On the afternoon the competition drew to a close.

Gu Ming suddenly heard a buzzing sound coming from the nearby mountain rocks.

He turned his head and saw several students break through the mountain path and emerge from a hidden passage.

Gu Ming instantly understood that these were the students who had successfully solved the Array.

’Looks like there are some real experts among the students from the province after all.’

He had been watching for days, thinking it was impossible for anyone else to make it up the mountain. He’d assumed he was the only one in the competition who had solved the Array.

But it turned out there were others who could make it up the mountain.

Since they hadn’t come up the main path, they must have used the second solution: deciphering the entire mountain’s Mist Array to find the hidden passage left by the officials.

"One, two, three..."

Gu Ming silently counted them, stopping at twenty-one.

An hour before the competition ended, twenty-one people had arrived one after another.

That was three people short of the twenty-four his system had claimed would make it.

’Where are the other three?’

Gu Ming looked at the people who had already made it up the mountain and noticed someone from Forest Valley in the crowd.

It was none other than Jiang Jinling, whom he had seen a few times before.

However, Gu Ming hadn’t spoken to her much, and every conversation they’d had was about Breathing Techniques.

Gu Ming had only struck up conversations with her to piggyback on the system’s Breathing Technique improvement method.

Now that the Breathing Technique was complete, Gu Ming had no intention of making small talk.

But while he had no such intention, Jiang Jinling clearly did.

"Gu Ming, what’s the name of your Pet Beast’s Breathing Technique?"

When she was at the foot of the mountain, she had been too far away to hear the name of the Cultivation Technique Ah Kun had shouted.

Now that she was up the mountain, her first thought was to analyze the Breathing Techniques of Ah Kun and Mouse Treasure.

Gu Ming casually tossed out a single word, "Kunpeng," and said no more.

"Kunpeng?"

she murmured, having never heard the name before.

She turned to look at Lu You, but Lu You was even less talkative and didn’t seem to want to speak at all.

Being a natural introvert, she hadn’t suddenly become an extrovert just because she had awakened a Divine Sense of courage.

She was still the same person. She had only learned to chase after a beautiful hope, because that hope was Gu Ming.

Aside from that, she was still not good at interacting with people, especially girls like this one who were so pretty they seemed to sparkle, and whose Pet Beast was even a Grass Element.

Lu You grew wary and didn’t respond.

Jiang Jinling wasn’t annoyed at being rebuffed. From five meters away, she cupped her face in her hands and openly studied Ah Kun, observing the frequency of its breathing and its Mana fluctuations, running her own analysis and deductions in her mind.

Just like that, as the competition neared its end, another commotion erupted from the base of the mountain.

Gu Ming turned to look down the mountain and, sure enough, saw people who had broken through the five-hundred-meter defense line and were sprinting all the way up.

From the looks of it, they were using a Breathing Technique to frantically plunder the surrounding Spiritual Qi as they charged upward.

Seeing this, Gu Ming felt a strange sense of déjà vu.

’Where have I seen this before?’

Beside him, Lu You let out a small gasp.

She had noticed they were students from Forest Valley.

They had actually imitated Ah Kun’s Cultivation Technique, creating a Suffocation Domain identical to Ah Kun’s and draining the Spiritual Qi around them.

Gu Ming looked closer and saw that it was true.

Someone had successfully stolen Ah Kun’s unique Ultimate Skill, replicating it perfectly.

’How did they manage that?’

The students around them who had already passed the assessment were in high spirits.

They had the leisure to watch the competitors below, and it didn’t take long for them to determine that the method being used was different from Ah Kun’s.

"It’s a Breathing Technique tailor-made for their Pet Beasts’ Talents. I remember Forest Valley High School has three Elves whose Fire, Water, and Ice Element abilities are all top-notch."

"It would be a real shame if they couldn’t even make it to the national competition."

Gu Ming listened in for a moment and understood.

It turned out the three people sprinting up the mountain all had Pet Beasts that were Five-star potential Elf King cubs.

What was an Elf King?

The title of Elf King was similar to that of a Fish King. It denoted a Pet Beast with a superior bloodline among common Pet Beasts, one that possessed the potential to become a "King."

This meant that in a future Evolution, they could evolve a crown.

A real crown, one that could be worn on their head and would not come off, as if it were a part of their body.

