When they looked back, they saw a yellow-haired boy with a bloody blade in his hand. After they looked more closely, they found out that it was coming from their fallen friend!

"Damn you! What did you do to Theo!?" One of them shouted angrily.

Without wasting time, Xin ran to him and swiped his blade!

Seeing Xin coming toward him very fast with a blade, he was forced to block it with his arms.

"Urgh!" He groaned as he felt immense pain from his hands.

"Noooo, my hands!" He screamed in hysteria as he looked at his now stump hands as blood came out furiously.

"Bastard, you will pay for that!" The last guy shouted as he drew his blade and slashed at Xin's head.

Xin simply ducked his head and stabbed his leg, with one of his legs disabled, his balance was off and he immediately fell down. Xin quickly cut off all his tendons and moved to the rest to make sure that they were out of the game.

"Bastard! Do you think you could dispose of us like this?" The regular with what now, stumped hands, said.

Xin didn't respond as he stopped his bleeding with some bandages. He finished it quickly as he moved to cut off all their tendons and dump them on a dark the corner to make sure their friends would have a much harder time finding them and bringing them to the starting zone. If they cared about them that was.

Liu Guanyi appeared shortly and they continued to search for more scouts. They moved for a bit until they saw many fast-moving silhouettes in the darkness.

"What was that? They are very fast yet they don't seem aggressive." Xin wondered.

He checked the footage in his observer and saw a small fish with brown colored scales in the image.

"It was the stone carp!" Xin exclaimed.

Liu Guanyi nodded and said. "Then, let's follow it!"

With the stone carp's appearance, they decided to follow them. And as long as they followed them, they would be able to meet many of the regulars from group B. This was much better than walking around aimlessly in the darkness with little vision.

However, with its pros, it also had cons.

The movements of the stone carps naturally wouldn't go unnoticed to the scouts from both sides. After the scouts confirmed it, they would inform the main group.

Liu Guanyi would not care about the forces from group A, but he did care about the main force group B.

It was clear… because they had Adori!

Yup, it was true that Liu Guanyi had somewhat befriended the princess, but he knew that their relationship was not so good that she would help them in the test.

So far, he knew that he was only considered as an acquaintance. He wasn't even sure that she would agree to climb the tower together. Fortunately, he already had a plan in mind to anticipate this.

However, Liu Guanyi needed to help Xin first to ensure that he would pass the test. That was why it was troublesome for him to meet the main force of group B in the beginning.

If it was Adori herself and the scouts, he could just bait her somewhere and let Xin deal with the scouts. He knew the boy could do it.

But with Adori, an extremely talented princess of the Zahard's royal family as the leader, he was sure that the regulars from group B would do their roles properly.

Which meant that they have light-bearer controlling lighthouses that would make stealth moot. Spear-bearers that would attack and hinder their movements from distance. And Wave Controllers to attack with their mystical shinsu controls that he wasn't able to comprehend yet, though it was still weak or so he heard.

'Time is the essence. If we could find most of the scouts before they confirmed the location of stone carp school or nests, we could avoid the main force easily.' Liu Guanyi calculated.

"Use one of your observers to scout the area near the stone carps, if you find any scouts, you can just dispatch them quickly. We will split up to cover more ground!" Liu Guanyi ordered as he walked away.

"Wait, you don't have any observers to see in the darkness!" Xin exclaimed as he warned him.

"Don't worry, a true warrior doesn't entirely rely on such devices. We will meet later in the starting zone." Liu Guanyi said with a smile as he continued to walk away uncaringly.

Xin saw his figure moving away quickly, it seemed that he truly didn't need the observers to see in the darkness as he nodded at his words.

'Mr. Liu most likely has already mastered shinsu sensing. He is already very strong but he always trains harder more than anyone!'

'After this, I need to train harder and master it as well! I want to help him as well and not always be helped.' Xin thought as he clenched his hands and reaffirmed his resolve.

He did as he told and spread out one of his observes as he continued tailing the stone carps' movement. Quite a long time passed until suddenly his observer that he sent to tail saw something in a split second and disconnected from him.

'What happened again? Is my observer destroyed? I need to check it.'

He recalled his last observer and quickly moved toward the place which the observer sent the signal for the last time. To catch and find out the cause of its destruction, he decided to run as fast yet also as stealthily as possible.

Something that Xin had been taught as a vital skill for any scouts. Unfortunately however, his skill was still a far cry from what the scout teacher was able to perform.

'I guess it's fine if some scouts heard the noise and spotted me. I need to take care of them anyway.'

When he arrived on the spot, he saw the remnant of his observers. He picked the biggest piece and examined it. And Xin found a distinctive mark on it.

"Is this!?" Xin exclaimed in surprise.