Such a rough way of climbing the pagoda dumbfounded the surrounding crowd. The students who were already climbing the stairs looked out the window and saw a meteor streak upward past them, which was then followed by the sound of a huge explosion at the top. Everyone had completely stunned expressions on their faces.

“The hell? What was that?!”

“The hell? A human cannonball?”

“It’s Titan High… This… So they can fly that far?”

“It was definitely Zhu Hanyun who did it… He’s the only Titan High Senior One student in this competition who’s a warship!”

Many suddenly realized that they had underestimated the strength of Titan High’s warship students. Zhu Hanyun was the only warship student in his team, and had sufficiently shocked everyone here. This was still only the strength of a warship student. If there were students participating in this battle who cultivated the Titan Art and had reached the aircraft carrier level, did everyone else still even stand a chance?

While everyone was still feeling amazed, Zhu Hanyun, who had turned himself into a barbette, had already launched a second person, his junior brother.

Like the junior sister earlier, the junior brother had the momentum of a fiery meteor crossing mountains, oceans and vast multitudes, as he directly leapt over the entire 700,000 steps to accurately land at the very top of the pagoda.

The students who were still climbing the stairs were petrified. Even the teachers in charge of maintaining order as well as the dispatched resident special forces marveled.

Not only did Zhu Hanyun have explosive power, he also had pinpoint accuracy: the junior brother who had been fired out went right through the hole created by the junior sister’s collision.

His explosive power, shooting angle and accuracy were all flawless.

As one of the hottest contenders for the championship, Titan High revealed its astonishing strength in the first round.

“This is a little over the top…” Super Chen and Hero Guo shivered as they stared at the Titan High students as if they were monsters.

For a moment, both of them were a little disheartened. Zhu Hanyun’s refined skills here were in fact an act of psychological warfare. Titan High had a very distinctive character, and so did Devil-Subduing High and Balance Flame Middle School. In contrast, Super Chen and Hero Guo felt that their No. 60 High didn’t seem that great.

The “study of spirit swords” was initially one of No. 60 High’s defining characteristics, but it still remained to be seen if they could use spirit swords in this body technique competition. The support spells from Headmaster Chen also paled in comparison.

At that moment, Hero Guo even wondered if No. 60 High would be able to survive the first round.

After Zhu Hanyun sent his junior brothers and sisters to the top one after another, everyone saw his legs start to contract like springs, and with a resounding explosion, he also sent himself to the top.

This was an unexpected situation. No one had thought that Titan High’s hulking students would conversely be the first team to qualify, with all their members surviving the first round.

“It’s our turn.”

At that moment, the students of Devil-Subduing High suddenly stepped forward.

Their black school uniforms were especially eye-catching and instinctively deterred people from approaching them.

“The person leading them is Gao Tianming; he’s Devil-Subduing High’s captain this time,” Hero Guo said as he gazed at the tall, thin boy standing at the very front of the Devil-Subduing High group.

As his full name suggested, Gao Tianming was very tall1. He was nearly three meters tall, and was like a walking giant in the crowd.

“Why is he so tall?” Super Chen was a little astonished. Height was largely determined by genetics. Super Chen was only about 1.75 meters tall now, but boys could still grow a little more at this stage. Maybe by the time he was in Senior Three, he would be able to join the 180-meter club?

Although he expected to grow taller himself, Super Chen thought that Gao Tianming’s height was a bit too much. When this guy looked for a girlfriend, how tall would she have to be? Otherwise, he would have to squat down to kiss her. How tiring that would be!

Not only would it be tiring, he would look very funny.

At that moment, Gao Tianming was at the very front. After the Devil-Subduing High students waited for a moment, spirit power abruptly burst out at the top of the pagoda, like ripples from a stone thrown into a lake.

What happened?

The students who were climbing the stairs were surprised as they felt the pressure from the spirit power above them.

“It’s an array.” At that moment, Lotus Sun had seen something. “And it’s probably a teleportation array…”

She squinted, but couldn’t see very clearly. Nevertheless, she was able to make a guess based on just the runes along the edge of the array as well as her own experience and intuition.

Standing at the front of the Devil-Subduing High team, Gao Tianming was clearly a little stunned when he heard this, and he sized up Lotus Sun out of the corner of his eye, before stepping forward with the group of junior brothers and sisters behind him.

A teleportation array had also been set up in front of the group at some point, which was connected to the array at the top of the pagoda.

Devil-Subduing High School became the second team to qualify by directly using a teleportation array.

“???” For one moment, the surrounding students were dumbfounded.

A lot of them didn’t understand. “How did Devil-Subduing High manage to set up a teleportation array at the top?”

Someone speculated, “They must have used the puppet technique. At least one person in Titan High has come under their control. After Titan High went up, they set the stage for Devil-Subduing High, which took advantage of it to reach the top.”

For a moment, there was a hubbub of discussion, and some of the students who were still climbing the stairs felt the pressure.

They hadn’t even climbed 50,000 steps, and two high schools had already qualified for the second round ahead of everyone else.

“They’re too strong… How can we keep up?”

“Don’t give up. It’s only the first round. When it comes to the real battle for survival, there will be all sorts of restrictions. Also, I think we should hurry up and talk to everyone about forming an alliance to cripple these strong schools as much as possible, or we won’t stand a chance.”

Plenty of the students on the pagoda stairs were feeling extremely apprehensive after seeing how powerful Titan High and Devil-Subduing High were.

A lot of them didn’t forget to look for allies as they climbed the steps, and discussed joining forces.

“It’s our turn now,” Lotus Sun took a deep breath and said.

“What’s the plan?” Super Chen asked.

“I’ve thought up a way that’ll save us effort.” Lotus Sun said, “I can send us up with Mysterious Sea’s water column, but the distance is a little far, and my spiritual energy alone might not be enough, so we’ll need to work together… But this is the first time I’m trying this. If the ten of us together don’t have enough spiritual energy, there’s a chance we might fail and fall midway.”

“Is it that bad…”

“It’s fine, just listen to the class monitor.” Gu Shunzhi smiled at that moment.

Lotus Sun clearly didn’t realize that Wang Zhen, Liu Qingyi, Gu Shunzhi, Zhenyuan… were like universal-grade nuclear-powered motors…

Sending everyone to Mars wouldn’t be a problem, let alone the top of the pagoda!

And besides these people, even less needed to be said about Wang Ling…

His spirit power reserves could send Mysterious Sea’s water column around the universe several times over…

1 His name literally translates to “high dawn.”