As for why a Five-star Pet Beast could be called a King,

Gu Ming asked the people next to him, but they couldn’t answer either.

It was a scientific research topic that had remained unsolved for the past sixty years.

Pet Beasts that could be called Kings weren’t always Five-star. Some races only became Kings when they reached the Six or Seven-star Realm, or even the Eight-star Realm.

In short, it varied by race.

This also didn’t mean that becoming a King was the upper limit for that race.

Evolution held too many unknown possibilities. Just when a Beastmaster thought they had reached the limit, someone would always manage to raise a Pet Beast to an even higher Star Level.

But back to the matter at hand.

The breathing rate of that three-person squad’s Pet Beasts was extremely fast, comparable to the breathing ability of a Three-star Pet Beast.

And so, they managed to break through and make it up the mountain just before time ran out.

They had already memorized the route up the mountain, perfectly replicating the path Gu Ming had taken.

They didn’t even need to waste time with trial and error to find the path. For Beastmasters with One or Two-star Pet Beasts, two minutes was more than enough to ascend the mountain.

Not to mention, there was another team of Forest Valley students at the summit waiting to receive them.

Several meters to Gu Ming’s right, Jiang Jinling’s Grass Spirit unleashed its full power. A ripple of emerald green light appeared around it, and countless flowering vines sprouted from beneath its feet.

The vines were a kaleidoscope of colors. One grew into a round mirror, another into a serrated Grass Sword, and a third took the shape of a Jade Ruyi. They gathered around her, cleverly positioned to occupy a space several meters wide.

Gu Ming only needed a single glance to sense the rhythmic principles of an Array woven within them.

This Jiang Jinling’s combat power was truly extraordinary. Before a fight had even begun, she had already established a Barrier Array at her feet.

If Gu Ming were to fight her, he would be walking right into her home turf.

Even with Cyan Treasure’s Ultimate Skill, Mastery of Wood Escape, it probably wouldn’t be very effective. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

That area was her domain. If Cyan Treasure scattered its Grass Seeds, she might detect them in advance and snuff them out before they could even sprout.

If a fight were to break out, he would have to have Ah Kun use its Wave-Swallowing Technique, first clearing the ground with a wide-area wave of water to get rid of all those vines.

But he was sure Jiang Jinling had more tricks up her sleeve.

Gu Ming was only running through scenarios of how to fight her in his mind; he had no intention of actually making a move.

[Data on Jiang Jinling and her Pet Beast has been entered into the database...]

A moment later, the system finished logging her Pet Beast’s data. A glint flashed in Gu Ming’s eyes, and any thought he had of fighting her vanished completely.

’If I can fight her in a dream, it’s definitely better to do it there. Just saving on medical fees is a huge win.’

The students next to him were also getting restless.

Not everyone was looking forward to facing a formidable rival like Jiang Jinling in the future national competition.

If they could eliminate her fellow schoolmates now, it would lessen the pressure on them during the actual competition.

However, not many people present were actually considering making a move.

Everyone knew that if they couldn’t take down Jiang Jinling and drive off the other three all at once, whoever made the first move would be targeted by all six students from Forest Valley High School.

Then they would definitely have a hard time in the future national competition.

Not long after, the three from the base of the mountain reached the summit, regrouped with Jiang Jinling’s squad, and successfully planted their Wind Banner.

Those who had considered making a move hesitated for a long while before finally shaking their heads in regret and backing down.

A little while later, the Thousand-eyed Wind Bird announced the end of the competition.

In total, twenty-six competitors had solved both problems.

Fifty-four competitors had solved the first problem, but twenty-eight of them were still at the base of the mountain and were thus regrettably eliminated.

Gu Ming looked back at the people around him.

Excluding himself and Lu You, there were exactly twenty-four climbers, just as the system had said.

In the system’s eyes, those twenty-four people had already ascended the mountain and left much earlier.

The time of their departure was when Gu Ming himself had climbed the mountain—on the fifth day of the competition.

Thinking of this, his first thought was that the system’s prediction had actually spanned a two-day period.

This surprised him slightly.

’If it can predict things two days in advance, then maybe there’s something to the system’s nonsense after all. Even if a lot of it doesn’t match reality, at the very least, I can keep an eye out and use it to predict things that might happen in the future.’