Ze Tian Ji

Edited by: Michyrr

"Of course he was the winner." Zhexiu looked at them all like they were idiots.

In the time before he entered the capital, he hadn’t even broken into Ethereal Opening. Even though the gifts of his wolf bloodline were special, it was simply impossible for him to beat a Star Condensation expert.

He added, "But if I were to fight him now, I have the confidence."

Tang Thirty-Six asked in surprise, "The confidence to beat him?"

Zhexiu replied, "No, I have the confidence to perish together with him."

The room instantly grew silent. Tang Thirty-Six, his head aching, thought to himself, besides me, these guys of the Orthodox Academy are all freaks! It’s really impossible to communicate with them.

Chen Changsheng suddenly looked at him and asked, "Just what do you plan to do?"

Logically, even with Tang Thirty-Six’s temperament, no matter how unbridled he was, even he would not deliberately provoke a powerful figure like the Tianhai clan head at Clear Lake Restaurant, thus causing the situation to suddenly intensify.

Tang Thirty-Six grew quiet, then said, "We’ve analyzed before just what the two sides want to do. His Holiness probably wants to quickly hone the sword that is you. Why does the Tianhai clan want to cooperate with him?"

"Because they want to build up momentum...and ultimately force me into a match with Xu Yourong."

"Do you want to engage in a bloody battle with Xu Yourong until the end?"

Chen Changsheng seriously pondered this question. He realized that he had no reason, no justification, for fighting that girl who he had never even met, and so shook his head.

"Then there you are."

Tang Thirty-Six said, "What I want to do right now is to make it impossible for them to imagine just how we will respond. After I finish up with this matter, you can just quietly study and cultivate."

"Is it really okay?" Chen Changsheng looked at him and earnestly asked.

Tang Thirty-Six’s straight eyebrows rose as he asked, "Who am I?"

Chen Changsheng suddenly recalled Su Li by the hot spring in that snowy mountain ridge. He now felt that this matter was rather dubious.

"But why did the other side so abruptly increase their pressure on the Orthodox Academy?"

The dignified head of the Tianhai clan would naturally not alter his established guidelines for the sake of a plate of lobster.

Tang Thirty-Six looked at him and laughed, seemingly harboring some sort of evil intentions.

"It’s plainly obvious that your father-in-law has a rather good impression of you now. The Tianhai clan is quite concerned that Xu Yourong really has taken a fancy to you. If she’s not willing to fight you, what then?"

Chen Changsheng was clueless as to how to respond, so he decided to rather awkwardly change the subject. "First, we should resolve the problems before us: how to not be drowned to death by them."

He had said something similar back at Clear Lake Restaurant.

When the Orthodox Academy had originally fallen into a difficult situation, Tang Thirty-Six returned from the Mausoleum of Books. With a bowl of soy milk in his left hand and a youtiao in his right, he resoundingly and forcefully declared at the gates of the Orthodox Academy that he would solve this problem. And then with great gusto, he plunged the youtiao into the soy milk and declared that he would drown them to death. Now Chen Changsheng was very curious to know—now that the stratagem of ’when the army comes, a general is needed to block it, and when the floods come, the earth drowns it out’ was clearly no longer of any use—just how Tang Thirty-Six wanted to continue the drowning.

If there really was no response, then it was better that he not think too much and go straight to the Li Palace to ask the Pope for assistance.

"There are many different ways of drowning." As if he had planned it all in advance, Tang Thirty-Six said, "The strategy I will use next is called ’the drowning of the seven armies’."

(TN: The drowning of the seven armies is a famous tactic from Romance of the Three Kingdoms in which Guan Yu, during the Battle of Fancheng, dammed the Han River and drowned Cao Cao’s army. Historically, the flooding of the Han River was a natural occurrence which Guan Yu simply took advantage of.)

"The drowning of the seven armies?" Chen Changsheng was quite perplexed.

