Chapter 364: The Rules of the Sky Quadrant

“Brother Boulder?” Liu Wencai walked excitedly over to Jiang Chen’s residence in anticipation of clearing up his questions, but soon realized that not a single soul was present.

“Left?” Liu Wencai looked dumbly around at the empty yard. He knew that Brother Boulder had likely gone to report to the sky quadrant.

“Thank you, Brother Boulder.”

Even though the person had left, Liu Wencai still bowed deeply and respectfully outside Jiang Chen’s residence.

“I’ll make it to the sky quadrant after three months and continue our brothership!”

An unforeseen surge of confidence rose in Liu Wencai’s heart at that moment.

......

The sky quadrant was exactly as Jiang Chen had thought, a place full of spirit power.

The earth quadrant couldn’t hold a candle to the sky quadrant.

“Welcome to the sky quadrant.” An examiner greeted them enthusiastically.

There were four keepers in the sky quadrant, one from each of the four great sects.

“According to the rules, your rankings will be the last ten in the quadrant. All of your scores will start from zero in this quadrant.”

Everything was starting from zero?

Jiang Chen started. Did this need to be announced? It was a new cycle, of course everything was starting from scratch.

“Heh heh, judging from your expressions, you must feel it odd that I’m saying this. Don’t think it’s strange; this is the sky quadrant, and thus different from all the others. The scores for each cycle are cumulative here, and every candidate that ascends to the sky quadrant starts off with zero.”

“Master examiner, I spent my first cycle in the sky quadrant and had obtained a score before. I fell to the earth quadrant but performed well and came back again. Can I not regain the score I had before?”

There were many candidates like this one.

They’d been the bottom ten in the first cycle and had been demoted to the earth quadrant. Due to superior performance in the earth quadrant in the second cycle, they’d been promoted again.

Now that they were back, they naturally wanted to regain their old scores.

The examiner smiled faintly, “My apologies, your scores are zeroed when you leave the sky quadrant. When you come back, you will start off as a newcomer and start from scratch.”

The candidates’ faces immediately changed. “This... this isn’t fair! Then they who’ve been here for the past two cycles will have much higher scores! We’re starting from scratch, then doesn’t that mean we’re only going through the motions for the selection?! How can we compete with them?!”

“Going through the motions?” The examiner laughed coldly. “If you have no confidence in yourself, then what meaning is there in you participating in the selection? This selection is meant for geniuses, and a true genius would be able to fight against disadvantageous conditions. What need do we have for mediocrity? If you truly have talent and potential, why would you have been demoted from the sky quadrant to the earth quadrant? Did we purposefully send you away?”

The candidates were speechless.

Jiang Chen had remained silent off on the side. Although the rules seemed a bit ridiculous, he wasn’t of a mind to bring contempt upon himself and protest something.

The rules had been set by others. To question their rules was to invite ridicule and scorn.

“Alright, old rules it is. Every single person who arrives must first understand the rules of the quadrant. The sky quadrant is completely different from the other quadrants. The tests that you need to undertake here aren’t just limited to matches in the rings.”

“Come and pick up your participant tokens as well as a set of the rules. Go carefully study them!”

It was apparent that even those candidates who had returned to the sky quadrant were treated like newcomers upon their return, with redefined participant numbers.

There were a hundred in total in the sky quadrant, so the newcomers naturally started at number 91.

Jiang Chen had been the champion, so his number was 91.

He received his token and a copy of the rules.

“Alright, just as usual, there won’t be any exams on the first day. The third cycle will officially begin tomorrow.”

“Remember, the sky quadrant only welcomes true geniuses, not trash who only knows how to complain and not work hard. Read the rules well. Even though you’re latecomers, you may not necessarily lose. Alright, dismissed!”

Jiang Chen didn’t linger after he finished listening to the examiner. He headed directly for his residence.

The sky quadrant was at least five times larger than the earth quadrant. Each candidate had their own residence and yard. All was extremely quiet and no one had any fear of being disturbed.

Jiang Chen arrived at residence 91 and looked at the quiet residence, murmuring to himself. “This will be my hideout for the next three months.”

He pushed open the door and as per his habits, began a thorough inspection. After making three or four circles around and encountering no accidents, he finally sat down leisurely on a chair in the yard and began to read the rules of the cycle.

The sky quadrant was indeed much different than all the others.

It seemed to deliberately want to protect the various geniuses, foregoing the endless rounds of battles between candidates.

This quadrant seemed to focus more on the candidates’ cultivation.

