Damned Healer

Chapter 768 768: Greatest Chance

Darian and his group headed toward a spatial transfer point in the city. There, they activated a teleport inscription using their status tablets. As they passed through, they found themselves at the top of Rainbow Heaven Mountain.The sight was breathtaking. A monumental arena dominated the peak, literally floating in the middle of an ocean of clouds. Everything around it was bathed in vibrant light and prismatic colors that seemed to come from the air itself.

The group was led to an internal area of the structure, where a Demon was waiting for them with unshakable calm. Gildor and the Queens separated, heading to a spatial location in the stands. The youths, without wasting time, were guided straight toward the heart of the event.

After walking through a long, dark corridor, the 87 youths were hit by a thunderous echo coming from the audience. As they stepped into the light, they found themselves surrounded by colossal stands rising in a spiral until their vision couldn't reach the top anymore.

The place was completely packed with millions of people, and the mixture of their powerful auras created a vibrating pressure in the air. The murmur of the excited crowd sounded like the constant thunder of a distant storm.

At the center of everything, there was a large martial stage.

A little above it, Darian and the others saw hundreds of spheres of light. They floated gracefully like iridescent bubbles. Inside each one rested a small martial stage that, at first glance, looked like a miniature toy. However, the distortion of spatial energy around the spheres made it clear that those stages were far larger than they appeared; they were independent combat worlds compressed by the power of space.

Not far from where they stood were the other disciples, also waiting.

All the youths took deep breaths, trying to calm their hearts and souls. Fortunately, the second and third stages of the Celestial Tournament were always the same, so they knew what to expect.

The thousand disciples would be divided into 100 groups of ten people. Inside those groups, everyone would fight each other to earn points until only one person in the group remained the winner.

In these battles, the death of a disciple in combat was not rare. In the cruel world of cultivation, brutality was the norm, and the great powers rarely allowed themselves the luxury of mourning the loss of a genius.

The logic behind this was merciless: cultivating is, by definition, walking against the laws of the world. Wanting to reach the top means accepting that you will be tested and targeted by the trials of fate at every step. There is a clear limit to how far a cultivator can go relying only on sect inheritances and resources; to reach the peak, it's inevitable that each person must fight and seek their own fortune.

In that context, the tournament worked as a necessary filter. If someone weak or unprepared advanced further than they deserved, they would end up facing dangers so sinister in the future that even their soul could be obliterated, erasing any chance of reincarnation.

So dying early in a controlled environment was almost seen as a form of mercy. After all, geniuses were never in short supply; with every new generation, hundreds of them appeared to take the place of those who fell.

But to be fair to disciples from smaller organizations, during the group division, the first 500 who passed, who were always the ones from the top 10, were placed in groups among themselves. In other words, the lower half of the disciples would be drawn into separate groups away from the best.

Besides that, there was always the option to give up and avoid risking one's life. But arrogance and the desire to win sometimes cloud the sense of danger, and that ended up creating victims.

While everyone waited, Darian looked at the disciples behind him and spoke calmly, "Once again, don't take unnecessary risks. If the gap between you and your enemies is too big, admit defeat without hesitation."

"Understood."

The disciples nodded. They knew that being there in the top 1000 was probably already the absolute limit they could reach. They would try to win a few matches, but the main goal for them was to gain experience. Darian and the six he trained were the ones who would truly compete for the top 100.

With every passing minute, more and more disciples arrived at the arena and waited. At that moment, Darian felt countless gazes staring at him like sharp blades. A cold smile appeared on his face.

"There's a lot of jealousy," Neblis murmured. She and the others noticed the looks the arriving disciples were giving Darian, and later them as well.

"Only mediocrity doesn't provoke envy. For the name of the Big Brother to spread, stepping over them is normal," Vymara said with a proud expression.

All the other disciples nodded in agreement. The path of cultivation was exactly like that. Someone who tried to advance quickly would be seen as a competitor by others, and those people would block their path. But if you didn't advance, people would think you were weak and intimidate you.

