Heartless Phoenix Queen

Speaking of which, the reason why Yun Ji wanted to fight with Tang Ao again was because she wanted to cancel her engagement with him that year and retrieve the Eight Trigrams Mirror. Her parents had already passed away from illness, and she was the only one left in this world. That was why she had fought so hard to become one of Feng Lingxue's twelve beauties when she was selected as her plan.

Except, her innocent body had long since been given to the amorous young duke. He couldn't help but feel a bit regretful whenever he thought of her ridiculous behavior of matching marriage in her youth. After all these years, who knows if this Tang Ao had a change of heart or not. Plus, after she found out that Tang Ao had followed the sinister and cunning Murong Xiu, she was even more worried that the honest Tang Ao from back then had already changed his temperament. She felt that Tang Ao would definitely not accept her. However, her strong self-esteem did not allow Tang Ao to despise her.

When she helped Violet Garden break through the Eight Lightning Formation Tang Ao had set up for the Northern Yue Army, she understood that the technique Tang Ao knew about hadn't improved much. Thus, his heart was moved. The best way to break the engagement from that year was to fight him once more. Thus, when Murong Xiu had borrowed Feng Lingxue, Yunji had immediately volunteered to come to the Western City of Mount Li.

However, when she saw her young brother Tang Ao once again, wearing a half-mask, her heart inexplicably tightened. She didn't know what this feeling was. It was just that his desire to fight Tang Ao once again grew stronger.

Murong Xiu quickly arranged a suitable place for Tang Ao and Yun Ji, as well as a hundred civil and military officials to watch from the side. Originally, some of the antiques felt that this kind of formation array was an unorthodox technique. However, when they heard that Tang Ao was able to trap the Northern Yue army with an "Eight Layered Array", these antiques became a bit interested in the battle between formations.

Therefore, on the day the two of them fought, the surrounding audience stands were completely packed. Some of the people that Murong Xiu invited were afraid that he would come, but most of them were interested in formations. Some people even bought telescopes from the market, although they didn't know that these new telescopes were actually made by the Regent himself. A small fight like this had unexpectedly made Murong Xiu make a lot of extra money. This money quickly continued to be invested in the development and research of military equipment. From this point of view, Murong Xiu was definitely a winner in terms of military equipment.

In order to improve the content of the duels, Murong Xiu also participated in the discussions. He had rejected Yun Ji's request to compete in high-grade formations, but the reason was that the bystanders couldn't understand what was going on. Mu Rong Xiu even wrote a letter to ask Feng Lingxue for her opinion on this matter. In the end, this guy told him to ask Zi Yuan. Murong Xiu was almost angered to death by Feng Lingxue. She was clearly an enemy to Zi Yuan. However, the thick-skinned Mu Rong Xiu still went out to ask Zi Yuan about it.

When Zi Yuan received the letter, he was extremely surprised. When he found out about Yunji and Tang Ao's matter, Helian interjected, "These two must have had an affair."

Zi Yuan felt that his husband was too smart and could already guess the truth. No matter how he thought about it, it wouldn't have much of an impact on the current battle situation. After all, it was a personal battle between Yunji from the East Flatland and Tang Ao from the West Faction. Thus, Zi Yuan still generously replied with a suggestion.

In the end, when this suggestion reached Murong Xiu, he immediately agreed and requested Yun Ji and Tang Ao to follow this procedure. Although Yun Ji meant something, after Murong Xiu said that it was the Empress's attention, Yun Ji, who still had a lot of admiration for the Empress, stopped protesting.

Thus, the process of the sparring that day was very simple and modern.

The first test was to grab answers from the examinees. Yun Ji and Tang Ao each wrote thirty questions on their respective formations. On the day of the battle, the Supervisor, Murong Xiu, randomly selected twenty questions.

The rule was that after Murong Xiu said the question, the person who rang the gong first answered the question, got the wrong answer, and got another person to answer. If the other person answered correctly, the other person would get a point.

The second test was a must-answer test. On the day of the magic battle, the Supervisor, Murong Xiu, drew out the questions twice. Every time there were twenty questions, everyone would answer them. The time limit was one drop of time, and the time limit was approximately three minutes from the time Zi Yuan was born. The answers to the right questions accumulated points.

The third and final trial was where everyone would have an incense stick of time to go to the two identical rooms. They would use the exact same items that Murong Xiu had given them to set up a formation.

In the end, the final score would be the highest score while the others would be the last one.

When the competition officially started, Yun Ji was a little nervous. She was a little worried that Murong Xiu would use tricks to choose the topic, so she deliberately chose Tang Ao's topic. She discovered that she was actually worried that she wouldn't be able to answer Tang Ao's question, and couldn't help but laugh at herself.

The audience below the stage had originally seen a cold woman standing there with a straight face. Although she was very beautiful, because of the lack of temperature, she appeared to be out of reach, causing them to somewhat distance themselves from this woman. But when the woman revealed a smile, the audience felt that the woman's beauty made her seem like a fairy that had descended from the heavens.

