Chapter 21: His Strength Soared Two Hundredfold! He Could Rival a Gold-Trait Prodigy!!

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Name: Xiao XuanRace: HumanLevel: Tenth Heaven of the Innate Realm (Second Revolution of True Qi: 0/400,000)Vitality: 999Soul: 10Cultivation Arts:Bloodthirsty Demonic Art (Sixth-Tier Peak! Combat Power 700%)Thunderflame Body-Tempering Art (Seventh-Tier Peak! Mastery, 0/100,000! 600%)Martial Techniques:【Thunderflame Annihilation Slash】 (Seventh-Tier Peak! Mastery, 0/100,000! 600%)【Flame-Dancing Lightning Flash】 (Seventh-Tier Peak! Mastery, 0/100,000! 325%)【Thunderflame Adamantine Body】 (Seventh-Tier Peak! Mastery, 0/100,000! 700%)Traits:【Scavenger! Unique】 (Cannot be upgraded)【Decent Talent! Purple】 (0/1,000,000! Talent 1000)【Lightning Control! Purple】 (Lightning attacks 1000%! 0/1,000,000)【Flame Control! Purple】 (Flame attacks 1000%! 0/1,000,000)【Strength Enhancement! Purple】 (Strength enhancement 1000%, 0/1,000,000)【Speed Enhancement! Purple】 (Speed enhancement 500%, 0/1,000,000)【Defense Enhancement! Purple】 (Defense enhancement 1000%, 0/1,000,000)【Gigantification! Purple】 (Enlarges the body to 50 meters, thereby increasing physical combat power by 1000%; can stack with the three basic physical traits!)【Blade Mastery! Purple】 (Possesses hundreds of years of blade experience, increasing the power of blade techniques by 1000%)【True Eye! Purple】 (Can instantly see through the disguise and cultivation of enemies whose strength is not more than thirty times your own!)【Combat Mastery! Purple】 (Possesses powerful combat talent and can unleash one’s own strength as overwhelming combat power!)【Limb Regeneration! Purple】 (Greatly increases injury recovery speed! Slightly increases Essence-Blood recovery speed! Can rapidly regenerate lost body parts!)Eco Points: 12540

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Looking at his current status panel, Xiao Xuan’s combat power had increased by at least a hundredfold compared to a day ago.

After all, his Vitality alone had risen fivefold.

Then the strength of his True Qi doubled, making it tenfold.

The three basic physical traits doubled it again, bringing the increase in combat power to twentyfold.

Gigantification doubled it once more. That meant a terrifying fortyfold increase in combat power.

And Combat Mastery and Blade Mastery could greatly raise the upper limit of that power, pushing it to three or four hundred times his original level without the slightest exaggeration.

On top of that, if he also counted the doubled power bonus from his cultivation arts, then it was no longer merely a hundredfold increase in combat power.

It was two or three hundredfold.

In other words, his combat power had already long since crossed the hundredfold threshold.

At that thought, Xiao Xuan frowned slightly.

“These are only Purple Traits. If gathering a full set of stackable ones can already unleash such a terrifying combat bonus, then what about Silver? What about Gold?”

“If those also awakened in a fully comprehensive set, then just how terrifying would that combat power become?”

The thought genuinely shocked him.

But he quickly dismissed it again, because an ordinary top-hundred provincial genius usually only had a few Purple Traits, or at most a single Silver Trait.

And most of those Purple Traits could not stack with one another.

Traits that could stack were extremely difficult to come by.

Once such a combination appeared, it would absolutely bring about a qualitative leap in strength.

Not to mention that Xiao Xuan possessed a terrifying four or five stackable Traits.

Even the cultivation arts he practiced could stack with them. That was practically tantamount to cheating.

Under such outrageous conditions, the current Xiao Xuan could absolutely slaughter a prodigy with a Gold Trait with ease, so long as they were at the same level.

That was right—the kind of genius whose single trait could boost combat power by a hundredfold.

“So a Trait’s rank does not determine everything. If your luck is good enough and you awaken stackable Traits, then even a few Purple Traits stacked together are enough to contend with a Gold Trait!”

Thinking of this, Xiao Xuan smiled faintly. By that measure, his current strength already counted as top-tier.

However, when it came to upper limits, they were naturally not in the same league.

A few Purple Traits stacked together could indeed rival a Gold Trait in combat power.

But their future realms would be completely different.

Generally speaking, anyone who awakened a Gold Trait, no matter what category it belonged to, would also receive a Silver or even Gold cultivation trait as a bonus.

With a cultivation trait of that level, their future achievements would be at least at the level of a Martial Thearch, or even a Martial Saint.

But even a Purple-Trait holder with a Purple cultivation trait could at best reach Martial Emperor in the future.

The gap between Martial Emperor and Martial Saint was terrifyingly vast.

Above the level of Martial King, every minor realm doubled the disparity.

A difference of two major realms meant a thousandfold gap in combat power.

Yet between Martial Emperor and Martial Saint lay Martial Venerable and Martial Thearch.

That was a difference of three major realms.

One realm meant a thousandfold gap—no, more than that. There was also the difference in cultivation arts and martial techniques.

After all, low-level talents trying to cultivate high-level arts faced multiplied difficulty to begin with, and lower talent ranks also meant lower comprehension. Dreaming of cultivating high-level arts was sheer fantasy.

When all of those factors were stacked together, the gap of a single realm would be more than ten thousandfold.

That amounted to a trillion-fold difference in talent ceiling.

No matter how monstrous your combat power or your multipliers were, if there was a trillion-fold gap in base combat power between you, then even if a god descended, that god would probably still have to kneel.

