In a nearby prefecture, posters lined alley walls:
> "Underground Spirit Clash — High School & University Cultivators Only! Winner gets 1 million yuan and an elite-grade Spirit Ring!"
Lu Fan needed the money. And more than that — the experience.
He registered under a fake name: "Jiang Ye."
Masked, robed, and completely unreadable, he stepped into the ring as just another unknown.
His first opponent underestimated him.
By the third match, people whispered about the "Ghost-Handed Scholar."
By the seventh, he defeated a Stage 4 Spirit Spring Realm cultivator with one blow — a perfectly timed Mirror Flow Counterstrike that flipped the man out of the arena before anyone saw Lu Fan move.
But the real storm came in the finals.