After the Global Cultivators' Tournament officially began, the little paper servants quietly followed the national teams into the mountain arena.
The rules were simple. Throughout the competition zone, numerous specially crafted point tokens had been hidden. Each team had to eliminate opponents and gather as many of these tokens as possible.
Final scores would be calculated based on the number of surviving team members and the total points collected. The team with the highest score would be declared the winner.
There were no restrictions on how to obtain the point tokens or eliminate competitors. Injuries and deaths were not taken into account.
However, if a contestant chose to surrender, all attacks had to cease immediately to prevent further harm. Surrendering was treated as elimination. The contestant was no longer allowed to interfere with the competition and had to remain in place until staff arrived to escort them out.
To ensure timely monitoring and emergency response, surveillance cameras had been installed throughout the entire arena.
Each contestant also carried a bodycam.
The footage from these cameras was broadcast live across the world.
Yet none of these cameras could match the agility of Song Miaozhu's invisible little paper servants. Wherever she wanted to look, they would go.
It was clear that every contestant had come prepared, each carrying rare and powerful spiritual artifacts.
French's noble competitor had a feathered hat imbued with spatial properties, storing all the tokens they found inside the hat.
The contestants from US carried Easter eggs—some could heal wounds, others exploded on impact.
Japan's Hundred-Demon Parade Box summoned legendary guardian spirits from their folklore.
Egypt wielded scrolls of papyrus that unfolded into defensive barriers.
And Russia's Snow Woman nesting doll created a domain of extreme cold, freezing anyone caught inside.
Had these items appeared in China, they would have been classified as high-grade spiritual artifacts, each with great potential for cultivation.
Even so, when it came to actual refinement, China still stood above the rest.
All of China's contestants were familiar faces: He Zhen, Yin Chunan, Le Pengkun, Zhang Yunxi, and a new elite master who had risen in recent years—Master Bai Songde.
Master Bai specialized in crafting oiled paper umbrellas. His representative artifacts were the Bone-Spike Spirit Umbrella and the Vajra Spirit Umbrella, one offensive and one defensive.
Among the five, Master Bai was the least cultivated, but even he had reached the first stage of the Blue Spirit Realm.
The others were already in the third or fourth stage of Blue Star Realm. Each possessed at least two major spiritual artifacts of their own making.
In contrast, the strongest contestant from any other nation had only reached the ninth stage of the Green Spirit Realm.
By cultivation alone, China's team had a commanding lead.
Higher cultivation meant greater spiritual investment, stronger artifacts, and better endurance when using them. No matter how one looked at it, China had the highest chance of victory.
But no one expected their moral compass to get in the way. From the moment they entered the arena, they had earnestly focused on searching for point tokens.
When they encountered other national teams, if they were not provoked, they would not strike. Their strength made them a threat, and so they became a primary target.
Midway through the tournament, several countries—US, Japan, Korea—formed an alliance and launched a coordinated assault on the China team. Two members were eliminated.
Only Zhang Yunxi and Master Le Pengkun escaped with Master He Zhen, fleeing on a large spirit cat. But they lost most of their hard-earned tokens, and with them, their advantage.
Fortunately, they quickly learned their lesson. While hunting for tokens, they began to engage in "friendly sparring" with weaker opponents, seizing their points in the process.
Later, when the allied countries split up to act independently, China team launched a series of ambushes, taking revenge for their earlier loss and narrowly reclaiming the first-place spot.