Chapter 582 — The Gaze of the Four Transcendent Saints

With this, Qi should quickly regain power beyond her peak. At her peak, her Time-Space Shuttle had only been a mastery-level divine skill; if it could be raised to perfect level, her escape ability would surely be even stronger.

By then, a Perfect God-level Time Sprite could probably slap a Super God right in the face and still leave them unable to catch her... For the Shi Jin whose name was about to spread across the entire King Star, this ability would be very useful.

It would give Shi Jin enough room for steady growth.

Thinking it over this way, opening the Time Essence Crystal was not really a loss. After all, these powerhouses of Blue Star could not guard him at all times and in all places, and he could not stay cooped up in one place forever.

The ability to flee when danger came—that, he had to have.

"Many thanks, seniors..." At this point, Shi Jin looked at the Time Essence Crystal and said with a grin, "Next time I get a Super God Stone, I'll be troubling you again..."

The five Super Gods: ???

...

Thus the matter of the Cosmic Overlord Legion came to a temporary close. For the next while, Shi Jin, now in possession of the Meditation Jade, began slumber-cultivation.

The Meditation Jade was a cultivation resource that only took effect during meditation, and originally required the user to focus their mind single-mindedly in meditation to use it.

But when the Meditation Jade met the Cultivation Fruit, it was as if a BUG had been born. Shi Jin took the Meditation Jade, ate the Cultivation Fruit, and settled in for a good long sleep, and the effects of the two cultivation resources activated at once, reinforcing each other, sending Shi Ying's meditation speed soaring like a rocket.

This sensation of leveling up while fast asleep was really no different from cheating.

Ordinary people might suffer insomnia, or be too full of energy to fall asleep, but with Shi Tan beside him, a Buggy's hypnosis and a Ginseng Baby's Sleep Fruit could keep Shi Jin sleeping for centuries without issue. What was more, Shi Jin, with his Body Mastery talent, could also guarantee perfect control of his spirit as it entered sleep, granting him the finest cultivation experience.

The so-called fine cultivation experience was simply this: close your eyes, open them, feel nothing at all, and you had matched several years of another's bitter training. Shi Jin felt there was hardly anything more satisfying.

This gave Shi Jin the idea of spending a great deal of money to get more Meditation Jades, and once the tournament ended, sleeping all the way back to Ember Frost Peak before doing anything else.

While Shi Jin was in slumber-cultivation for this stretch of time... the Apotheosis War continued apace.

Among them, each of the top ten newcomers was like a monster, scoring one-hit kills in every match, no matter the opponent.

After some time, the top sixteen emerged.

They were: Eleven, the Fantasy Worm, the Ginseng Emperor, Crimson Pupil, Susu, Rin, the World-Destroying Dragon, the World-Cleansing Demon Duck, the Arcane Cult Leader, the Ultra Holy Beast...

And six other contestants. Those six were all top-twenty finishers from the previous Apotheosis War, but this time around, no one believed they could last even a single move against the top ten newcomers—they had no presence whatsoever.

After all, you have to understand—the last of the top ten newcomers, the World-Destroying Giant Dragon, was already a match for Kahn in strength, and that was without the Mechanist Shi Jin lifting a finger to amplify it.

You could say the sudden emergence of the top ten newcomers made veteran spectators of the Apotheosis War feel that this year's tournament was the darkest, most chaotic edition in the history of the event... impossible to see through, impossible to predict.

But one could already imagine how brutal it would be when the top ten newcomers slaughtered one another.

"The new matchup list is about to come out!! Place your bets, place your bets!! Now the ten supernovas might finally clash—come guess who takes first place this year."

Right now, in every major realm, a slew of underground gambling dens were running odds on this year's Apotheosis War, and waves of gamblers were placing bets with bloodshot eyes.

"Eleven is bound to be first!"

"Crimson Pupil is number one under heaven."

"I say the Mystic Mechanism Hierarch takes first! A name like that has to be Great God Shi Jin's ace. Great God Shi Jin has contracted two divine pets and is confident enough to enter them separately without stepping in to assist himself—he must be certain of the championship."

As the crowd guessed excitedly, the new matchup list came out...

"Is the list out?"

The intra-team matches were about to begin, and Shi Jin, who had been immersed in cultivation for a long time, comfortably opened his eyes.

By now, both of his beast-taming spaces had been cultivated to the peak of level nine, ready to break through to the divine level at any moment.

The day the championship challenge ended would be the day Shi Jin broke through to the divine level, but before that, Shi Jin wanted more to see which of his beasts could claim first place in this year's Apotheosis War.

First place in the Apotheosis War earned the chance at the championship challenge, and with it the opportunity to obtain a permanent teleportation array.

Second through tenth place each received a teleportation keystone, along with varying quantities of divine-level universe crystals.

If Shi Jin swept the top ten, that would be at least nine teleportation keystones plus a pile of divine-level universe crystals—an overnight fortune. An ordinary second-tier realm lord might not even be that flush.

No wonder some prodigies were willing to stall their levels and keep entering the Apotheosis War. Take Ming Gu—seventy-nine consecutive second places, and just from teleportation keystones alone he had reaped nearly a hundred. Even if he couldn't use them himself, he could sell them to other realms, and he'd never have to worry about resources after breaking through to the divine level.

The teleportation keystones of the Void Emperor and the others had, in fact, been bought through pretty much this same channel.

Of course, the most precious thing was still the permanent teleportation array—a super treasure no number of ordinary teleportation keystones could ever trade for.

If not for the fact that the permanent teleportation array could only be won once, and if not for Shi Jin's belief that breaking through to the divine level would yield greater returns and more resources than stalling at demigod, he might even have wanted to stall at demigod for a few hundred years.

"Let me see..." Shi Jin looked at the freshly minted matchup list, then sank into thought.

Eleven, Bugbug, Ginseng Baby, Crimson Pupil, Susu, and Lin had drawn the other six nobodies.

Little Machine, Duckduck, the Short-Legged Cat, and the rest had the rotten luck of running straight into each other!

World-Destroying Giant Dragon VS World-Cleansing Demon Duck!

Mystic Mechanism Hierarch VS the Transcendent Holy Beast!

This round... the second team was going to slaughter its own first!

"How marvelous."

...

Once the list was out, the six veteran contestants wore rather gloomy expressions.

Among them, Tian Yu, the Azure Dragon Clan prodigy who had "luckily" made it into the top sixteen, looked at his matched opponent, Lin, and nearly broke down.

"Of our Four Holy Clans, only you are left. Can you defeat this Lin and make it back into the top ten?" said Bai Wang of the White Tiger Clan.

"Only one of the Four Holy Clans remains, but the top sixteen holds more than one Four Holy evolver... this Mystic Mechanism Hierarch, this Transcendent Holy Beast—they're all Four Holy evolvers! This time we've been utterly crushed. The clan elders are bound to be furious," said Ming Wu of the Black Tortoise Clan.