The tour went fine; Great Chinese Wall had great views of surrounding mountains and meadows. But listening to talk of its builder without rolling on the floor laughing was tough. Even my girls eyed me oddly—unlike other bystanders, they could read my feelings from micro-facial twitches.
"Greetings, I am Professor Qiu Hua, and my duty is to introduce you to the Great Wall of the Imperial Capital. The Great Wall was built by the famous earth element magic user—the first emperor who unified China, Qin Shi Huang. Previously, it served to repel monster attacks, but now it's just a historical monument, as the residential zone boundary has long since extended beyond its limits..." continued the gray-haired, plump uncle who had replaced Professor Lu as our tour guide, the one who had brought us here. Apparently, he just wanted to show off in front of us and gather some intel. Or maybe my cousin had trampled too hard on his tender heart, leaving him in no state to enlighten the youth.
No, I get it, censorship and all that. But Qin Shi Huang was first and foremost a necromancer, and only secondarily a mage of other elements. Hell, he was even way better at spatial magic and artifactоrics than at earth element magic. Just look at the masterpiece of his life—Zombie Abyss. It can move through space, open passages to the Realm of the Dead, and has such a defense system that even a Curse mage's horse would charge in without any chance of getting out.
No, I get where these tales of the greatest earth element mage came from. He did rule with an iron fist and had extraordinary talent. So it was no trouble for him to advance all five of his elements to the Curse level.
Combined with his artifactоrics skills and access to the body of China's strongest dead Totem, erecting a masterpiece like the Great Chinese Wall was entirely feasible. But the fact that he moved that wall using earth element magic is what stuck with the common folk the most. And that's what they passed down to their descendants. They had no idea that pure earth element magic couldn't build something like that.
Though I'm not even sure he didn't contribute to the death of that strongest Totem himself. After all, the Azure Dragon is a very powerful combat unit, stronger than Qin Shi Huang himself for sure. Such a solitary iron-fisted ruler simply couldn't tolerate that the dragon obeyed only its Keeper, not him. I can easily imagine the Emperor "helping" the sea monsters of the past take down the dragon. Otherwise, I can't explain how only his intact corpse remained, while from the other totems of the big Four, you can find at most a few feathers.
"Mu Bai, what's with you? You look like you're about to burst out laughing. Does the professor's story amuse you that much?" Jiao Jiao tilted her head in confusion.
"Don't mind it, I'm just marveling at the power of Chinese censorship. Don't ask now, I'll explain later." Ruffling her hair, I turned my attention back to the tour guide, continuing to listen to the amusing fairy tales.
Until evening, they led us around various sights, then brought us to the dorm block allocated near the university and suggested we move in, which no one refused. Going into the city and renting a house there was frankly too much hassle.
The next morning, we got up at seven to be at the competition venue by eight. The other universities weren't even thinking of getting involved in the clash of the two mastodons—Mingzhu and Imperial—and quietly fought on their own arenas, leaving the central one for us.
Well, better for us. This isn't exactly a standard tournament anyway; there are no elimination battles here. Officially, it's an "experience exchange" meeting. In reality, universities from across the country find opponents of roughly their weight class and try to dominate them, showing off how great their young generation is—and thus their training process.
So in theory, any of them could challenge us or Imperial, but there are no such fools here. Xi'an University does hold top-3, but they specialize mainly in the light element, which has no offensive spells at Mid-tier. We firmly hold the title of top-2 university in the country and actively fight for first place. Sometimes, like this year, we even succeed.
But it doesn't repeat on a constant basis. After all, Imperial mainly admits Clan members, while Mingzhu takes common folk. It's clear who has better funding and conditions. And besides talent, those are the two most important factors in raising strong mages.
"Have you decided who we're putting in the first team lineup?" Teacher Gu asked us, not even removing the cigarette from his mouth even at such a prestigious event. I think I know why he's always in Director Xiao's doghouse.
"Well, by unofficial tradition, the captain doesn't go in the first team, so at minimum, I won't be there. Let's not crush the poor students' hopes too hard. I suggest sending TuTu, and you can toss in the other three for show; they won't change anything anyway." I suggested with a shrug.
That unofficial rule did exist, and as far as I know, it's to probe the opponent's strength. Or the team just shows disdain for their rivals. Chinese style—what else to expect? Scorn and probing the enemy with weaker figures is the basis of any cultivation story.
"What makes you think you're the captain?" Chen Min Xiao scowled at me, the wind element mage with dark gray hair who was Luo Sun's buddy. Does he have nothing better to do? Or is envy clouding his brain? Good thing Mo Fan, true to canon, was late and couldn't drip his nonsense on me along with this clown.
"It was decided by right of strength. If you have a problem with that, I can just withdraw from the competition with my girls, and you can explain to Director Xiao yourselves why we lost with such a winning hand." I pressed this upstart with my cultivation to shut him up. With his personality, he might've claimed he could've taken them all alone and told me to get lost from the team.
Since Chen Min Xiao shut up after my intimidation, and no one else piped up, Teacher Gu listened to my suggestion and assembled a team of TuTu, Zhao Manyan, Luo Sun, and Zheng Bing Xiao, an unremarkable brunette in glasses who was one of our university's weakest participants.
Apparently, Teacher Gu realized no one would let him sneak the kid into the finals and added the poor boy to the probing team so he could at least show something. In canon, by the way, he never got to, since Chen Min Xiao snatched his spot with cries about his underrated strength. I think it's clear why I didn't let him speak when he had the chance.
From Imperial University, a combat Four also headed to the arena: two guys, the gorilla-sized Xu Da Lun and Liao Min Xuan with long hair like a Chinese cultivator, plus their two fairly cute girls—black-haired Zhao Min Yue with piercing blue eyes, who by her surname was related to Zhao Manyan, and pink-haired Jing Jing, a plant element mage. I figure she's the one in this fight who'll suffer the biggest shock on their team.
Judging by their expressions, they were set to either win or at least put up a worthy resistance. I don't know how Imperial's teachers drill them, but big props to them, since their whole team knew full well the strength of my girls.
Well then, I hope TuTu doesn't trample them too hard... who am I kidding? Director Xiao paid us exactly for that. The only question is how much my Sunny Bunny will drop their self-esteem.