Chapter 1318: Identity Revealed
Translator:EndlessFantasy TranslationEditor:EndlessFantasy Translation
After defeating Sword126, Lin Huang hurried towards the next possible Sword Servant location with Warlord.
Lin Huang no longer considered hunting down other competitors.
Currently, all the competitors' accumulated points were still rather low and their Sword Dao was not as strong as Lin Huang's. The Trial would only last for ten days, so Lin Huang refused to waste his precious time on them. He would rather fight the Sword Servants, no matter what his accumulated points were. His priority right now was to ensure that he learned something from every fight.
After the hour-plus fight with Sword126, the number of potential Sword Servant locations had increased to thirty-one.
Lin Huang followed the route that Warlord had laid out and arrived at the next location in no time.
This time, the Sword Servant was located in a rundown double-story building. He was a lanky man dressed in a grey robe by the name of Sword33.
After hearing the number of his name, Lin Huang knew this fellow was much stronger than Sword126.
Lin Huang's assumption was proven right after they engaged in combat.
Sword33's Sword Dao path was very simple—if one move was all it took to solve the problem, never make a second move. If a straightforward attack was all it took to settle things, never deviate.
The only aim of his swordsmanship was to use the simplest move to achieve the best result.
His methods were unlike Sword126's more circuitous methods whereby her moves did not vary greatly and were executed in simple sequences.
The foundation of Sword33's Sword Dao was much stronger than Lin Huang's. Despite their simplicity, Sword33's moves were distilled from the essence of countless other sword moves. They were wildly versatile and had no set sequence.
To Lin Huang, this fight was much more difficult than his first two fights. All of Sword33's moves were terrifyingly efficient;it seemed as if every slash from him could end Lin Huang's life. Moreover, almost all of Lin Huang's attacks were countered by Sword33 in the most direct manner.
This fight continued for an entire six hours. As Lin Huang's cumulative points were static during that time, Unrivaled Combat God once again overtook Lin Huang on the leaderboard. Lin Huang's position dropped to first runner-up.
However, Unrivaled Combat God was only able to celebrate his victory for three minutes before Lin Huang's accumulated points surged ahead with another one hundred points, taking the lead once more.
After more than six hours, Lin Huang had nearly exhausted all of his Sword Dao moves and won by a hair.
The fight with Sword33 made Lin Huang realize his own weaknesses. His moves were not efficient enough; there were many sword techniques that he had yet to master, and he needed to be much more proficient in driving his Sword Dao with his will.
After the fight, Lin Huang sat on the rooftop of the double-story building with his legs crossed and used up three full hours to review the fight he had with Sword33. Then, he sped over to the next location with Warlord.
After encountering Sword33, Lin Huang bumped into Sword47, Sword163, Sword159...
He challenged all of them, one at a time.
In fact, he totally forgot about his accumulated points as he was on the road twenty-four hours a day, fighting, and assimilating everything he reaped from the fights. He would not waste a single second. He had no time to think about eating or sleeping; he had not even taken a single sip of water.
To further increase his travel speed, he summoned Thunder.
The first half of the Trial passed by in the blink of an eye.
Five days had passed already out of the ten set for the Trial.
Xie Lin's name remained on the top of the leaderboard no matter what, with a high score of 8937.
Other than defeating 89 Sword Servants, he had bumped into other competitors too during the last five days. Lin Huang had immediately cut them down so his time on the road was not affected.
As for the first runner-up, Unrivaled Combat God, the points he had accumulated were not so few either. He had 3341 points. Even though he tried his best to catch up, the gap between him and Lin Huang widened further and further.
Other than Unrivaled Combat God, there were still another four people who had earned more than 3000 points. The disparity in their cumulative points was very small. Three others obtained more than 2800 points (including one who got more than 2900 points). Fallen Star from Death Sickle was obviously among them.
Among the top ten—other than Lin Huang who scored a runaway win—the competition between them was extremely close.
The difference between their points ranged from the lowest— 17 points—to a maximum of only 81 points.
On this day, Lin Huang was on the road as usual when a push notification popped up before him.
"Competitor Forbidden Lamella defeated BOSS, points accumulated: +100!"
Lin Huang was startled when he saw the announcement. It was the first time he had seen another competitor successfully take down a Sword Servant.
'I'm not familiar with this name. Perhaps he's a local from the Great Heaven Territory?'
Lin Huang had not looked at the leaderboard since the first day. If he had, he would have noticed that this fellow named Forbidden Lamella was the previous second runner-up. Due to the sudden 100 point increase from beating the BOSS, he had overtaken Unrivaled Combat God to become the first runner-up.
However, this Forbidden Lamella was not local to the Great Heaven Territory.
It was understandable that Lin Huang had never heard of Forbidden Lamella. In fact, other God Territory competitors who joined this Trial in the Great Heaven Territory had never heard of Forbidden Lamella.
This was because Forbidden Lamella was the Sword Dao super-genius secretly trained by the grade-7 organization, Divine Clapnet.
Most God Territory competitors did not know what was going on with him, but some of them had formed at least some assumptions about his identity.
As the second runner-up, Forbidden Lamella had already been conspicuous since the beginning. Now that he had defeated a BOSS and risen to number two, he attracted even more attention.
Many people started to notice the anomaly in the push notifications too.
Previously, whenever Xie Lin defeated a BOSS, the message in the push notification had always referred to him as a "participant". After reading that 89 times, everyone had gotten used to the term "participant". Those who initially suspected Lin Huang's identity had almost forgotten about this anomaly.
However, the push notification that popped up after Forbidden Lamella's defeat of a BOSS specifically referred to Forbidden Lamella as a "competitor", which was clearly different from Lin Huang.
This spurred a lot of speculation among the competitors.
"Whenever Xie Lin defeated a BOSS, he was called a "participant" 89 times continuously but Forbidden Lamella was called a "competitor" instead. Something's going on with Xie Lin!"
"I always thought that participants and competitors refer to the same thing even though different terms were used. Now, it seems like a participant is a special designation."
"What makes him a participant while the rest of us are competitors?"
"Now that I think about it, five days ago, a notification popped up suddenly and asked if I'd join this Competitive Trial. Could it be that Xie Lin's the one who initiated this Trial?!"
...
Lin Huang did not know the "global" announcement triggered by Forbidden Lamella had spurred such great suspicion among the competitors about his identity. Lin Huang had only glanced briefly at the push notification, and had noticed the word "competitor". He did not brood about this Forbidden Lamella either. Lin Huang's only priority right now was to waste no time on anyone other than the Sword Servants.
Based on his calculations, he would not be able to challenge around two hundred Sword Servants in the five days he had left. Therefore, he had no time to lose. If he could challenge another Sword Servant, he would do it. He had no time to be concerned with other matters.