"Roar!!!"

Accompanied by soul-stirring waves of sound. Among the scattered fragments of the iron box, a ferocious-looking giant beast stomped the ground, swelling at an astonishing speed.

The iron box falling from the sky measured about three meters in length, width, and height, large yet within the realm of reason. However, the beast inside swelled in an instant to ten meters tall and eight meters wide, resembling a towering small mountain, casting a dark shadow and an endless sense of intimidation.

"So painful!"

In an instant, several young cultivators outside the field couldn’t bear the pressure, covering their heads and eyes, squatting down, unable to look towards the field anymore. A few older cultivators furrowed their brows and silently circulated their True Essence throughout their bodies.

This giant beast, even merely looking at it, can directly cause harm! Like a strong light, its appearance can directly scorch a person’s eyeballs.

Yet the harm to the eyes is just the tip of the iceberg. The beast’s appearance contains a demonic nature. When humans capture its appearance with their eyes and send the information to the brain for parsing, the brain suffers severe backlash due to its inability to parse the demonic nature. Simply put, this is a poison transmitted along the line of sight.

With such destructive power in its appearance alone, one can imagine the sharpness of its core. The five Mad Sword Cultivators, in the forefront, still displayed identical indifference on their similar faces, but the trembling of their legs clearly revealed an instinctive fear.

These Mad Sword Cultivators, meticulously forged by Wuxiang Sword Academy, were veterans who had experienced life-and-death battles. The five sent into the field today were elites who had established meritorious service with Shen City soldiers on the Chaos Battlefield, having long since looked past life and death.

But viewing life and death lightly is merely a rational act, being human does not obliterate instincts. Faced with such an unimaginable gigantic beast, the survival instinct immediately issued a mountainous warning.

This is something that cannot be fought or approached, not even looked at directly. Its very existence signifies a distortion of civilization. Within its massive outline lies an unspeakable ferocity.

At this moment, the five Mad Sword Cultivators, let alone summoning battle intent, even their basic thinking or instinctive reactions were shocked into oblivion, reduced to numb puppets.

Next, the giant beast, still expanding, could effortlessly bring calamity, turning the five into dust.

"So, can we start the battle now?"

Outside the field, Wang Jiu’s voice rang out faintly.

People awoke from their stupor, realizing that this giant beast wasn’t a Chaos Beast suddenly emerging from a temporal gap but was personally brought by the dean of Cyan Lotus Academy!

"What battle?! Are you insane?!" Wang Xiao stared incredulously at Wang Jiu, "What the hell is this thing?!"

Wang Jiu replied, "Didn’t you already guess? This is our contestant Zhang Lan."

"Do you take me for a blind man!? How does this thing remotely resemble Zhang Lan!? You still have his portrait on your roster, go ahead and compare it yourself!"

Wang Jiu said, "The portrait was drawn based on his appearance when alive; naturally, it’s vastly different from his current form. But the difference in appearance doesn’t affect one’s identity. He may look very changed, but indeed he is our academy’s excellent Sword Cultivator, Zhang Lan."

"...I’m genuinely curious how an excellent Sword Cultivator turns into this from a dead man!"

Wang Jiu became interested: "You’re curious? Let me briefly introduce. The modification of Zhang Lan’s body into his current form was done by the seventh experimental group of the All Things Group led by me at Cyan Lotus Academy. We used cutting-edge biotechnology to fuse the characteristics of 3,978 species onto Zhang Lan’s remaining body, ultimately turning it into a form with combat capabilities. The detailed technical specification manual is still being written, estimated to be completed in about ten working days, at which time we will send a brief to one sect, three academies, and seven families. Interested organizations can contact me, and I will offer a preferential price..."

"Wait!" Wang Xiao interrupted Wang Jiu’s marketing actions without hesitation, furrowing his brows and questioning, "You modified Zhang Lan’s corpse into a monster!?"

Wang Jiu thought for a moment: "Although your summary is basically accurate, I believe the words and tone you used imply a clear misunderstanding. So I need to inform you of the following in advance: First, Zhang Lan left a will before his death, expressing his wish to donate his body to the Academy for various research purposes. He believed that his deviation during seclusion was related to the insufficient refinement of his physical body, hoping the Academy could use his remains to develop better Body Forging Techniques to avoid future practitioners repeating his mistakes. Although the Academy did analyze his body and conducted related research, it didn’t yield any reliable results. Based on his last wishes, I modified his remains into a powerful Combat Body that absolutely won’t go astray, thereby fulfilling his wish to the greatest extent."

Wang Xiao was speechless, staring at the slow-expanding, over-fifteen-meter-tall grotesque exotic beast in the arena, struggling to convince himself to accept Wang Jiu’s words. Who in their right mind would hope to be transformed into something like this after death?!

