Ironman and Batman

Everyone in the Jia family was excited with the success of the Gu fighting competition's promotions. Even they couldn't imagine the scale of this competition when they first devised it. They thought that at most a few hundred gu masters would participate in the first year and it would slowly gain traction over the years. But the million primeval stone prize pool seemed to be too attractive to the gu masters. Several gu masters of righteous path and demonic path made their way to participate in the competition and Jia clan couldn't refuse them. Like any merchant city, Jia city didn't antagonize with the demonic path gu masters.

Demonic path gu masters weren't in fact 'demonic' in nature. In Southern border, where clans hoard resources, lone gu masters find it difficult to survive. So they have to sometimes resort to robbing the resources of other gu masters. Thus they are labeled as 'demonic' path gu masters by the righteous path forces with wanted posters being circulated against them. Jia city allowed even such gu masters to enter the competition with their lax regulations. After all, the goal of this competition was to find powerful gu masters to incorporate into their forces.

However, whenever Jia clan members felt that a particular gu master was too troublesome to be allowed into the city, they would make use of Rank 3 Poison vow Gu to ensure that they wouldn't fight with other gu masters in the city outside the arena. However they could fight in self defense if they were attacked first. Some demonic path gu masters hesitated in the beginning but after reading the fine print, they felt that they were not too restricted too much. If it wasn't for the reason that Poison Vow Gu was expensive, Jia clan might've used such agreements with all the demonic gu masters that entered the city.

Thus, with tight security measures in place, the gu fighting competition was finally about to start. Initially, Jia clan wanted to have a simple elimination style tournament but with more than a thousand gu masters signing up for the competition, they had to come up with new formats of fights to finish the tournament within a month. Thus they expanded the arena by several times in preparation for the tournament.

The preliminary rounds would have a royal rumble format setup within a maze. Forty gu masters would enter the stage at a time and start in different locations. As they made their way to find the exit, they would find several prize tokens along the way. The first ten gu masters who would exit the maze would proceed to the next rounds and all the tokens they collected could be redeemed as prizes. Naturally, the tokens that the eliminated gu masters collected would have no value. This way of distribution of prizes was devised by a shrewd Jia clan member who felt that the prizes distributed could be significantly reduced while the Jia clan could still boast about the million primeval stone prize pool. Thus, the gu masters would have to decide between exiting the maze early or collecting the prize tokens.

Also, the exit wouldn't be a fixed point in the map. It would open and close at random points in the maze for random intervals of time thus, avoiding situations where gu masters would guard the exit point to rob the gu masters making way towards the exit. Further, due to time constraints, if the gu masters couldn't make their way to exit within an hour, ten gu masters with highest prize tokens in possession would be declared winner.

The preliminary rounds would last for five days. Everyday, there would be five matches. Gu Guangzhi was scheduled to participate on the third match of the first day. As the maze would be different for each match, participants were allowed to watch other matches. Several Recon sight Gu were used during the matches to observe the movements of the gu masters in the maze. These images from Recon sight Gu were projected on to large screens for the audiences to watch after paying a small fee for the tickets. These Recon sight Gu were usually used by large clans for defense and monitoring purposes. However, Jia clan was utilizing all the avenues it had for making money from the competition.

As Gu Guangzhi watched the first two fights, it quickly became apparent to him, how ruthless these competitions could get. There were several gu masters who initially collected prize tokens but later became prey to other gu masters. Some gu masters surrendered after fighting for a while and gave up their prize tokens. These surrendered gu masters had to give up their participant token as well to the victor. The victor would then imprint their identity on the surrendered opponent's token. According to the rules, these participant tokens could be used to take one gu insect of their choice from the defeated gu master after the round was over. So this way, even if the participating gu masters weren't among the first ten to reach the exit, they could still gain something from this competition. In normal, one on one matches, these transactions were straightforward but in a royal rumble style match, there were times, when a few gu masters ganged up on one gu master. But the participant token could only be imprinted by one victor, so they would start fighting amongst themselves. Thus, the first two rounds had several ugly fights. The surrendered gu masters were supposed to be transported from the maze by the organizers using Quick exit Gu but sometimes these fights would get so dangerous that even the surrendered gu masters would die before the organizers could reach them.

One hour before Gu Guangzhi's royal rumble match started, he was given an information tablet about all the gu masters who were going to participate. Only the names and cultivation levels were present on the information tablet. Attracted by the prize pool, many Rank 2 gu masters joined the competition as well. It was hard for a Rank 2 gu master to defeat a Rank 3 gu master but it was not unheard of. In fact, some gu insects were inherently powerful, like Gu Guangzhi's Hellrise bamboo bird Gu. This information tablet was kind of a last warning to these young Rank 2 gu masters. If they withdrew now, they would lose the registration fee of 500 primeval essence stones but they wouldn't have to give away their powerful gu insects after defeat.

As Gu Guangzhi was perusing through the information tablet, he found two peculiar names.

Ironman - Rank 3 middle stage

Batman - Rank 3 peak stage

'These two gu masters, they aren't transmigrators like me, right?', thought Gu Guangzhi.

As he was thinking about them, a messenger from Jia Fu made his way to Gu Guangzhi silently. He pointed to a gu master and said, "That female gu master is Mao Ning. She is one of Jia Gui's subordinates. She uses fire path gu insects. She is a Rank 3 middle stage gu master so if you can take her out, Master Jia Fu will pay you twenty four thousand primeval stones." Gu Guangzhi simply nodded. He didn't like becoming an assassin for hire but due to his affiliation with Jia Fu, he was similarly being targeted by Jia Gui. As expected, one of Jia Gui's messengers reached Mao Ning and gave a similar message pointing to Gu Guangzhi.

He put the impending danger to the back of his mind and asked Jia Fu's messenger, "Do you know about these guys, Ironman and Batman?", pointing to the information tablet. The messenger thought for a moment and said, "Oh, those two! They are rather infamous around this region. They are a pair of demonic gu masters. One cultivates a metal path after stealing a low level Iron body inheritance from Tie clan. He is a wanted criminal with a high reward in the Tie clan. Despite his size, he is rather sneaky. The other cultivates enslavement path using moon bats. No one knows how these two met but they are very powerful together. They gained infamy using the names Ironman and Batman after joining hands. It's best if you try to avoid them." After listening to the information, Gu Guangzhi mused, "What an interesting coincidence!"