Chapter 73: Round of Sixty Four

A smile appeared on Ryan's face as he put his sword away and extended his hand to help the girl up. The girl accepted and soon stood face to face with Ryan.

"Good fight! You almost had me there for a second" said Ryan. He thought back to that agile sword that had almost pierced his waist and shuddered.

"But in the end, I didn't. Good luck in the next round" responded the girl before she left the platform and walked towards her clan in the stands.

"Good job Ryan. Nice fight!" A loud shout from Miko drowned out the rest of the cheering crowd as he congratulated Ryan. Ryan gave Miko a thumbs up before he jumped off the stage and walked over to John and Miko.

"Good stuff. Nice recovery." John congratulated Ryan on his fight.

"I had almost lost there. That girl is quite strong." Ryan responded as he sat down.

"That she is. Those techniques of hers were quite strange and hard to predict, but you did the exact thing you should have. You overwhelmed her graceful and unpredictable techniques with pure power, and put her on the defensive at which point she couldn't recover." John was quite impressed with Ryan's battle there. Although it may seem simple, Ryan had made the correct decision and turned the battle from a battle of techniques to a battle of raw power.

The group watched the rest of the fights until the fourth round finally arrived.

"Well, I'm up again." John hopped up and started walking towards his fighting stage. He arrived at the same time his opponent did, who was a boy from the Ronan Clan. Since John won his fight in the first round, he assumed the ranking of his opponent, which was in the forties. As such, in this fight, he was fighting the eighteenth ranked opponent, who was much stronger than his previous opponent and was roughly equal to Ryan in strength.

John nodded his head towards the boy and the boy did the same. While the Ronan Clan and Fenix Clan were not close allies, they were not enemies either. The two groups treated each other fairly well, and so neither fighter saw it fit to insult the other.

"Let's have a good fight, I'm John." John said as he smiled towards the boy.

"Roy, I look forward to it. I won't be like that Crimson Valley boy and underestimate you." Although Roy didn't know exactly how John had managed to win, John's fight at least showed that underestimating him would result in a quick loss.

Roy took out his sword and steadied it by his side. John responded in kind and took out his scythe, which resulted in Roy raising his eyebrows in surprise.

"A scythe huh? Never fought a scythe user before. This should be fun."

The referee commenced the start of the fight, and John and Roy stood there staring at each other.

'I don't want to reveal the Supreme Battle Art before I fight Dylan in the finals, so unless I'm forced to do so, I want to hold that back and save it as a trump card. I'll just use my body Qi like I did against Ryan, and use it to strengthen my body without using any particular technique or battle art.'

Although his essence Qi power was astounding for his cultivation level, it was still much lower than Roy, who scored nearly six hundred on the test. John knew that only by using his body strength would he be able to win, but he still wanted to hold back as much as possible as to save trump cards for the final.

"Let's start this fight, shall we?" John blurted out and ran towards Roy. Roy smiled and dashed forward as well.

Peng!

Sword and scythe collided, and both fighters were knocked back a few yards.

"You said you weren't going to underestimate me, and yet that blow was still a testing blow." John couldn't help but notice that the attack from Roy was far from his full power.

Roy smiled and nodded his head. "I'm not underestimating you, that blow was a testing blow to see where your power lies. If it overwhelmed me, I held plenty back to quickly defend myself with. But I don't think that was your full power either, was it?"

John smiled and said nothing as he once more ran towards Roy.

Myriad Annihilation Scythe!

A powerful beam of scythe Qi flew towards Roy, and Roy struck out with his own technique.

Boom!

The techniques collided in midair, at which point John struck out with the second attack of the technique, and Roy widened his eyes slightly at the power of the attack.

"No wonder you scored so high despite being in the middle Mist Creation Realm. You really are powerful!" Roy couldn't help but praise John's attack. It was definitely more powerful than anything he could have achieved back when he was in the middle Mist Creation Realm.

Despite it being John's strongest essence attack however, it was still blocked by Roy, although he had to use one of his strongest moves to completely cancel it out.

John and Roy continued to exchange blows for several minutes, and John was repeatedly on the losing end of the exchanges. Roy dashed backwards after an exchange and shook his head at John.

"That's enough testing each other's power. We have up to five more fights after this one if we win all the way to the finals, so I would like to save as much strength for the next battles as possible. Don't you think it's time we both go all out?" Roy enjoyed fighting John, as he could tell John was a fighting expert, but the Qi expenditure was not worth it in the end.

"I suppose you're right." John nodded his head at his opponent's words. He had become so engrossed in fighting with his essence power that he had almost forgotten he was in a tournament. John shook his head at himself as well.

'I really am a battle fanatic. Even during this tournament, I just want to fight as much as possible. I guess it is time to end this.'

John focused his mind and started to channel qi from his body dantian into his body. Immediately, an intense and slightly sinister battle aura exploded outwards from John, stunning both Roy and the crowd into silence.