"So cool..." Just as he was thinking this, he heard Wang Zhao not far beside him muttering, with eyes glowing intensely.

Senior Brother, are you out of your mind!? What’s cool about this? No wonder Junior Sister says our aesthetics have become a disaster!

But that was not the main issue. Wang Xiao suppressed his inner roar, ready to open his mouth and inquire about the real core issue.

Whatever the Cyan Lotus Academy wants to do with their people’s remains is their own business, but bringing out this terrifying monster to compete is just too much; how does this even meet the requirements for the mixed group!?

And before Wang Xiao could speak, Wang Jiu preempted him with an answer.

"Second, the modified Zhang Lan meets all the competition requirements of the Sword Fighting Tournament. Firstly, he has practiced at the Wuxiang Sword Academy for 15 years, and 10 years within his family before that, totaling 25 years, which is within the mixed group regulations. Secondly, he possesses the core techniques of the Cyan Lotus Academy..."

Before he finished speaking, Wang Xiao interrupted: "What core legacy does this freak have? Can Zhang Lan’s Flying Dragon Waterfall be used by that thing?!"

Wang Jiu said: "Indeed, it can." He then snapped his fingers, and the fifteen-meter-tall giant beast immediately rolled its body, releasing a massive dose of toxic visual information, causing more people to cover their eyes and squat down holding their heads.

Yet, those with profound cultivation could clearly see that the indescribably shaped exotic beast, with an incredibly graceful pose, unleashed an overwhelming corrosive Sword Qi resembling a waterfall, indeed the once-shocking Flying Dragon Waterfall of the Two Academies...

However, the Flying Dragon Waterfall, known for its elegance and swift, majestic momentum, used by a beast over fifteen meters tall and ten meters wide and thick, was awkward to the utmost degree.

"Actually, the Flying Dragon Waterfall is no longer Zhang Lan’s ultimate move. By utilizing the core technologies of the Cyan Lotus Academy’s All Things Group, we developed more core killing moves for him. For instance, the most powerful Self-immolating Explosion can release power comparable to a full-fledged strike of a Sea Overturning Realm Cultivator in an instant, and this self-detonation doesn’t completely destroy the main body; its core will disassemble into numerous rice-grain-sized flesh buds and escape hundreds of miles riding the shock wave, re-rooting and growing outside the safe battlefield, regaining over 50% combat power within a month..."

"Wait, is this still considered human!?" Wang Xiao said, "The Academy’s biotechnology is indeed admirable, but what you’ve created now is essentially a monster! Not a human participant in the Sword Fighting Tournament!"

Wang Jiu said: "I understand that the basic rules of the Sword Fighting Tournament require participants to be human. However, although the appearance is a bit special, Zhang Lan’s identity is undoubtedly human."

"...Isn’t your definition of human a bit too broad? If such a creature is considered human, then the Sea of Chaos is a human kingdom!"

Wang Jiu said: "Throughout history, there are countless humans in civilization who have been labeled as monsters: those who first comprehended Heaven and Earth Divine Techniques, those who first successfully wielded Heaven and Earth Spirit Wind, people with overly strange appearances, people with distinctly different personalities... All have been called monsters. Including us cultivators, in the eyes of mortals, we are all nothing short of monsters. So, what exactly is a monster, what is a human, and where is the boundary between the two? If it’s about stature or appearance, the changes of cultivators’ transformation Divine Techniques are numerous; when a cultivator transforms into a larger giant, does that make them non-human? Zhang Lan, although constantly expanding now, can still compress to maintain a height within 2.5 meters, which already falls into the standard category of mortal humans, so why isn’t he human?"

"..." Wang Xiao was dumbfounded, completely at a loss for words.

Wang Jiu continued: "Admittedly, Zhang Lan now possesses many organs and appendages not present in other humans, but cultivators skilled in Physical Divine Techniques generally have unique organ or limb structures, which is not unusual. The crucial point is that each organ and limb here developed by triggering the vitality of the original corpse to spontaneously absorb nutrients and evolve, not directly grafted from other creatures, still retaining the authentic Zhang Lan flavor..."

"The damn Zhang Lan flavor!"

"Furthermore, the modified Zhang Lan even retains human reproductive abilities—to enhance adaptability, he can accommodate both male and female, should be called extraordinarily reproductive, a human among humans!"

"A human among ghosts!" Wang Xiao was nearly jumping, feeling as if his intelligence was being blatantly insulted, yet on the other hand, he sadly realized there was no room for counterargument against Wang Jiu’s self-consistent rigorous logic.

Looking at the terrifying giant beast in the arena that finally ceased expanding and reached a height of seventeen meters... Wang Xiao could only lament that in today’s world, being human is really tough.