Chapter 290 - 276: Rigged! Rigged! Rigged
After a grueling series of obstacle courses, the surviving contestants finally arrived at the last one.
It was an extremely narrow crawling tunnel. Contestants had to lie completely flat to squeeze through, a true test of a martial artist’s fundamental crawling skills.
However, the scene on the light screen once again upended everyone’s understanding of reality.
The contestants weren’t crawling on their elbows and moving forward alternately as one would expect. Instead, their bodies were parallel to the ground, their limbs even slightly suspended in the air. Then, their legs began to swing rapidly from side to side in a completely bizarre, horizontal fashion.
Without pushing off the ground in any way, their bodies slid forward horizontally.
The crowd: "????"
What kind of move was that?!
"My heavens," an old escort chief, a man who had practiced martial arts for many years, exclaimed from in front of a light screen below. His eyes were about to pop out of their sockets. He pointed at the screen and stammered, "This... this completely overturns my understanding of the human body. Power must originate from the ground to move forward, but their hands and feet aren’t pushing off backward. They’re just opening and closing from side to side. Where in the world is that forward momentum coming from?"
He couldn’t figure it out for the life of him and could only arrive at a ludicrous conclusion. "Could it be... could it be the long-lost legendary ’Loach Skill,’ allowing one to generate wind under their body and slide across the ground?"
But there was no doubt about it. The man responsible for all this, Lin Qingfeng wearing the face of "Wang Xiedi," dodged every dirty trick with a grace as smooth as flowing water, becoming the first to pass all the obstacles, cross the finish line, and claim the championship.
After a brief silence, the crowd erupted in thunderous cheers, celebrating the birth of the new champion. However, the contestants on the stage didn’t share the sentiment.
"It’s rigged! This is absolutely rigged!" one of the players who had just crawled to the finish line shouted, his face red with anger as he pointed at Lin Qingfeng, who stood at the apex of the pyramid.
"Unfair! This guy seems to know every single trap on the course like the back of his hand! Which door is real, which bounce pad has the best angle—it’s like he could predict the future. I’m starting to suspect he built this thing himself!"
"That’s right! We protest!" another contestant who finished right after him chimed in. "We worked our asses off, running into fake doors and falling into pits through trial and error. But look at him! It was like a stroll through his own backyard. Not a single hair out of place! If this isn’t an inside job, I’ll eat this pyramid right here and now!"
His declaration immediately resonated with the other players.
"Rigged! Rigged! Rigged!"
"Refund! I didn’t even pay, but still, F*** YOU AND GIVE ME A REFUND!!!"
"Eat one! Eat one!"
"Yeah! Make him eat it!"
The shouts rose and fell in waves, while the ordinary folk below listened on, completely bewildered.
Facing the tsunami of accusations, Lin Qingfeng simply stood at the top of the pyramid, calmly dusting off non-existent dirt from his clothes.
He accepted the rewards from Su Ling’er, cleared his throat, and said, "Rigged? Looks to me like you’re all just salty!! I’m the champion, I’m at the top of the leaderboard. It’s a well-deserved victory! What do you mean, rigged?"
’Of course I know my way around the course I f***ing worked my ass off to build! And I didn’t even use my Nascent Soul Cultivation to crush you all. I ran the whole thing slowly in a costume just like you. How is that not fair?! It’s perfectly fair! And now you’re blaming me? Damn it all!!!’
He then pointed to the first player who had accused him. "My friend, you said I knew the course like the back of my hand. You’re not wrong."
The player was taken aback. "So you admit it?!"
"I admit my eyes are better than yours," Lin Qingfeng said with a sincere expression. "I observed the terrain before every move I made and then decided where to go. What’s the matter? You were too busy trying to trip up everyone else, so you couldn’t manage it? Isn’t that perfectly normal?"
He then pointed to the player who claimed he would eat the pyramid. "And you, my friend, you said I came out unscathed. You’re not wrong either."
That player puffed out his chest. "How do you explain that!"
"I explain it by saying my Body Technique is more agile than yours," Lin Qingfeng said, spreading his hands. "I’m quicker than you. You tried to grab my waistband to pull me down, and I haven’t even called you out on it yet! And you still have the nerve to question my superior skill? Your technique is garbage. You couldn’t even beat me with dirty tricks. I didn’t use a single dirty trick the entire time, I was just focused on running. Is that my fault, too?"
"You... you... you’re just twisting words!"
"Yeah! Twisting words!"
"Exactly! Besides, playing dirty wasn’t against the rules! It’s your own fault for not playing dirty! You cheated!"
"He cheated! He cheated!"
Lin Qingfeng sighed and suddenly did something no one expected.
