Little Shrubby's breakthrough was contained within the limits of the courtyard, with no one outside it knowing.
Lin Mu had gone through a roller coaster of emotion and was finally able to calm down.
"You did good Little Shrubby… Though you certainly had me worried." Lin Mu said while approaching the beast.
~pat~
He rubbed the beast's head, feeling the rich vitality that could still be felt within his body. Even now it was surrounding his fur, allowing it to be palpable.
"Of course! There's no way I would fail in this." Little Shrubby replied with a growl.
He then quickly shrank to kitten size and jumped into Lin Mu's embrace.
~Purrs
Lin Mu embraced the beast for a bit before turning around.
"That's one problem over. Now there's just the Tournament left." Lin Mu spoke to the Saintess.
"Go, you should prepare for it too. You might not be able to have a tribulation in this time, but perhaps you can further it." The Saintess suggested.
"Yes, that's what I was thinking too." Lin Mu agreed.
He then looked at Little Shrubby and the twins, who were still with the Saintess.
"I'll enter seclusion till the day of the Tournament. You guys should continue cultivating as normal." Lin Mu stated. "Perhaps you'll be able to take part too." He added.
"Really?!" Little Shrubby asked in an exited tone.
~HISS~
The twins hissed in intrigue as well, wondering if they will get to fight as well.
"Little Shrubby yes, but not you two." Lin Mu clarified making the twins a bit sad. "Its better for you two to not show your powers here. Especially in the close observation of the top experts." He clarified.
But the twins didn't seem to be satisfied. Lin Mu noticed this and couldn't help but smile a bit.
"Come on, you two are too strong for the people here. It's best to not be too showy." Lin Mu tried to placate the twins which worked perfectly.
After being praised, the twins quickly recovered and were happy too. They curled around Lin Mu's neck being playful. Though in reality the amount of force they were using would have killed a normal human already.
The Saintess was also in an agreement with Lin Mu not letting the twins appear in the fight.
Using tamed beasts in the Tournament was allowed and Lin Mu had confirmed this already. After all, he had already seen several beast tamers in the banquet earlier.
There were several beast tamers that specialized in it, thus their power was mostly through the use of their tamed beasts. There were beast tamers that didn't have high cultivation base, but could use tamed beasts that were several stages above them.
One might ask, how the weak cultivators were controlling stronger beasts when they could easily be killed by them. After all, beast taming usually worked by 'suppressing' the beasts and getting them to submit to you.
Many of these cultivators hadn't really 'suppressed' these beasts. Instead they had used other methods to tame them. One could make special pills for the beast, tend to them, or just help them and they might show them a favor.
This could be nurtured further through various means and turned into a budding friendship.
With all these factors in place, it wasn't unusual for beast tamers to have beasts that were stronger than them.
Lin Mu was open to using Little Shrubby, though he didn't know which kind of battle would be suitable for him. After all, he was confident enough to pass through the starting few matches with ease.
The tournament was massive and could take months to be finished.
In the first month, just the qualifying matches along took up the entire time. In that, one would have to win at least five fights, in order to reach the main tournament. And this was just the start and would weed out the weaker cultivators.
Around 90% of the cultivators would be removed during this. After that there would be several matches divided in brackets. It was mostly here that the betting started as well as where one could start to get rewards.
Of course, for winning the starting bracket fights, one didn't get anything more than some immortal stones, it was still quite a good offer for poor experts. Even for normal experts, it was enough to obtain the immortal stones that could replenish their immortal qi that they had spent in the battle.
Though more often than not, they would have more than enough time to rest between the matches so that they could return to their optimum condition. Only if they were unfortunate enough to be in the close fights or if they sustained injuries that didn't allow them to recover fast enough would they need quick replenishing of their qi.
The number of bracket fights were hard to estimate as there could be a lot of people qualifying in some years and fewer in the other years. But once everyone had finished one bracket fight each, the preliminary rankings could be decided.
After these rankings were formed, new matches would be decided randomly, and then the contestants would have to fight whoever they got. This was where luck factored greatly, as one could meet an expert that was several stages stronger than them right away.
If that happened, they could only blame their luck as they lost.
The matches would whittle down the contestants until only sixteen of them were left. These sixteen could then challenge each other to remake the ranking and only the top eight would proceed. Once that happened, the quarter finals would start. The semifinals would only have four contestants and the final would end with the obvious two.
This would keep the rankings ever changing, making it a very lucrative opportunity bet as well as to do business.
Lin Mu had made sure to study as much as he could and had even gone so far as to learn more about his opponents. At least the ones that were in the open and were considered as 'strong'.
As for the rest, he was going to try his luck.
'It's certainly going to be exciting…' Lin Mu thought.