In short, a cultivator never had peace. Advancing in cultivation was dangerous, being weak was very dangerous, and even being strong was extremely dangerous.

Darian couldn't help but sigh. In his old universe, the Spiritual Guardians had no idea about the blessing they received from Heaven's Will. Everyone could ascend in power much more peacefully compared to cultivators; they only needed to complete group missions and help in the training universe. If you were at least somewhat competent, you could live with relative peace and stability.

After a few minutes, the number of disciples in the arena finally reached one thousand.

*Buzz*

Suddenly, everyone in the stands fell silent. In sync, they all turned their eyes upward. In the central region of the arena, in the sky, space-time began to distort and hum.

A blinding light flowed out of the void. It was as if a multicolored sun had appeared above them. Then...

"!"

An ethereal humanoid figure emerged, and all the light moved toward it. People held their breath.

Only its silhouette could be seen, but an overwhelming force struck them like a hammer, suppressing them body and soul. It was clearly a feminine silhouette; not very tall, but her presence completely changed all the energies in the environment.

No one needed to say anything. Everyone knew who that figure was.

She was precisely the legendary anomaly that appeared several generations ago and caused chaos and bloodshed across the universe.

There were countless terrifying stories about this Demoness. This very planet, where they were holding the Celestial Tournament, where she killed and destroyed every organization that once lived here, was just a small example of her actions.

There was one event in particular that people even avoided talking about because of how horrifying it was. Millions of people died... and most of them, people were convinced, had no fault at all. Fortunately, after that last event, this Demoness simply disappeared.

Then, in this generation, she suddenly returned.

At first, the entire universe panicked; all organizations feared her day and night. But... it didn't take long for people to notice something different from the descriptions left by people from several generations ago.

Now, she was always very calm and even seemed like someone relatively easy to talk to. In just a few years, she visited all the major powers, evaluated the problems that existed throughout the universe, and even helped many of them without asking for anything in return.

It was as if she were a completely different person. Even so, the greatest powers feared her and didn't dare show even the slightest disrespect.

People referred to her using her demonic side because of the macabre stories about her, which were more closely tied to that race. But the truth was that she was a hybrid of a demon and a pure Chromaraic.

Then, a few years ago, she announced that she would help with the next Celestial Tournament, offering something very valuable to the humanoids who reached the top 100. If one of them won, she herself would give that humanoid a bit of help.

At that moment, ten figures floated upward toward that feminine silhouette in the sky.

Everyone could clearly see those ten; they were the leaders of the greatest organizations in the universe. One of them was a Dire Fey woman. That woman in particular approached very close to the Demoness and bowed toward her.

"This humble leader of the Yinblood Sect welcomes you, miss. On behalf of all cultivators in the universe, I can say it is an honor to be able to see you," that Dire Fey said seriously. Her greeting showed unmatched respect.

The entire arena was in absolute silence; people didn't dare even breathe too loudly.

"Oh? So that old woman handed over her position. I don't know you. What's your name, brat?"

A calm and melodious voice sounded, and at that moment Darian's gaze changed.

That Dire Fey immediately changed her expression to slight panic. She had taken the position of leader of the greatest organization in the universe less than two years ago.

"Forgive my lack of manners!" She bowed deeply. "My name is Purina."

A soft laugh sounded; everyone in the stands was stunned. That figure… gave off an aura of kindness and calm, as if anyone could easily talk with her.

"Don't be so polite, I hate meaningless formalities. I prefer everyone to call me by my name and speak normally. As for you, call me Big Sister Remira."

Everyone in the arena heard that name for the first time in silence. Meanwhile, at the center of the arena… Darian was completely stunned.

'Remira…' Thinking about everything he had heard about this Demoness, the pieces immediately fit together in his mind. He snorted heavily, then a faint smile appeared on his lips.

Those ten figures brought Remira to the VIP area inside the arena. Inside, there was an immense and luxurious hall, with a huge glass window that overlooked the entire arena and the martial stage.

