Chapter 801

The air was thick with tension. The draw for the next day's tournament began. The participants were divided into ten groups of ten. The format was a round-robin tournament; winners would remain on the stage while losers stepped down to wait. Each jade token was equipped with a tracking mechanism for wins and losses. Although the rules might sound chaotic, the records on the jade tokens prevented any confusion. Each participant had to face ten different opponents and maintain a perfect record of ten consecutive wins. If none of the ten participants in a group managed a perfect record, that group would be temporarily set aside. Once the prodigies with perfect records from other groups were confirmed, the remaining contenders would be shuffled and redistributed. This part of the process relied heavily on luck. For instance, if one group failed to produce a undefeated prodigy, it would be sidelined while the other nine groups each saw one prodigy advance with a perfect record. In that scenario, ninety-one people would be drawn to form a new group of ten, and they would battle until a new undefeated prodigy emerged. This meant that prodigies from the original groups who had failed to maintain a perfect record would have another chance to enter a new group and vie for a spot in the top ten. Of course, this was unfair to those who had already been in the initial groups, but such were the rules; if you didn't work hard enough, that was on you.