Of course, that only applied to ordinary people with low-level talents.

It had nothing to do with Xiao Xuan.

Not only could his Traits be upgraded, even his cultivation arts could be upgraded with Eco Points.

Talent meant absolutely nothing to him.

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Half an hour later, Xiao Xuan arrived at the gates of Nanhai University by flying car.

Following the directions, he made his way to an enormous martial arena.

The moment he arrived, he saw a great number of students already waiting in the center of the arena.

The surrounding stands were also filled with quite a few Nanhai University students and parents who had come to watch the excitement.

Xiao Xuan took a glance around. The number of participants was not as high as he had imagined, but it was still far from small.

There were at least forty to fifty thousand of them.

That might have sounded like a lot, but in truth, it was not many at all, because Shanhe Province alone had at least ten thousand cities on the scale of Blackwater City.

And from more than ten thousand cities, only forty to fifty thousand people had made it here for the Special Admissions Exam. That was enough to show just how difficult it was.

Because in theory, the Special Admissions Exam was considerably harder than getting in through the regular college entrance exam.

The regular college entrance exam still included talent scores. Some people whose talents awakened a little later could still rely on talent alone to get admitted.

But the Special Admissions Exam depended entirely on strength.

After all, just registering required combat power at the Vitality Realm.

And since the Special Admissions Exam tested actual combat, if someone failed and was crippled in the process, then the time needed to recover might cause them to miss the regular college entrance exam. If that happened, their whole life would be ruined.

That was why only geniuses with absolute confidence in their own strength—or those who wanted to show themselves at the Hundred-Province Genius Tournament—would choose the Special Admissions Exam.

“Xiao Xuan, over here!!”

The moment Xiao Xuan arrived, he heard Su Qingwu’s voice.

Her call quickly drew the attention of the surrounding students, because among everyone present, the most eye-catching person there was Su Qingwu, the beautiful girl.

A few people had tried to strike up a conversation with her just moments earlier, but all of them had been completely ignored.

However, the instant those people saw Xiao Xuan, all of them knitted their brows.

Anyone who had come for the Special Admissions Exam was a genius. At a single glance, they could tell that Xiao Xuan was no ordinary fighter.

Most importantly, the power Xiao Xuan had just experienced such a massive surge in had not completely settled yet.

As a result, the faint aura leaking from him was already enough to deter a number of petty opportunists.

“Innate Realm? That kid is actually in the Innate Realm.”

“He has not even entered university yet, and he is already there. Do not tell me his talent awakened more than ten years ago?”

“Hmph, he is just lucky. Awakening early only gives you a few extra years at the start. Once you reach the later stages, a mere few years are nothing.”

“Even so, his talent rank should at least be Purple!”

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For a time, quite a few geniuses began evaluating Xiao Xuan in their hearts.

As for Xiao Xuan, he walked over to Su Qingwu’s side and exchanged a few words with her.

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But at that moment, Xiao Xuan suddenly sensed a powerful aura rapidly approaching from the horizon.

BOOM!!

A moment later, the others also heard the sonic blast drawing closer from afar.

All of them instinctively looked toward the source of the sound.

They saw three figures flying over at astonishing speed from the horizon.

More precisely, the figure in the middle was carrying one person in each hand.

Very soon, the three landed on the main dais.

The three consisted of a middle-aged instructor and two students.

“It is Professor Liu Feng and his martial graduate students!”

“What? Graduate students? There are actually still people these days pursuing a dead-end degree like that?”

“Tsk, tsk, maybe they failed their classes for all ten years. Otherwise, why would they end up in graduate school?”

“What trash. They actually managed to fail their courses. Serves them right for becoming graduate students. Even if I could not get my diploma, I still would not go to graduate school.”

“Exactly. How shameful.”

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The moment the three appeared, the university students in the stands all looked at the two people beside Professor Liu Feng with thinly veiled contempt.

At a glance, the two looked exactly like the sort of shut-ins who spent all day holed up in their dorms instead of cultivating or attending class.

Faced with so many eyes on them, both of them looked timid and shrinking.

“What are you standing around for? Hurry up and turn on the testing device! You useless trash, do you not even have the slightest sense of initiative?”

Liu Feng was already furious the moment he saw those two graduate students, and he immediately cursed them out.

In this era, university lasted a full ten years, and every school generally had its own graduation standards. If you met those standards, you could graduate early.

Nanhai University’s graduation standard was to reach the First Heaven of the Innate Realm.

For those who failed to meet the standard but still wanted to obtain a diploma, there were only two choices.

The first was to take the near-fatal graduation trial.

If they passed it, they could still receive their diploma.

If they did not dare take the graduation trial, then they had simply wasted ten years.

The second choice was to do exactly what those two in front of him had done.

Apply for graduate studies and become a professor’s errand-runner in exchange for three more years of study.

That was why such people were the lowest of the low—disgraceful wastrels who squandered humanity’s resources.

Even after graduating, their diploma would still bear the humiliating label “Graduate Student!”

Of course, there was another kind of student as well—those who still could not graduate even after three years of graduate study.

In that case, they still had the same two choices: take the near-fatal graduation trial, or continue applying for doctoral studies.

In other words, become the lowest of the low among the lowly.

Although that was still better than not getting a diploma at all, the status attached to that education was inferior even to a bachelor’s degree.

In other words, the academic contempt chain in this era was generally:

doctoral graduate students < master’s graduate students < bachelor’s students < junior-college students < special-admissions junior-college students Which was to say, special-admissions junior-college students were the true elite.

They were the real geniuses.