Tang Thirty-Six suddenly said, "I heard from before that the Orthodoxy cavalry caught two groups of foreign tourists that were planning to sneak into the Orthodox Academy to see the sights."

Chen Changsheng thought, just what does this have to do with what we’re discussing?

Tang Thirty-Six continued, "This matter reminded me of something. Since so many people want to come in and see, we might as well sell tickets. We can even make a little money."

Chen Changsheng and Xuanyuan Po still did not understand.

Tang Thirty-Six looked at them and seriously explained, "What I want to say is, the Orthodox Academy is very big...with just the few of us, won’t we feel rather lonely?"

On the morning of the next day, at dawn’s first light, many spectators had already arrived outside the Orthodox Academy.

It was obvious that the fact that the Orthodoxy cavalry had arrested three groups of tourists that had attempted to break into the Orthodox Academy had not affected the mood of the rest.

Moreover, news of yesterday’s incident at Clear Lake Restaurant as well as the Tianhai clan head’s subsequent anger had been spread throughout the capital. Everyone knew that just today alone, more than forty experts had come forth to challenge the Orthodox Academy—it must be known that in the previous few days, there were only several dozen matches in total.

Just who would want to miss this sort of spectacle?

Of course, the Orthodox Academy could do as it had done in the first two days and delay. However, today was different from back then. Today there were forty-some letters of challenge, and there would assuredly be even more on the morrow. Snowflakes continued to fall and snowballs continued to roll along. The mantle of snow upon the ground was only getting thicker and the snowballs were rolled up until they exceeded the gates of the school. Just what could the youths of the Orthodox Academy do?

The flower peddlers outside the lane had already arrived, but the breakfast peddlers had arrived even earlier and taken the good spots. The crowd feasted on piping hot meat buns and refreshing cold noodles while enthusiastically discussing this matter. The air was saturated with the scent of ground meat and cucumber, so much so that those starstruck maidens smitten with Tang Thirty-Six wished that they could stuff the fresh flowers into their bosoms, afraid that their aroma would be ruined.

The crowd gradually grew quiet because, in front of that awning across the street, many people had appeared. Some of them were old, some were young, some tall and some short, but every one of them was silent. It was clear to see that these were not common folk come to see the excitement because their bodies all exuded an extremely dangerous Qi. They were all true experts, all experts that had come to challenge the Orthodox Academy!

Seeing these several dozen experts that the Tianhai clan had taken from the various academies, and even transferred from the counties, many people couldn’t help but be concerned for the Orthodox Academy. How can they beat them? How can they even finish?

At this moment, the gate to the Orthodox Academy opened with a creak as someone pushed it open from within.

The street outside the school was absolutely silent, the mood rather strange. Even those young maidens only threw their anxious and expectant gazes over, not incessantly yelling Tang Thirty-Six’s name and saying crazy things such as ’I’m definitely going to marry you!’ as they had done in the last few days.

The person that came out of the Orthodox Academy was not Tang Thirty-Six, nor was it Chen Changsheng. It was Priest Xin.

Priest Xin swept his gaze through the crowd, especially the group of experts standing in the distance on the street. He couldn’t help but shake his head, his expression rather complex. However, it was impossible to tell whether he was concerned about the Orthodox Academy or if it was something else.

He extracted a piece of paper from his bosom and instructed his subordinates to carefully stick it on the wall to the side of the gate. Then he turned the crowd, cleared his throat, and loudly announced, "Today, the Orthodox Academy will temporarily stop receiving applications of challenge."

The Hundred Flowers Lane and the distant street were all silent. This response of the Orthodox Academy’s was within the crowd’s expectations, but precisely as the crowd had discussed, the Orthodox Academy could not delay forever. Then the Orthodox Academy would inevitably need a new method, and based on logic, this Li Palace priest should have something else to say. This perhaps indicated that something big was about to happen.

Just as expected, Priest Xin followed by announcing, "Today, the Orthodox Academy will formally begin to enroll new students!"

......