Chapter 610: Meeting Expectations
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Zhen Liu kept his back straight and his eyes forward as he walked into the lounge area, doing his best to ignore the heated stares pointed in his direction.
Granted, it probably didn’t help that he was also walking with one of his hands tucked away like he was one of those old experts who took nothing in life with any form of seriousness anymore and just needed a finger flick to deal with their enemies.
He did have a good reason for it though.
<=Multiple strong desires detected. Beginning core condensation.=>
While a part of Zhen Liu thought at this point he might’ve collected too many [cores] and not enough materials, another part of him didn’t want to end up in situation where the opposite was the case.
Money could be earned, treasures stolen, materials unearth but the motivation and desired needed to empower such items could be…tricky to come by.
Either way, Zhen Liu took all of these gazes in stride as he walked over to where his cousins and sat with them…granted, they also gave him a weird look as he did.
“Hey, I’m back.”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…is something the matter?”
Silence hung in the air as Zhen Liu’s cousins stared at him with a strange expression, as they tried to figure out the best way to phrase their question without resorting to simply, “what the fuck were you doing out there?”.
Thankfully, Zhen Liu recognized this turning of thoughts and he had a good justification ready to go.
Of course, just because he thought it was good thought, didn’t mean his cousins would immediately buy it.
But hey, it was better than nothing.
“Okay, if you’re wondering why I decided to antagonize basically everyone out there, it’s because-”
“You wanted to make yourself the obvious bad guy because you wanted to make sure any attempts at sabotage and/or cheating was directed at you instead of us?,” Zhen Yue interjected, causing Zhen Liu to become flabbergasted.
“How the hell did you-”
“Jin Fang told us,” Zhen Hai answered, “she knows you too well.”
“That’s…fair.”
“She also mentioned how you did that because you wanted to see if you could intimidate your next few opponents into surrending as opposed to, as she said, getting their shit rocked.”
“Did it…”
“Partially,” Zhen Feng confirmed, “some of them look nervous while the rest seem very open to the idea of facing you in the arena.”
“Tsk! Damn.”
A part of Zhen Liu felt a touch deflated, since he wanted to be the one to give this answer to them, but the fact that his girlfriend did it for him also worked out in his favor.
However, there was still one more question Zhen Liu’s cousins had for him.
“Is…Is there any particular reason as to why you chose to slap the man silly as opposed to just…letting your puppets do the work?,” Zhen Guo asked.
“Or you know,” Zhen Tai followed up, “at least give him the dignity of punching him in the face to defeat him? Face slapping is one thing, literally doing it is a whole other thing.”
“Ah, that…well…remember how yesterday and the day before, people here have been calling me what I can only assume is an insulting slur and y’all told them off before I could do anything?”
“Yeah…,” Zhen Hai agreed.
“Well…that dude called me a slur, and then try to double down on it…and none of y’all were here to stop me from doing that.”
“The…the implication of your statement is that if Zhen Hai or myself haven’t been there to stop you, you would’ve -”
“Slapped the absolute shit out of those people, Zhen Yue? Yes, yes I would’ve,” Zhen Liu answered in a completely serious tone.
The branch scions were absolutely stunned silent at Zhen Liu’s statement, now realizing just how much anger and violence he was holding back on the regular, but that silence was quickly filled with activity as they heard a bit of good news being announced from the fighting stage.
[Zhen Xing vs Lin Jing, concluded! The winner is Zhen Xing!]
<{"What an upset! Despite having been initially on receiving end of a brutal barrage of attacks, Zhen Xing managed to turn it around all while dancing! Talk about showmanship!"}>
As soon as they heard the news, the branch clan scions had a small celebration.
“Fuck yeah! Two for two!,” Zhen Guo exclaimed with a fist pump.
“Haha! And here I thought that Zhen Xing would’ve choked on it the main stage. I mean, I would’ve,” Zhen Feng admitted.
“Well then that locks it,” Zhen Yue nodded.
“Huh? Locks what?,” Zhen Liu asked in a confused tone.
“We are now honor bound to win our matches and in an equally showy manner,” Zhen Hai elaborated.
“And it looks like our chances are coming up sooner than I thought.”
Right after Zhen Hai made that claim, several orbs of light came floating in to teleport the next batch of fighters to their respective arenas.
Proving Zhen Hai’s statement, five of those balls of light went directly to him, Zhen Yue, Zhen Feng, Zhen Guo and Zhen Tai.
A part of Zhen Liu thought it was weird that five of his cousins all had matches at the same time again, but that was probably just his paranoia talking.
Hopefully.
“Well then…I wish you guys luck.”
“I think we’re pass the luck portion at this point. All we need now is skill. Pure and simple.”
“Right.”
And with that short exchange of words, the rest of the branch clan scions touched their respective orbs and teleported away.
Once they were gone, Zhen Liu couldn’t help but let a worried expression form on his face.
After all, he couldn’t have been the only person here, fighting while hiding their true capabilities…right?
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‘You guys think they’ll be okay?’
[Yup…]
[Definitely more than okay, milord.]
[We’ve been inside their heads, maestro, they more than got this as is.]
[If they don’t win this shit, I will be thoroughly disappointed that they dared to choke on a stage this small.]
[Wait, isn’t this just the first round of a round robin thing? Doesn’t that mean it’s fine if they lose like…one round?]
‘See, you’d think that, but in this kind of contest, it’s usually better to get an unbroken win streak than a majority win. Especially if you end up tying with someone…’
[To be fair, director, that’s when it gets the most interesting.]
‘Maybe to watch, but not to participate in. Especially when we got something else looming over our heads…’
[I mean…fair enough.]
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As Zhen Liu sat there, flip flopping between thinking about the best and worst case scenarios, his cousin Zhen Xing came back from the arena looking awfully pleased with himself.
Granted, his expression did deflate a little bit when he saw that only Zhen Liu was sitting in the part of the lounge area where his cousins were sitting earlier.
“Did the rest get called up for their matches too?”
“Yup. All five at the same time.”
“Huh…weird.”
“Probably just a coincidence.”
Zhen Xing sat himself down, across the way from Zhen Liu, and did his best to relax after his first battle for round robin.
Just because there were three more to go, didn’t mean they couldn’t relax just a little bit.
Zhen Liu and Zhen Xing sat there, silent for a spell until the latter decided to thank it in a way that surprised the former.
“Zhen Liu.”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
“Huh? What for?”
“Well…for helping me get to the level to fight on this kind of stage…but for also forgiving me for…well…”
“Ah…don’t worry about it,” Zhen Liu said with a wave of his hand.
“Different time, different place.”
‘Different me.’
“Besides, we should be rooting for our family right now, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
With these words exchanged, the two cousins went back to watching their cousins fight.
So far…it was going good.
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The elders of the branch clan had strange looks on their faces as they didn’t know whether to perceive the main clan’s matriarch words as either being an insult or a compliment.
Regardless, they were still proud that their kids weren’t eating concrete after their performance in the lottery round.
“You guys think that our kids will make it to the final eight?”
“Weird as it sounds, I hope only one to two of them do.”
“Really? Why?”
“I don’t want them being in a situation where they’ll get pitted against each other for politics…well…someone else’s at least.”
“Ah…”
