"This is the first time I see essence stones."

"From their looks, they seems to be of low grade, but they are still incredibly valuable."

"Damn it, this guy is so lucky to receive them, with his rank 2 talent it's not worth for him to obtain those."

From the students to bystanders that came to take a look, everyone went on with their own comments and observations, greatly surprised and envious.

Essence stones are the solid materialization of the heavenly Qi flowing through the world, usable on oneself, and very important in a cultivator's growth.

Once someone becomes a cultivator, he will be able to extract the heavenly Qi straight from the essence stones and refine it inside his dantian, forming new wisps of Qi. With sufficient essence stones, the rate of cultivation will increase greatly; this can make up for the disadvantages of those with lower talent ranks while greatly bolstering those who already had a natural advantage.

"I pushed greatly for this reward to be set, pressuring the other deans. I intended for all the prizes to land in Shen Xue's hands, to think all of it would go to Ye Mo, that's a shame...." Hong Li thought with pity as they handed over the essence stones.

After insisting much, Hong Li was able to persuade the Golden Martial Institute's dean to give essence stones as prizes for the winner, but the latter giving way wasn't without motives, this one secretly believed Qiong Lieyu would claim the rewards for himself, his institute benefiting instead of the others.

At this point, two out of three agreed already and the miserable Sky Martial Institute's dean opinion was ignored once again as he was given no choice but to follow their lead.

Not only was Zhang Xuanhan the weakest of the three top students, he wasn't even in the podium, being surpassed by Yan Mei. This humiliation was embarassing enough and as if the Sky Martial Institute coming last this year didn't pain him already, now he also had to offer such precious resources to an outsider, there was reasons to be indignant.

Beside the nurturing effect of essence stones, they also had monetary attributes as well as usable properties. If bronze, silver and gold was the standard currency used by mortals and cultivators alike, essence stones were comparable to diamonds that were only found and used in eminent domains with powerful and influential cultivators.

For example, the three great sects that ruled the central lands solely used essence stones to measure the value of all commodities while they completely gave up on gold coins. Someone that show themselves there trying to exchange something with coins would only be the source of ridicule.

As it has monetary attributes as well as usable properties, their purchasing power was astonishing and no cultivator ever had enough of them so they couldn't be priced with the regular coin system.

Essence stones were only formed in mines and underground caves with a considerably concentrated amount of heavenly Qi, often directly connected to an earth vein.

The rare that were discovered were all seized by the greatest power in the area and depending on the quality of the mine, some influential organization could even travel a great distance and relocate themselves near the cave while compensating the original owners under both threath and compromise to chase them away.

In Azure Water City, there was no essence mine and less than half a hundred essense stones while most of them came from the three martial institutions that possessed connections with sects so many inhabitants never even saw one before. It could be imagined how valuable these essence stones were for them.

Finally, Ye Mo was given 5000 gold coins along with a dozen peak-tier healing and Qi rejuvenating pills to complete his prizes.

The other participants placed below him were given similar rewards, but of lesser quality.

Qiong Lieyu was offered 3000 gold coins, 3 Qi Condensing Carps, an entry to the third floor of the Golden Martial Institute's towers, an access to their armory and five healing and Qi rejuvenating pills.

The recompenses given lessened gradually as the deans went lower in the leaderboard. Participants were rewarded up to the top 100, however, although students ranked with two digits still benefited greatly, it looked lackluster compared to the goods offered to the best participants.

Eventually, the prize distribution ceremony came to an end with one final speech from the deans encouraging students to do their best and surpass themselves next year.

When Ye Mo jumped down the platform, Shen Xue approached him.

Shen Xue was placid, his voice cold as he looked in Ye Mo's eyes, "You did well back then, the scene could have been replayed a hundred times and I still wouldn't have believed some little cultivator that barely escaped with his life would dare return throw themselves at me, much less in the middle of a battle where even Ma Shinfei could hardly approach without being injured. I was too conceited, it was a good lesson."

Facing the fearsome Shen Xue, Ye Mo easily maintained a languid expression.

"I hope you survive and grow stronger, cling to life like a rat and improve yourself to the best of your abilities. As long as you become powerful enough, we shall meet again and at this time, I will definitely kill you."

Everything being said, Shen Xue turned around and left.

In the crowd, this incident immediately attracted people's attention. Not only was Shen Xue approaching someone, but he even talked.

Beside his family, few people ever heard what his voice sounded like. The surroundings immediately quietened down trying to catch a glimpse of it and understand what he was saying, but when the ambient chatters and noise lowered enough for his words to be heard, Shen Xue had already said what he wanted and walked away.

Ye Mo snickered, "Missing the rewards for once won't hurt you. If we meet again, this time I won't need to run away."

Shen Xue was stronger than Ye Mo, it was a fact, he accepted and understood it.

However, Ye Mo's pursuit was to step on a realm no one has reached before, standing above everything. In his journey, Hong Li, Li Zhen and anyone else must be surpassed without mentioning a kid like Shen Xue.