As soon as Tang Ao entered the arena, the ladies of the capital began to cheer for him. Although half of his face was wearing a mask, his unmasked face was very angular and handsome. Not only did the mask not give him any points, it instead added a mysterious tint to his appearance, making him look even more dashing.

Mu Rong Xiu also stood on the stage and pressed down with his hands, signaling for the audience to quiet down. Then, with a loud and clear voice, he said with his inner strength, "The match between Yun Ji and Tang Ao will now officially begin. First, we'll fight over the answers."

Murong Xiu explained the rules of the competition to the audience in simple words. When the audience heard this, they all felt that it was quite strange. Thus, their interest in watching this match intensified.

In order to comfort Yun Ji, Murong Xiu took out a large box from behind him and said, "Miss Yun Ji, the two of you will be fighting over the answers here. Little Wang will shake it for a moment, mix it up, and then randomly pick the answers."

Yun Ji nodded her head, feeling that this question was still as fair as ever. Even if the questions she had chosen were Tang Ao's own, she would recognize them as well. She felt that she wouldn't be able to answer this fellow's question.

Picking out the first question was indeed Tang Ao's question. However, when Yunji saw the answer, she quickly knocked the gong.

"Miss Yunji, Little Wang hasn't started, so that doesn't count. This question should be answered by Tang Ao instead." Mu Rong Xiu said with a smile.

Yun Ji could do nothing about it, this was indeed what she was worried about.

Tang Ao gave the correct answer and accumulated some points.

The second question was posed by Yun Ji. While Tang Ao was still deep in thought, Yun Ji had already rung the gong after Murong Xiu told him the start. Thus, she also got a point.

The two of them almost alternated their points. Tang Ao's chance of getting a question was not very high, and there were even some questions that were quite difficult for Yun Ji to answer, but Tang Ao was actually able to answer them correctly. And there was one very simple question, although Yun Ji got it, but she answered it wrongly, so she gave the chance to Tang Ao instead.

In this way, when the first round of the competition ended, Tang Ao won 11 points, while Yun Ji won 9. The gap between them wasn't that wide.

Murong Xiu told the two of them to rest for a bit before starting the second test. Since it was a question that had to be answered, he asked them to scissor. The losers would have to answer the questions first. He also taught the audience the rules of the stone scissor cloth. After that, the traditional guessing boxing style in Xili's capital was gradually replaced by the stone scissor cloth, and that was the end of the story.

Yun Ji had lost her guess punch, so she would definitely answer the first question. Yun Ji had taken up most of the topics that Murong Xiu had randomly chosen, which was why Yun Ji had gotten a perfect score on them.

The audience immediately burst into applause. Everyone was very excited. This beautiful girl was also very intelligent. Only beauties and talented girls would attract more attention.

When it was Tang Ao's turn, the group of West Li Capital's noblewomen once again broke out into enthusiastic applause.

Tang Ao also came up with his own question for the majority of the questions. However, he didn't answer two of Yunji's questions, so in the end he only got 18 points.

At this point, both of them had a score of 29 points, a draw.

With an excited tone, Murong Xiu told the audience, "Seems like the real victor is the final test. If you win, you win. If you lose, you lose." Murong Xiu patiently explained the rules of the competition to the audience. Afterwards, he brought Yun Ji and Tang Ao to a room directly opposite the stage.

"The rooms on the left and right are exactly the same. Your props are also exactly the same, just these things in front of you." Then he said to the audience, "If you're all interested in these two rooms, you can have four people take a look at these props and these two rooms for a notary."

Immediately, two women came out of the group of noblewomen, and two officials came out of the group of officials. The four of them looked at the two rooms and the tools, and the four of them confirmed that what the Prince had said was exactly the same.

The incense began to burn. The first thing the two of them did was finish setting up the formation in the room before the incense was finished. There was no point in this process, but the time limit needed to be deducted, so the two of them were quite nervous.

When Murong Xiu noticed that Yun Ji didn't use as many items as Tang Ao did, he couldn't help but be a bit worried about Tang Ao's formation. Although Murong Xiu hadn't studied formations systematically, ever since he had mastered the Book of Heaven's Path, he no longer felt that these formations lost their mysteriousness. He could even set up small formations of his own. He had yet to completely master a formation that was too large, but he still had some understanding of its mechanism. He also knew that if he wanted to set up a formation in a secret room, the items he needed wouldn't be as many as possible. The more flaws a cultivator had, the more likely he would be able to break through the formation.

Yun Ji was the first to exit from the room as she finished setting up her own array formation. Only when the incense stick had almost burnt down did Tang Ao slowly walk out. Soon after, a new incense stick lit up. Tang Ao entered the room first in order to gain more time.

Everyone stretched their necks and anxiously looked at the doors of the A and B. Seeing that the incense was about to burn out, the door of room B opened first. All of a sudden, all of the male members of the audience cheered while the ladies booed. Some of them even started to pinch their husbands' ears.

Thus, it was very clear that Yun Ji had won this match. After the incense stick had burnt to the ground, Tang Ao finally walked out of the 'A' gate. Moreover, his entire body was in a sorry state. It seemed that the formation set up by Yunji had put him through quite a bit of trouble.