Ultragene Warlord

Chapter 1397: Another Hack

Bu Wentian said, "There aren't many competitors at this level of strength among the qualifiers, let alone among the southern universe. Perhaps there might be just two or three, so it was all but inevitable that you would encounter the young prince of the spirit race and the invincible competitor of the Solarvine race."

The matching wasn't ordained by fate, but by the nature of the competition.

But... what about the appearance of the Splitsilver race at the beginning?

Zhang Lie turned to the others. "How about you?"

Sun Mengmeng replied, "My three opponents were a piece of cake, though I ended up facing a Splitsilver."

"Me too! I encountered a Splitsilver and a spirit race competitor," Yang Ze added.

Fang Yi frowned. "I was also matched up against a Splitsilver. He couldn't beat me and tried using a hack, but I beat him anyway."

Sun Xiaowu snorted. "I did the same!"

Li Feng mocked, "How pitiful the Splitsilver are! Even though they tried to gain an unfair advantage, they encountered us, whom they can't defeat even with their hacks. I feel ashamed on their behalf."

Of the six members of Team Zenith, five had encountered the Splitsilvers.

Bu Wentian shrugged. "The Splitsilvers send a large number of competitors to the Cup every year to test the effects of their hacks. It's akin to a showcase for them all."

That resolved all the problems, then.

"The inevitability of a clash of coincidences, or a coincidence of a clash of inevitability...?"

Zhang Lie murmured. "Right, one more thing. Wasn't Radiant Sun a member of the Redgold race? How did he become part of the Solarvine race?"

Bu Wentian replied, "It's been quite a while since that fight, after all. After the appearance of Resplendent Sun, the Solarvine race split from the Redgold race—or rather, they swallowed them up. It's little different from before, really. The Redgold race became a subordinate species of the Solarvine race, though there are hardly any Solarvines at all."

Zhang Lie said, "Doesn't that mean I was very lucky to encounter one during the qualifiers?"

Bu Wentian replied, "Don't you mean, very unlucky?"

Zhang Lie shook his head. "How could it be unlucky for me to encounter such a strong race? I'm very curious to see just how strong the competitors will get in the actual Cup."

Sun Xiaowu added, "Me too. I'd like to know just how strong you have to be to skip the qualifiers entirely."

Zhang Lie didn't know that all the spectators of the Cup were discussing his match against Resplendent Sun.

"What happened? Why were we all kicked out?"

"The virtual realm has always been exceptionally stable. It's never shown signs of such collapse..."

"Apparently, it was caused by the Cup."

"How could that be? The Cup's never had any problems before!"

One of the spectators who was present for Zhang Lie and Resplendent Sun's fight quickly added, "It has to be because of the Solarvine's fight against some member of an unknown race!"

Everyone else quickly got interested. "What do you mean?"

"That match was devastating. I just don't know what the outcome of it was..."

"Why?"

Another spectator added, "I watched that match to get a sense of what the new Splitsilver hacks were like, only to find myself following an unprecedented dark horse!"

"The Solarvine's match against the competitor of an unknown race... that was surely the most exciting match I've seen in the history of the Cup, bar none! Both of them were far beyond the level of a new talent, but by the end..."

"What happened at the end? Why aren't any of you saying a thing?"

"Didn't you watch the match?"

"Well, we don't know what happened, either."

"The laws of the virtual realm seemed to have crumbled by then, and we weren't able to identify what was going on."

"Crumbled? As a result of that match?"

"Haha, you're a true jokester, aren't you? It was just a match between two combatants. How could that have caused the collapse of the realm?"

"Right, no matter how amazing the up-and-coming Solarvine is, there's no way he could have caused the collapse of the realm."

"Ah, the result of the match is out! Go have a look. The will of the virtual realm judged that it was the Solarvine's defeat!"

"What? Impossible! Isn't he supposed to be invincible?"

"The will of the realm couldn't have made a mistake, could it?"

"How could it be wrong?"

"What if it was a hack?"

"Right, if the Splitsilvers were able to hack, who's to say that this unknown race can't, either?"

"But we watched the previous matches too, and he's a competitor with tremendous strength! He even defeated the spirit king's son, Ling Jin, who's widely known to be the successor to the throne."

Some of the spectators disagreed.

"Even Ling Jin was no match for him?"

"Perhaps he's been using the hack since the beginning."

"Right? I was shocked to see him overcome the Splitsilver hack with brute force. Who's to say that he hasn't been supported by a hack from the beginning?"

"Hacking to the point that the realm collapsed...?"

"Could that really be it?"

"Do you know what race that competitor is from?"

Deep within a certain galaxy, Resplendent Sun's head emerged from a golden lake. He looked far more humbled than he had been upon entering the Cup, and the golden light he gave off was dim and muted. It was evident that he had suffered a serious mental blow.

A resplendent golden sun appeared, descending with a will so mighty it seemed as though the universe itself had been given physical form.

Seated within the sun was a man who seemed like a god, his eyes shut, the source of all the illumination. He shone brighter than Resplendent Sun himself. The figure within the light slowly began, "You've awoken."

"Father!" Resplendent Sun knelt on one knee.

The radiant figure was none other than Radiant Sun, who had defeated Bu Wentian during a previous iteration of the Cup.

Radiant Sun asked, "How is your recovery?"

When his son emerged from the apparatus, everyone had been shocked.

Resplendent Sun had all but wilted. His eyes were rolled back, and his mind had suffered deep trauma. His soul had almost been vanquished; Radiant Sun could sense that his son had been struck by a blow beyond what the virtual realm could handle, a blow from a dimension of strength that even the truly strong might not glimpse in their lifetime.

Without immediate attention and intense treatment, his son would be all but crippled.

"Thanks to the ambrosia of eternal sun, Father, I've recovered about two-thirds of my peak strength."

Resplendent Sun had been submerged in a pool of such ambrosia, refined from stars across the galaxy, each representing a drop of life that grew out of a backdrop of eternal destruction and annihilation. One drop alone would be a precious treasure; Radiant Sun was bathing in the ambrosia. In the known universe, only the Solarvine race, whose growth began deep within stellar cores, had access to such quantities of the ambrosia of eternal sun.