A chair at the center of everything was waiting for her. But Remira didn't bother sitting and walked toward the window instead. She began looking with extreme attention toward the center, as if evaluating the 1000 disciples.

The Dire Fey Purina approached her carefully. The others didn't have that courage and preferred to stay as far away as possible.

Seeing her gaze, Purina became confused. Remira watched for a while but didn't spot who she was looking for. Then she casually murmured:

"Brat, among these thousand exceptional disciples of this generation, is there any who stood out a lot recently, doing some very strange things around the universe?"

After hearing the question, Purina found it a bit strange. Was that woman really interested in a particular disciple?

"A young one who does strange things…" she murmured thoughtfully, searching her memory. But she couldn't remember anything in particular.

Seeing that she didn't know, suddenly one of the other nine people in the hall took a deep breath and gathered the courage to speak.

He was a tall man with a humanoid appearance, though he was using metamorphosis. This was the leader of the fifth-greatest organization in the universe, the Chaos Elementals Sect.

"Fairy Remira, if you allow me to speak…"

Remira turned and looked into that figure's eyes, nodding.

He quickly bowed, still very nervous. "Young leader Purina doesn't know about something that happened shortly before she assumed her position. It was a secret event her sect was involved in… but she must have been very busy right after taking the position and hasn't read the report yet. Fortunately, my sect found out…"

At that exact moment, at the center of the arena, a Demonic Elder appeared.

That Elder introduced himself as the general overseer of the Tournament; at that moment, a cheer echoed across the stands.

He waited a few seconds, then gave a brief explanation of the rules, which everyone already knew. At the end, he directly announced the start of the group and battle draw.

In the air, several runes with everyone's names engraved appeared. Then they gathered into a giant sphere, created by a very simple inscription. Everyone in the arena could feel the energies of that inscription and could verify live whether there was any influence or cheating in the draw.

As the sphere spun, the names swirled inside it. Suddenly, they all grouped together. At the same time, the names lit up.

Darian read his name and took a deep breath, relieved. He hadn't fallen into the same group as any of his 87 allies. After checking a bit more, he looked for the names of the six he had selected and confirmed that none of them had fallen into the same group. As for the others, there were three groups where two of their names appeared together.

There were 100 groups of ten people, and 50 groups belonged only to those from the universe's top 10 powers. The chances of ending up together weren't that low, but not that high either.

Right after that, two names in each group changed color. Those would be the first fights of each group.

There were a hundred small arenas inside the bubbles, so a hundred battles would happen at the same time, one from each group.

The decision of the top 100 would happen on that very same day. That was because fights usually lasted only a few minutes; quickly, one side would feel they were going to lose and give up.

Even with one or two losses, disciples would still keep fighting and had real chances of becoming number one in the group, so it wasn't worth wasting energy or getting injured unnecessarily.

*Darian, from the Golden Crow Sect, vs Aegmi, from the Heaven Demons Sect*

Darian snorted; he would fight right away.

In the VIP stands, Remira read the names of those who would fight. Then her eyes locked onto the youths below.

Her breathing was slightly faster and, even though she tried to pretend everything was normal… everyone there felt that she was very different from how she should be.

It wasn't difficult for them to figure out exactly where she was looking. On one particular stage, she watched a young human in red robes step forward calmly, alongside a demon.

'Darian…' she thought, filled with emotion, remembering the years they had spent together. An immense longing burned in her chest.

She had certainly known about his death when it happened. Then she visited Ruri and discovered that Darian would eventually be reincarnated. So when she learned that he had finally been conceived, she chose to return to this universe.

She knew that eventually Darian would be sent there to cultivate, and she also knew he wouldn't have his past memories.

This was her greatest chance. A unique opportunity that fell from the heavens. That was why she created this entire Celestial Tournament, knowing that no matter where he was, Darian would stand out and reach the top. His appearance was different, but even his aura and gaze were the same.

Finally, she had found him again.