One’s scores was dependent on the acquisition of points in the sky quadrant, and there were two major ways to gain points.

There was a foundational way to win points and an advanced way.

The foundational way was the same for everyone. It was divided into four areas, and each area had five exams for a total of 20 exams.

Each exam was worth five points, for a total of 100.

An appropriate number of points would be awarded based on the number of foundational exams completed. Points would not be deducted if exams were left unfinished.

There were a lot of ways to win points in the advanced method.

Challenging other candidates, for example.

In order to challenge other candidates here, you needed to bet 20 points. If you won, you would regain your 20, and the opponent’s 20. Accordingly, the same if your opponent triumphs, your loss would forfeit your 20 point bet to the opponent.

The rules stated that every candidate could issue one challenge a day, with their opponents selected at random.

The option to accumulate points through battle was something that those who excelled in battling loved. If they selected someone who was roughly on par with themselves, then they could even designate their own bets.

What did that entail? That meant under the condition of mutual agreement, they could increase the number of points being bet.

The rules set the original bet at 20 points, but if both sides agreed, one could increase that up to 50, 100, or even all the points a candidate currently had.

But of course, both sides had to agree to this.

Moreover, this aspect was strictly regulated. If it was discovered that someone was purposefully taking it easy, cheating, or giving his points to someone of his sect, then both parties’ points would be reduced to zero.

Therefore, although bet designation had occurred in the first two cycles, the bets hadn’t been particularly large. No one had dared to bet all their points at once either.

After all, the qualification to be in the sky quadrant was one that was hard to come by. No one wanted to lose all their points because of a gambler’s mentality.

Everyone wanted to make it onto the list of 64 and then the final 16 in the sky quadrant.

No one would purposefully lose their points for someone of the same sect.

In the world of cultivation, sacrificing oneself to elevate another of the same sect was something that happened, but just not in this manner.

Apart from challenging others, there were still many ways to earn points.

Conducting various missions, for example.

There were five mission levels.

A first level mission would result in 10 points if completed.

A second level mission would result in 20 points if completed.

A third level mission would result in 40 points if completed.

A fourth level mission would result in 100 points if completed.

Finally, a fifth level mission would result in 200 points if completed.

Regardless of what level mission it was, a candidate had to have sufficient points in abeyance. This was because if the mission wasn’t completed, the value of the mission was deducted from the candidate’s points.

If you wanted to apply for a fifth level mission, you would have to have two hundred points in reserve. If you had less than two hundred points, then you didn’t have the right to apply for the mission.

According to the rules, there was only one chance a day to apply for a mission. If one failed, one was barred from applying for a mission within the next five days, and had to wait until the sixth to apply again.

Apart from these regular missions, some special ones were occasionally released as well. The points available from these special ones were exceeding high.

However, there was only one such mission a month.

Whenever this special mission appeared, it would stir all the geniuses into a frenzy.

This was because the number of points available was extremely high, and points wouldn’t be docked if candidates failed. However, what made these missions special was that there was a degree of danger to them.

This mostly summed up the rules. Overall speaking, there were many ways to obtain points apart from the 100 points from the foundation missions each month.

Jiang Chen read the rules over several times and formulated a general plan of attack. It looked like there was a possibility for large gaps between candidate points.

And it wasn’t like there weren’t necessarily no chances for newcomers.

This was because apart from the foundation missions, all other chances to earn points had to be prefaced with a candidate betting their own. Some could make it big, some could suffer losses.

After all, there would be successes and failures a-plenty with the missions.

If a candidate was a bit more aggressive and failed a few more times than others, it was easy for him to end up with nothing as his points dropped.

If newcomers maintained a steady pace, there weren’t necessarily no chances to find their footing.

“The sky quadrant exams are truly complicated. I don’t have a single point right now, so it looks like I need to start from the foundation points. There are 20 missions in total, so I have to get all 100 points from them. When I gain these 100, then I’ll take on some more missions and slowly accumulate my points. I have no capital now as I have no points, so I can’t be too aggressive. Otherwise, if I lose even my foundation points, I’ll have no chance to make a comeback.”

Jiang Chen was well aware that as a newcomer, he had nothing to play with. If he lost even his foundation points, then he’d be demoted.

There were only 100 foundation points to be had in the three month cycle. There would be no more if he lost them all.

Therefore, he had to be conservative in earning his points in the beginning, without the luxury to take risks.

If he advanced brashly and failed several times in a row, he’d only be able to stay on the sidelines and watch others have fun as he awaited demotion at the end of the three months.