He broke off a small piece of stone from the pyramid’s peak, walked over to the player who said he’d eat it, and held it out. "Here you go, friend. Open up. You have to be a man of your word. I’ve always admired men who keep their promises. Don’t be shy. The flavor should be pretty good. Nice and crunchy."
The entire arena fell dead silent.
The player’s face turned the color of a pig’s liver. He was trapped, unable to accept it or refuse it. His mouth hung open for a long time, but he couldn’t force out a single word.
Seeing this, Lin Qingfeng shook his head in mock pity, tossed the stone aside, and walked back to the top of the pyramid.
Then, under the watchful gaze of thousands, he picked up the huge, luminous pearl and examined it against the sunlight from left to right. He then picked up the three secret manuals and patted their covers.
Finally, he picked up the pitch-black object that looked like a poison pill, intending to show it off, but quickly snatched it back and hid it... ’Hm, this pill looks awful. Better not bring it out and embarrass myself!’
"If you don’t have the skills, don’t come out and make a fool of yourself." After doing all this, Lin Qingfeng tucked all the rewards into his robes, turned, and waved to the dumbfounded crowd below, leaving only his retreating figure behind.
"You... you..."
"Don’t talk to me about playing dirty or not! I bet he got a walkthrough guide in advance and is just pretending to be a master."
"Damn it, why am I not the one with the inside track?! I wanna be a dirty cheater too!!!"
"Dammit, I’m so pissed," one player muttered under his breath, grumbling to his companion. "I can’t swallow this. I really want to go up there and give him a couple of punches, see if that skin of his is really that tough."
"Don’t be rash," his companion immediately pulled him back, gesturing with his eyes toward Su Ling’er, who was hovering nearby.
"See that woman over there? She can use Sword Flight, so she’s at least at Foundation Establishment. We’re either at Qi Refining or just mortals. Even if initiating a PK duel doesn’t give us a red name, trying to start a fight right in front of her is suicide. It’s not worth it."
"Once this event is over, we’ll have someone tail him. Then we’ll corner him and spam him with PK requests! Even if he doesn’t accept, we’ll annoy him to death!"
Some players who knew Lin Qingfeng’s ID quietly looked up what information they could find about him on this continent. After seeing the "Guixi Sect’s First Marathon," their faces lit up with understanding.
"It really was an inside job, and he’s a whale... I’m so jealous. I also want to be the organizer and a contestant..." However, as one of the top-five finishers, he didn’t say much more. He quietly slipped away to continue exploring this new city.
However, the grand event was far from over. Many mortals and players, watching the peculiar obstacle course on the light screen, felt they hadn’t had enough and felt a flame of desire to try it for themselves.
"Dad, I want to play on that seesaw! It looks way more fun than the swings," a child pleaded, tugging at his father’s sleeve, only to be firmly rejected.
"Master," a young Martial Artist said to his master, cupping his fist. "The mechanisms of this obstacle course are ingenious. If we could run it ourselves, it would surely be of great benefit to our Body Technique practice."
Because this kind of obstacle race was genuinely fun to play, a chorus of voices rose from the crowd, all expressing their desire to experience it firsthand.
Lin Qingfeng’s voice once again entered Su Ling’er’s ears via voice transmission.
[Lin Qingfeng]: "Junior Sister, relay my words. This course is now open to the public. The entrance fee is one hundred copper coins per person."
Hearing this, Su Ling’er was a little confused. "Huh? One hundred copper coins? Copper coins?"
She was completely stunned.
A hundred copper coins?
She subconsciously glanced down at the Wooden Sword at her waist, then up at the celestial marvel in the sky.
’Senior Brother... you went through all this trouble, turning my guest room into a divine miracle, all just to... charge a one-hundred-copper-coin entrance fee?’
An image couldn’t help but form in her mind: her terrifyingly majestic Senior Brother, sitting in a mountain-like pile of copper coins, and then... rolling around in them?
"Pfft—" Su Ling’er almost snorted with laughter.
’No, no! I can’t think of Senior Brother like that! It’s too disrespectful!’
Still, she couldn’t understand. ’Senior Brother, if you wanted copper coins, you could have just told me! Why go to all this trouble?’
’Besides buying a few things in the mortal world, aren’t these things basically like rocks from the mountains to us Cultivators? Our sect isn’t short on money. What are you up to, Senior Brother? Are you trying to emulate the East Sea Dragon King from the storybooks, collecting a room full of useless gold and silver, and then rolling around on top of it? But you’re a Cultivator, not a dragon! Besides, your palace is built in the sky! Aren’t you afraid you’ll make the floor collapse?!’