Chapter 564: Underground Ring (Second)

“Bang! Bang! Bang!!”
The sounds of fist hitting flesh could be heard on top of a twenty-meter squared stone platform as two bare chested men fought it out against each other on it.
One of the males was in his twenties while the other in his thirties. Both of their muscles were exceedingly pronounced and far larger than the average size. Each punch or kick was made with formidable strength, and their battle against one another was exhilaratingly fierce.
Soulforce blazed from each person intermittently—both of these fighters were Soul Warriors!
A ring of seats surrounded the platform, with people to be seen cheering loudly on them. Like the combatants, the audience were also soul cultivators, some of them weak, some of them strong, but power aside, they were all yelling out at the fighters in the middle.
This was an underground fighting ring!! One where soul cultivators fought!
……
On the right side of the ring where the most people could be seen, Bai Yunfei stared incredulously at Zheng Kai, “Is this the ‘interesting’ place you were talking about?”
Smiling as he watched the two Soul Warriors duke it out, Zheng Kai smiled, “Hehe, yep, how about it? This is the only ring where soul cultivators can fight in the Capital. You can watch great battles here, and all sorts of battles can be seen. Even Soul Exalts fight here….feeling excited yet?”
Bai Yunfei did not. He eyed the audience around the place and then the two people in the middle with furrowed eyebrows, “I don’t quite like places like this….”
Just the sight of this place brought back unhappy memories.
Zheng Kai blinked once, realizing just how he came to met Bai Yunfei in the first place. Rushing to fix his faux pas, he said, “Ah, please don’t misunderstand, Yunfei. This isn’t what you’re thinking. It’s completely different to the ‘Coliseum’ back in Talus City. Only people who are willing can fight in this arena, and the battles aren’t to the death. It’s merely a place where you can share pointers with one another, and the winner receives a considerable amount of primal stones as a reward. One can fight another soul cultivator on even grounds so plenty of soul cultivators like to come here and fight. The audience are all regular soul cultivators that either like betting or just like the thrill of watching a fight, that’s all.”
He tried his best to explain the place as best as he could so that Bai Yunfei wouldn’t think this was some sort of dark and unlawful place.
“I see….” The expression on Bai Yunfei’s relaxed a bit. Then again, how could a place like the one back in Talus City exist right underneath the foot of the city where the Royal Family lived?
In other words, this was merely a fair wrestling ring. It wasn’t like the Coliseum where commoners are brought to fight to the death. Only soul cultivators could fight here.
There was plenty of similarities between soul cultivators and commoners, as one could see from Casino Jin and now this wrestling ring.
According to what Zheng Kai said, this was a place where everything was on the surface and lawful to operate. Furthermore, it seemed like it was rather popular in the Capital. Any soul cultivator or noble could come here and either take part or watch the festivities. One could learn from here, spar with another equally matched opponent, and win prizes necessary to train for. What could possibly be bad about this place?
With those previous concerns of his now alleviated, Bai Yunfei decided to forget about those bad memories and follow Zheng Kai into the place.
There wasn’t just one arena to fight on. This specific location was pretty big and had at least ten rings to fight from. From a simple glance, the avenue looked like it could support over ten thousand people, meaning the owner was most likely a powerful person, or at least someone with considerable influence. Bai Yunfei could tell that most of the workers here were Soul Sprites at the very least, and some of the ones in charge of holding the peace were Soul Exalts.
Those who were fighting in the rings were averaging to be Soul Warriors, though there were a few Soul Exalts fighting. Bai Yunfei could also see two Soul Ancestors fighting each other on a ring several hundred meters wide. The two of them were leaping here and there as they fought. They intentionally kept their strengths to a controllable amount so that it wouldn’t hurt the audience, but the few bursts of elemental that would’ve flown were stopped by the barrier, preventing it from harming the audience.
Watching the people fight intensely and listening to the excited roars of the audience had started to make Bai Yunfei’s own blood start to boil. With so many people watching each of the battles with relish, Bai Yunfei started to think that such a thing wasn’t all too bad….
Zheng Kai noticed the change on Bai Yunfei’s face with a smile. “So? Yunfei, you starting to see the appeal of this place yet? We used to come here often, and brother Huang loved fighting here. He said plenty of strong people gathered here, though it was mainly our third brother that fought the most. He’s considered the ‘champion’ here, since he always won against his opponents.”
That surprised Bai Yunfei. Chen Qiantan was? He remembered hearing that the house of Chen trained in the near-extinct art of the ‘Drunken Fist’, and that it was supposedly unbeatable in close combat. He saw a tidbit of it outside the Capital, but it hadn’t been very interesting to him at that point, so Bai Yunfei never really thought about the technique as a whole.
Zheng Kai laughed, “So how about it, Yunfei? Want to give it a try? You can fight straight away if you want, the master of the place will arrange the opponent for you. You’ll get a prize if you win, I know you don’t really care for prizes, but sparring isn’t too bad. You can learn something from your spars without fear of injury or death here.”
Bai Yunfei waved his hand, “No need, I just want to watch. I don’t have an interest in fighting.”
……
“Ah!!”
Just as Bai Yunfei turned his head to watch the two mid-stage Soul Ancestors from before fight, a cry from elsewhere caught his attention.
Looking over to the direction of the cry, Bai Yunfei saw in one of the more isolated rings a brawl start to break out among seven or eight people.
Tensions and conflicts would always happen in places where soul cultivators gathered. Bai Yunfei already saw several isolated incidents happen on the way here, but they were always resolved rather fast. The people in this case were only Soul Ancestors, and with so many Soul Exalts here, Bai Yunfei wasn’t too worried about anything bad from happening.
About to turn his head away again, Bai Yunfei’s eye caught onto the figure of one of the people caught in the middle of it all. Doing a double take, Bai Yunfei narrowed his eyes and started to stride over.
“Eh? Yunfei, what’s wrong?”
Noticing Bai Yunfei’s abrupt change in interest, Zheng Kai called out and followed after him in concern.