Making People Question Reality

The announcement caught the attention of most people in the area. At least the people that heard Jam say that he would prove he himself, when it came time for his Squad to turn in their corpses, were intrigued.

Jam and his squad made their way to the inspection zone. Once they arrived, the members of squad 21 started depositing their beast corpses, in the same order as when they were discussing. First Rina, followed by Cynthia, Alex, and Kirin.

Jam's squadmates deposited the same amount of demonic beast corpses that they said they had. And now, the moment to utterly destroy these spectators minds had finally come!

Jam made his way up to the inspection zone and told the people managing it, that he needed more space. This comment had all those who heard it, laugh mercilessly at Jam.

Even Squad 9 didn't require more space than what was already available; and they had well over 20 million Demonic Beast. Moreover, most of the Demonic Beasts they have killed were at the Saint Realm.

Everyone knows that the higher realm a demonic beast is in, larger its size. While there were exceptions to this rule, even the smallest Saint Realm Demonic Beast is large enough to take up 3 cubic meters of space.

Evangeline had already told the management ahead of time that Jam would probably have more corpses than her. Thus, the management compiled with Jam's request. If any other person had told them they needed more space, the management would not have taken them seriously. However, Evangeline was the real deal. Moreover, she wouldn't have a reason to lie to them.

Jam was allocated twice the amount of space that all the other people up to know had available to them.

Jam cast open a rift from his Spatial Storage Dimension to the inspection zone, and for the next couple minutes, an endless stream of dead Saint Realm Demonic Beasts flowed out his rift. Jam created a mountain of corpses, at least ten times larger than Evangeline's stack of corpses.

After the stream of False Saint Demonic Beasts ended, Jam made another pile of corpses. This pile of corpses only contained the Saint Masters he had killed. Along with the four Saint Masters Jam had killed in his fight to save Evangeline, he had also killed about 1,000 Saint Masters.

The reason the Saint Realm Demonic Beasts had started to group up was because of Jam's merciless hunting. If he had only stuck with hunting False Saint Demonic Beasts, sure the False Saint Demonic Beasts would have grouped together. But, they certainly wouldn't be forming groups of several hundred False Saints.

After Jam had broken through to the Soul Condensing Stage, he needed to challenge himself. And after realizing that no amount of False Saint would be able to compete against him, in skill, he started targeting the Saint Masters.

Needless to say, Jam's glorious mountains of Saint Realm Demonic Beast Corpses, drew in shock and silence from everyone. The fellow competitors, Jam's squadmates, the supervisors, the academy elders, even the Sect Head… It didn't matter who you were, when confronting the little devil known as Jam, and his absurd strength, you had to stand in awe.

After a moment of silence from everyone in attendance, management started counting Jam's points.

"One Hu-hundred sev-seventy nine million False S-Saints, and o-one th-tho-thousand thirteen Sai-Saint Masters" Jam's score was so high it made the announcer stutter in disbelief.

In total Squad 21 turned in 1,013 Saint Masters, 180.533 Million False Saints, and 7.5 Million Soul Fusion Demonic Beasts. The combined score for Squad 21 came out to be… 451,808,800,000 points.

In most people's' heads, a nonexistent event took place. Squad 9 came and said "I'm the best with my 40 Billion points," and Squad 21 — or more specifically Jam — came out and said "Hold my beer!"

…

The rest of the inspection was uneventful. No one came close to reaching Squad 9's score, to say nothing of Squad 21.

Jam was sitting on a seat reserved for Squad 21 members. He was very uncomfortable, as the people who were entering the sitting area reserved for the squads to wait, were looking at him like he was an alien. The people that were already seated, picked up on the unusual aura surrounding Jam, and were staring at him as well.

Jam and his squadmates passed the time by sharing stories about their encounters during the competition. Jam story about being trapped in a natural formation and having to make a double breakthrough in cultivation, followed by a breakthrough in his formation skill, was the greatest highlight of the groups chat.

None of his squadmates had any memorable stories to share. Their collective experience was that of an average hunting session. After they split up, they spent most of their time searching for demonic beasts to hunt, then they would fight, kill, and collect the beasts. This process was near universal; it applies to most of the other squads as well.

Jam was essentially the source of most of the eventful occurrences in this competition. Jam saving Mary's squad, breaking out of a Tier 3 formation, saving Evangeline, and taking out more than 180 million Saint Realm Demonic Beast copses, were the most interesting events that took place in competition.

Some of the other situation which drew in attention in this competition, were that a couple competitors had been severely injured, and one had died. The last notable event was that one lucky competitor in Squad 3, found a Tier 5 herb while hunting his share of demonic beasts.

Eventually, all the Squads were processed and the result of the competition would be announced. The Sect Head usually wouldn't announce the prizes for this "low" level competition. However, this hunting competition was record breaking for a myriad of reasons.

First of all, this was the first hunting competition where seven core disciples came together to face off. The previous record only had six core disciples face off in the competition, and was broken when Cynthia joined the core disciples about a year ago.

Second, the record for most beasts ever collected, and most Saint Realm Demonic Beasts ever collected were both broken by Jam. Before, the most beasts ever collected by a single person were 40 million, the record for most beasts collected by a group was 155 million, both these records were achieved by people chasing these records, and they focused on Spirit Realm Demonic Beasts.

Third, Everyone in the core disciples class had advanced to the Spirit Realm. Even, if no records were broken, the Sect Head would have shown up to announce the result for only this reason.

The Sect Head began to announce the results of the competition in order of increasing rank.

"Squad 32, 40th place. 20 Million Points

Squad 23, 39th place, 33 Million Points

…

Squad 4, 3rd place, 1.6 Billion Points

Squad 9, 2nd place, 40 Billion Points

Squad 21, 1st place… 451 Billion Points."

As the Sect Head concluded the announcements, he announced the rewards, for the top 5, 3, runner up, and champion.

Each member of the top five squads would choose between one Tier 4 herb, a set of Tier 3 pills, a Tier 3 Artifact, or a chuck of Tier 4 ore.

The members of the top three squads would receive all the prizes available to the top five as well as a Saint Realm technique of their choosing from the third level of the academy's library.

The members of the squad in second place would receive a Sage Realm technique, along with all the other awards.

The members of the champion squad, would receive all the awards previously mentioned, as well as an Enlightenment Stone.

Enlightenment Stones were priceless natural treasures even Sages would fight to the death for; not for themselves, but for their juniors. They were crystalized masses containing the essence of a complete Dao. To use an Enlightenment Stone, a cultivator would consume it before refining the stone in their Dantian Space.

Once the stone was completely refined the cultivator could tap into the power of the stone, and possibly initiate a forced enlightenment. This forced enlightenment could do anything from, giving the cultivator inspiration to make a new technique, to directly raise the cultivator's Dao Cultivation.

As Jam and his squadmates were receiving their rewards, an unusual reaction occured once Jam grabbed his Enlightenment Stone. He hadn't consumed the stone, let alone refine it. All he did was touch it, and that was enough to tap into the essence of the Dao locked inside his Enlightenment Stone.

Jam's enlightenment was also unusual as he received all the benefits of the enlightenment instantly. Usually a cultivator would stay in their forced enlightenment state until they comprehend what they could from the Enlightenment Stone.

Jam touched his Enlightenment Stone, instantly gained all the insights available to him, and then the stone evaporated into the air; disintegrating in front of everyone present, as if it never existed in the first place.