here. I just don't know if it will be in time. But even if it's not in time, I have to advance through the first round first; in another day, I can have the next batch of familiars advance to S-grade!"

Only when the species grade comprehensively leaped forward and more high-end combat power was born would he have the confidence to truly gain a foothold in the State Competition of real Divine Kingdom duels and vie for Jinghun Hall!

With his thoughts settled, the City Tournament schedule advanced rapidly. Over a hundred matches in the first round all concluded, nearly half of the one hundred and fifty contestants were eliminated, leaving only seventy-five people to advance to the next round.

The draw for the seventy-five-to-thirty-eight knockout match was launched at top speed. The instant the results came out, there was another uproar across the venue.

In this round of draws, Lin Ye directly drew a bye!

Without needing to fight, he automatically advanced to the top thirty-eight!

Countless spectators sighed endlessly. Some marveled that Lin Ye's fortune was peerless, while others deeply knew that this was preferential treatment brought by strength; the organizing committee deliberately avoided the possibility of a dark horse perishing too early, making this genius showdown even more worth watching.

Compared to Lin Ye's effortless coasting to victory, Wang Hu's path to advancement could be described as a bloody, bitter battle.

In this round, he encountered an A-plus-grade water-and-earth dual-element familiar genius. The opponent had both offense and defense, with extremely strong kite-flying abilities, tightly countering the Crimson Flame fire-type combat power.

In a desperate situation, Wang Hu completely released all restraints and played all his trump cards. The Crimson Flame Heavenly Ape transformed into a full-scale frenzy, burning the heavens with a sea of fire and crushing with brute force. It forcefully broke through the opponent's water-and-earth defense, fought fiercely for several minutes, and painstakingly crushed the enemy familiar legion. Treading through full-body gunpowder smoke, he successfully squeezed into the top thirty-eight.

At this point, Cangnan No. 3 High School still steadily retained two dark horse seats.

The schedule continued to advance, and the thirty-eight-to-nineteen knockout round officially kicked off.

Lin Ye's opponent in this round was a genuine A-plus-grade genius, a veteran powerhouse from Cangnan Key No. 1 High School.

The opponent's core familiars were A-plus-grade Frenzied Tiger-men, possessing ferocious physiques, towering brute strength, and terrifying close-range critical strike capabilities—purely strong-attack crushing-type familiars.

However, the tiger-man population numbered only four hundred and sixty, supplemented by several hundred ordinary B-grade beast-type familiars, bringing the total army count to less than one thousand. Their overall cluster combat power and endurance were slightly inferior to Lin Ye's adult Marrow-Eating Demon Hound legion.

Stepping onto the battle stage, that A-plus-grade genius gazed at Lin Ye's illustrious reputation below the stage, then glanced at the lineup gap between the familiars of both sides, quickly weighing the pros and cons in his heart.

His tiger-men were extremely strong in single combat, but Lin Ye's hound human-sea was unsolvable, and the demonic aura corrosion countered all flesh-and-blood living beings. Fighting forcefully would only vainly increase familiar losses and ultimately lead to defeat.

Rather than wasting combat power in vain, it was better to admit defeat gracefully, preserving his strength to prepare for the subsequent loser's challenge track.

Without redundant stalemate, the A-plus-grade genius simply raised his hand and said in a deep voice: "I concede."

"The contestant concedes, Lin Ye advances to the top nineteen!" The referee immediately dropped the hammer to pronounce the verdict.

Lin Ye easily won once again, marching steadily all the way and advancing to the top nineteen without any twists and turns.

Only the final round of the knockout stage remained—the nineteen-to-top-ten, which was also the final ticket contention battle for the City Tournament finals.

The new round of battle rosters refreshed. The moment the matchup information on the light screen froze, the entire venue completely exploded, and the gazes of all spectators, contestants, and instructors locked onto the arena tightly, their faces filled with disbelief!

Nineteenth to top ten, Lin Ye's opponent—the SS-grade genius, Xiao Qingwu!

The entire venue fell dead silent for a fraction of a second, and then erupted into earth-shaking clamor!