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Ye Mo might be only rank 2 however, it was only hist first year as a cultivator and he had several means to raise his abilities and close the gap. Moreover, he had already meticulously planned every step of his cultivation journey for the coming years.

The difficulty with rank 5 talents like Shen Xue is that once they start cultivating, they will quickly surpass their peers, earning resources for themselves. With these resources, they will grow even faster and their advantage will snowball, winning most competitions and gleaning even more profits until no one can face them anymore while they take the top spot in every event held by the organization.

"This time he was eliminated, a never before seen occurence that everyone will profit from, using the benefits they obtained to quickly grow stronger and catch up to him while he will be stuck with nothing but his own talent. I, won't waste the rewards I have earned either and will quickly raise my battle strength once we return." Ye Mo thought inwardly.

Several students tried to strike a conversation or ask what Shen Xue told him, but Ye Mo ignored them, immersed in his own reflections.

After several were rejected, the others understood their place and kept their distance.

Eventually it was time to go back. When they reached the city, the crowd separated in three, each group returning to their respective institute while the outsiders dispersed.

Once they were in the institute's grounds, Ye Mo rushed to the battle skill tower. Many students followed behind him for various reasons, but they were blocked at its steps without any entry to the tower. The few who were able to get in couldn't proceed to the fourth floor like him either.

Most of them then decided to wait for him in front of his house.

It is easy to move in the dark, but hard to be secretive in the light. When Ye Mo took first place and stepped on the stage, his bold reputation spread like wildfire and the location of his home was leaked in an instant.

When they were close to it, they noticed a good number of students were already present, among them was even Gao Lixin who wished to hear Ye Mo's own narration of his encounter with Li Qiang, Ma Shinfei who as always desired to fight him and Yan Mei that was curious to know how he obtained so much points to earn the first place.

A lot of the surrounding students simply wanted to strike a relationship with him. Now that Ye Mo was this year's champion and his name traveled in every corner of the city, entering his social network was very beneficial.

In a short time, a large host was assembled around his house.

"I will finally be able to learn an investigative battle skill and complete my combat system. This one will be very important for the future." Ye Mo thought enthusiatic in the battle skill tower.

When he obtained the access to the fourth floor of the three towers, he contemplated for an instant picking a peak-tier cultivation technique, but quickly discarded it.

The Black Vortex cultivation technique was already among the best in terms of speed in the third floor and suited him well. Replacing it with a peak-tier cultivation technique wouldn't make that big of a difference, most of all, he needed battle skills too much currently to waste this opportunity for a cultivation technique.

When he walked in the last floor of the battle skill tower, he noticed how small it was. The size of a large room, no bigger than his little stone house.

Small lamps on the sides illuminated the place, but there was no furniture inside beside a wide table placed at the center.

On the table layed ten battle skill manuals.

Ye Mo quickly glanced at them before he raised his head and laughed coldly.

"Not only there is only ten battle skills available, they also don't contain any investigative battle skills."

Ye Mo wasn't that surprised to see there were only ten battle skills in the last floor, peak-tier Yellow Class martial arts are very rare in Azure Water City, even the four major clans only possessed around three of them and what made them what they are today was the fact one was a cultivation technique, making only two peak-tier battle skills.

It could be seen how superior were martial institutions in terms of assets, displaying ten of them only in the battle skill tower.

Yet, it didn't carry a single investigative battle skill, displaying only offensive, defensive and healing battle skills.

Others students at his place would salivate just being in the presence of these precious manuals, but Ye Mo who always planned everything carefully couldn't help being disappointed when he couldn't find the only kind of battle skill he sought.

"I didn't have high hopes in the first place. Although the Tiger Martial Institute has some fortune, it is still an institution and is in competition with two others, it can't compare to a sect or the northern empire beyond the great mountain range. However, to think they wouldn't have even one investigative battle skill, I guess I can only forget about it for the time being and fall back on something else."

Ye Mo didn't linger in his disappointment and quickly switched objectives.

He browsed through each manual attentively then decisively picked one and left the room.

"Radiant Finger Strike." On the ground floor, elder Chen read the name of the battle skill aloud before unsealing the manual.

In the past, long-range battles has always been one of Ye Mo's weaknesses. In those situations, he would use rocks or other things to throw at his opponents while trying to close the distance, but these could only serve as a distraction at best, it couldn't deal much damage to cultivators of this level.

People would quickly realize he is a body refining cultivator and use this knowledge to keep him at bay, putting him in a disadvantage during fights.

Since Ye Mo couldn't gain the only type of battle skill he lacked to scan his surroundings, then he would use this opportunity to cover another weakness of his with the Radiant Finger Strike battle skill.

As soon as he left the battle skill tower, he didn't return back to his house but made a small detour to the library before heading straight to the martial hall and renting another combat chamber for a week.