Before the Moonblade Contest, which is what everyone was actually focused on, there was martial arts training.
Although some people were excited and tried to at least pay interest at first glance, but quickly started zoning out.
'The instructor isn't very good,' Fang Yuan thought. The martial arts instructor wasn't necessarily bad with martial arts, but he wasn't teaching things in a systems-based approach. He was just pulling out information and techniques which sounded good and were whatever interested him at the moment.
The result was that the information, though correct, would make no sense whatsoever to a beginner.
It was only normal for the students, in that scenario, to lose interest.
However, Fang Yuan knew that this was the wrong approach.
Although naturally, learning how to fight with your fists was not as cool as throwing special attacks like moonblades around, it was extremely essential.
In truth, Fang Yuan had been much like them before he had regressed through time. When he had first come to this world, naturally, the special skills like moonblades and the like were what really interested him. Compared to that, martial arts seemed extremely mundane by comparison. Sure, the people of this world could have greater strength and reflexes than those of people back home, but how could that compare to say, shooting lightning out of one's fingertips?
Over time Fang Yuan realized how important training your body was, however. You couldn't always rely on having enough primeval essence to carry you through a fight. And even if you rested atop a mountain of primeval stones, would the enemy be nice enough to let you recover during a fight? No!
There was a reason that the White Boar Gu was so valued- gaining permanent strength would be excellent when all other means of offense were lost. Of course, just being strong wasn't enough- without the proper technique one would be little more than a wild animal.
The martial arts instructor noted the disinterest of the class, and tried to counter this by showing even more flashy moves. This, however, worsened the earlier problem and he could only sigh and hope that they would all gain greater interest later on.
With that class over, the event that everyone was actually interested in, the moonblade contest, began.
First off those with the worst prospects lined up.
Among them was Li Mei. She had only just had her Moonlight Gu refined with Fang Yuan's help, as such, she had only been able to throw two moonblades at most with her trash-tier aptitude.
She was a nervous wreck at this point, which didn't help with her performance.
She ended up missing both of her throws- one of them went over the grass puppet's head, and the other dug itself into the ground.
"Is that it?" the academy elder asked. The contest was based on three throws, but Li Mei could not even do that. Not with only 20% primeval essence, she couldn't.
The others that followed Li Mei did not do much better than she did, and the academy elder's frown only intensified.
"Make sure you all practice!" he barked as they left the field, dejected.
Li Mei, however, was not as despondent as the others. If it wasn't for Fang Yuan's help, she wouldn't' have even met the qualifications to stand among the others in this exam.
The only thing that she hoped was that Fang Yuan managed to do well. His act of helping her had made a large impression on her heart, and she could feel her heart flutter at the mere memory of that incident.
She glanced over to Fang Yuan, hoping to catch his eye, but he was looking somewhere else.
She sighed- regardless of her own feelings, she knew that she could never catch up to him.
'But I hope he wins this,' she said, having essentially become Fang Yuan's biggest fan in Gu Yue village within the matter of a few days.
Matter of fact, if Fang Yuan happened to tell her, "Hey, do you mind meeting up with me in a cave far away from the village sometime later? Oh, and don't tell anyone where we're going, it's a secret," she might have even agreed to such a thing and would not find it in any way suspicious at all.
As it was, she feared that if Fang Yuan did not perform well, it might've been the result of him holding back to help her. And she couldn't forgive herself were that to happen.
Mo Bei was the first person to try who had an actual shot of showing a good performance- all three of his strikes landed on the grass puppet's chest. The blades did not cut the grass puppet as he was not strong enough yet for that, but on any normal human such an injury would've been fatal.
It was an impressive performance, and even in combat, aiming for center mass was a common tactic even back on Earth. While the head was a far more critical target, the torso was bigger and the chance of hitting something vital was higher. In Gu Master fights, however, with the ability of people to heal themselves it was less effective but still a common tactic nonetheless.
Chi Cheng went up next, and also showed a similar result with three strikes on the torso.
Next was Fang Zheng. He was quite nervous as he approached the feel, having already been demoralized from Fang Yuan's accomplishments.
He couldn't help but glance back towards Fang Yuan subconsciously even before he made his move.
He ended up miscalculating the moonblade's trajectory and managed to hit the grass puppet's neck- it was quite impressive, so long as you hadn't figured out that he hadn't been trying to hit the neck. To most people, it looked like Fang Zheng was extremely talented by going after a smaller target.
Only Fang Yuan and the academy elder noticed Fang Zheng's mistake, but neither of them called him out on it.
Fang Zheng tried to hide his own shock, as he realized just how dangerous these moonblades were. His next two blows landed where he was actually aiming, on the grass puppet's torso.
There was only one other person who's performance mattered.
Although Fang Yuan was the underdog compared to the other three, he now had 500 primeval stones and did not lack them much like Mo Bei and Chi Cheng. And he had won the refining race, so no one felt that he could be counted out of the challenge either.
Which is why it was such a surprise when his first moonblade flew way off target, soaring above the grass puppet's head.