He was gloating and decided to taunt Cao Lei. That's right. The dragon's opponent was Cao Lei's last champion. And not for a second did he even entertain the thought of his champion losing. On the other hand, Cao Lei snickered. His champion had been taught by a predecessor as well and was in perfect health thanks to having been lucky in the first round and not encountering an opponent. What's more, his champion was using his very own two super weapons. Victory would be his, Cao Lei's!

Aside from those bickering experts, the others were all focusing on one fight. Min-Su's. After all, he showed incredible promise and surprised everyone in the first round by taming his opponent. Needless to say, it was something that rarely happened... Beyond that, they were also very interested in his opponent, a shadow tiger. That sentient beast had been killing left and right throughout the trial as if the place was his backyard. They were curious to see whether he would be able to defeat the strongest contender. Back in the cave, he fled from the monster puppet. Now, this tiger would have to face both that puppet and its new master. Regardless of the result, they had high expectations for the show.

That's how most of those experts were. Since they lost, they just moved on and would enjoy the remaining parts as spectators. The cruelty of the show didn't matter. Heck, quite the opposite. They liked it that way. They wanted to see worthy battles from those champions still left. Those fights were of weaker cultivators, too weak for them to usually be interested. However, it was slightly different since those were the top experts of their realm and it provided them with ideas and clues on how tackle the trial in a century.

It was to learn.

There were only four people who focused on this battle for another reason. Hae-Hyuk, Isla and Sophia were hoping for Min-Su to win while the tiger clan leader wished for his own champion to win. They didn't care about how it would play out but only about the result. This was the difference between viewpoints from the experts watching his battle.

As for Jin's battle, there weren't many watching it. The Teal Sword Emperor was watching, of course, since his champion faced Jin. His retainers and guests followed his lead. Besides them, there were scarce spectators. One of them was a princess. Since the beginning, she focused on him. As the one who owned a royalty ring from her empire, Jin was a curiosity to her. He was also a threat in many ways. She was hoping for his death. Even though she didn't know him, he was a variable because he owned that ring. And the truth was that it wasn't the ring she was mostly interested in. It was something that could have been in it... A big jade ball. A proof of succession. She recovered most of those from the kids from her generation but hadn't found the one belonging to that fool that died during the border war. She speculated that maybe this 'Jin' was the one who had it. Unfortunately, she couldn't mention it. The worth of that jade was a royal secret. Since her ancestor didn't mention it when they interacted, she decided not to do so either. She planned to wait for him and ask to get the ring back from his corpse. Considering who the ancestor that brough her here was, he would likely not mind and the contestant behind Jin would probably not care about such a small thing. Even if he knew the worth of the Jade, it would be useless to someone of his standard.

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As such, she looked expectantly at the screen that displayed Jin.

...

Jin was waiting for the membrane to drop. He studied his opponent and couldn't glimpse anything from him. In fact, whenever he thought he did, he had to forcefully force himself to forget it. Because that old man was trying to trick him just like he tried himself. During this battle, he would have to be prepared to expect nothing and everything at the same time.

Moments later, the membrane fluctuated and disappeared. As soon as it did, the old man drew his blade with his left hand and slashed. It was a common technique used by swordsman to slash upon the first drawing of the blade. What was different here was that they were far from each other. Instead of the physical blade being used to attack, it was a blade of spiritual energy that was sent at Jin. As he had his eyesight technique activated, he could distinguish that this wasn't just spiritual energy.

There was a 'will' contained in it.

Jin wasn't surprised for a single instant and remained calm as he parried the blow accordingly, using his spear shrouded in spiritual energy and will. He noticed how the old man's brows raised once before that swordsman rushed at him. He rushed as well. From there, they exchanged a few hits with their weapons colliding loudly, spiritual energy and 'will' exploding upon contact.

In general battles, what determined the outcome between a spear master and a sword master of equal abilities was distance. The reach of the spear was greater than that of a sword after all. On the other hand, the sword was better in close proximity compared to the spear. However, neither of those things applied to both of those men. They had reached such a mastery over their techniques that those weren't factors capable of determining an outcome.

Jin could fight with his spear in extreme closeness while the old man could fight with his sword from a distance.

Dozens of exchanges happened in minutes with only the sound of the weapons colliding reverberating throughout the cave. They were both making full use of the first three principles: Coating, External Manipulation and Fine Tuning.

They had yet to use the Domain as they were still testing the waters.