Chapter 200 - 199: Counter From Lord Zhao

A wave of shock rippled through the gathered elites. Chu Kuang had successfully ascended! He had achieved a cultivation state that made him practically invincible against anyone not named Xuan Mingzhe.

Yet, despite this monumental breakthrough, Chu Kuang’s expression was not one of victorious arrogance. He stood perfectly still, his eyes fixed on the floor, his jaw clenched so tightly the muscles in his neck looked like coiled steel cables. He radiated a profound, suffocating aura of absolute humiliation.

The realization hit the tens of thousands of spectators like a physical shockwave.

Chu Kuang was alive. He was unharmed. He was at the Half-Step Transcendent realm.

Which meant Lin Yuan had somehow, inexplicably, forced a Half-Step Transcendent monster to willingly hand over every single token he possessed without a lethal struggle.

"He is alive!" Lord Zhao Shenming exhaled sharply from the Zhao pavilion, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Lin Yuan did not maliciously kill him to obtain the tokens. The victory is clean. The Heavens be praised, the victory is clean!"

But in the Chu pavilion, Lord Chu Wuhai’s relief at seeing his son alive instantly curdled into a boiling rage.

The Lord’s face turned a violent shade of purple. The humiliation was worse than death. To have his son, a newly ascended Half-Step Transcendent, publicly stripped of his tokens by an Early-Stage nobody from a backwater province was a loss of face so catastrophic it threatened to unravel the Chu Province’s standing in the Central Continent for the next century.

Chu Wuhai could no longer contain the fury burning in his spiritual sea. He refused to accept this reality. There had to be a caveat. There had to be a way to invalidate the humiliation.

"Adjudicator Xuanji!"

The Chu Provincial Lord’s voice exploded across the Grand Court, amplified by his Middle stage Soul Transformation cultivation.

Chu Wuhai stepped forward, crossing his arms and executing a deep, rigid bow toward the floating dais where Chief Adjudicator Xuanji stood.

"I petition the Court!" Chu Wuhai bellowed, his voice echoing off the mountain peaks. He pointed an accusing finger directly at Lin Yuan, who was calmly walking off the teleportation array. "I accuse this man, Lin Yuan of the Zhao Province, of employing shameless, underhanded methods entirely unbecoming of a cultivator allowed to stand among true geniuses!"

The amphitheater fell dead silent. The political theater had officially begun.

"My son, Chu Kuang, stands before you hale and whole, possessing the might of a Half-Step Transcendent!" Chu Wuhai continued, his voice dripping with righteous indignation. "It is conceptually, and physically impossible for a mere Early-Stage Spirit Severing cultivator to best him in open, honorable combat! Therefore, this Lin Yuan must have resorted to base extortion, cowardly traps, or unspeakable deceit to manipulate the transfer of those tokens!"

"The ancients had a saying, Elder Xuanji," Chu Wuhai continued, ensuring the Five Emperors above could hear every word. "’Water that flows under the door does not prove its strength against the gate, and a rat that steals the tiger’s teeth while it sleeps is no hunter, but a pest!’ This tournament was designed as a crucible to forge gods, not a shadowy alleyway for thieves to ply their cowardly trades! Even if his exact method is not explicitly documented in the forbidden statutes, the sheer shamelessness of his actions corrupts the very spirit of the Peerless God Tournament!"

The Chu Provincial Lord lowered his hand, his eyes burning with a desperate, vindictive light.

"I move that Lin Yuan’s tokens be struck from the record, and that he be formally stripped of his Ascension Clause! A man who cannot fight with honor does not belong in the Upper Division!"

The true motive of the Chu Provincial Lord was glaringly obvious to the seasoned politicians in the room. He didn’t just want Lin Yuan punished; he wanted Lin Yuan demoted. If Lin Yuan was stripped of the Ascension Clause, he would be forced back into the Lower Division bracket. He would be entirely removed from Chu Kuang’s path. The Chu Wuhai was terrified that this mysterious, anomaly of a cultivator might humiliate his son again in the main tournament, and he was using every ounce of his political leverage to eliminate the variable before the real fighting began.

In the Zhao pavilion, Lord Zhao Shenming’s face hardened into a mask of pure ice. He immediately stood up, his own aura flaring to counter the oppressive weight of the Chu Provincial Lord’s voice.

"Preposterous!" Lord Zhao boomed, stepping to the edge of the terrace. "Are the lords of the Central Continent so fragile that they must rewrite reality when their children are bested? Lord Chu, you speak of honor, yet you stand before the Dao Court and demand the rules be changed simply because you do not like the outcome!"

Lord Zhao bowed respectfully to Elder Xuanji. "Chief Adjudicator! The rules of the Void Ascension Battlefield were absolute and clearly stated! ’Any method at your disposal.’ Those were your exact words! Are we to punish a cultivator for possessing a tactical intellect that outshines his peers? If Chu Kuang was foolish enough to fall for a trap or succumb to ’extortion,’ that is a failure of his own Dao Heart, not a crime committed by my General!"

"He is a cheat and a coward!" screamed a Chu lieutenant from the crowd.

"You’re just a sore, pathetic loser!" a young, highly erratic voice shrieked in response.

Bai Chen leaped onto the stone railing of the Zhao pavilion, his face flushed dark red with absolute fury. He pointed wildly at the Chu delegation, completely abandoning all protocol.

"Your golden boy got robbed blind!" Bai Chen shouted, his voice cracking with rage. "You arrogant hypocrites spend weeks boasting about how ’might makes right’ and how the weak deserve to be crushed, but the second my brother-in-law puts your Young Master on a leash, suddenly you want to talk about honor?! You’re all a bunch of shameless, crying children!"

"HOW DARE YOU!!"