Chapter 51: Breaking the Dungeon! Defeating the "Invincible"!

Not only Li Zerui, but all the geniuses in Dongjiang who aimed for the top ten and closely monitored the leaderboard dynamics noticed it as well.

The next moment, after Lin Yi’s damage output reset to zero, his ranking also vanished.

Li Zerui took over Lin Yi’s previous position and leaped to first place!

"What is going on?"

"What is the situation?"

This abnormal phenomenon was immediately detected by everyone in the examination control center.

Lin Yi’s previously far-ahead ranking vanished from the leaderboard in an instant.

The scene that followed left them utterly dumbfounded!

Right in the center of the large screen, within Lin Yi’s exclusive test instance, the massive body of the Goblin Giant slowly collapsed.

"Aargh~ I really~ can't fight anymore~!"

Boom!

The giant’s corpse crashed to the ground, producing a deafening roar!

Lin Yi had actually killed this Goblin Giant!!

"R-Report!!"

"An unprecedented situation has occurred in candidate Lin Yi’s instance!"

"The monster, which should have had infinite health, was killed by him!"

Li Yuanjing frowned. "What on earth is going on? Is there a bug in some mechanism?"

"We are checking it right now!"

"Find out the result immediately!"

"Yes!"

For a moment, all the staff members in the examination control center responsible for maintaining the instances broke out in cold sweat.

They all realized that if this matter wasn't handled properly, it could turn into a major incident.

The fact that Lin Yi’s score directly vanished from the leaderboard also shocked all the candidates currently taking the exam.

"What is going on? How did that Lin Yi disappear?"

"Didn't he just have a terrifying damage output of over a million?"

"Could he... could he be cheating?"

Such speculations arose in everyone's minds.

After all, unless an accident had occurred, how could the undisputed number one suddenly vanish out of nowhere?

Moreover, the exaggerated damage output from earlier was still stinging everyone's nerves.

The number one spot had already surpassed a million in damage.

Yet the number two spot had only just started approaching one hundred thousand.

Was this reasonable?

Was this scientific?

If he wasn't hacking or cheating, how else could it be explained?

For a moment, many candidates whose blood pressure had skyrocketed due to Lin Yi's dazzling scores, pushing their mentality to the verge of shattering, suddenly felt a wave of absolute clarity.

Human nature is such that when faced with situations they cannot understand, they subconsciously resort to denial.

Furthermore, they simply cannot bear to see others do better than them!

"Hahahaha! Serves him right!!"

"I knew that kid must be shady! He definitely cheated, he definitely cheated!"

When Zhao Kai saw Lin Yi plummet from the top spot and vanish from the leaderboard entirely, he was overjoyed.

He had been repeatedly slapped in the face by Lin Yi earlier, and his face was practically swollen like a pig's head.

To say he held no resentment toward Lin Yi would be a lie.

Now that Lin Yi was being punished for cheating, he was practically ready to pop champagne!

And most importantly—

Although he hadn't made it into the top ten either, Zhao Kai estimated that his own ranking should be around the top fifty in the entire province.

Now that Lin Yi was out of the picture, his ranking could climb even higher.

As for the true top contenders on the leaderboard, Li Zerui and Qi Xiaying, they didn't harbor the same malicious speculation about Lin Yi as Zhao Kai did.

They didn't know whether he had cheated or not.

They only knew that the dark cloud previously looming over their heads had temporarily dissipated!

Without the oppressive feeling of that million-level damage hanging over them, they all felt as though they had finally parted the clouds to see the light.

"Hoo..."

After letting out a long breath, their focus returned entirely.

There were still ten minutes left until the end of this round of the exam.

Twenty minutes of high-intensity output and attacks was actually quite exhausting.

If the first two rounds could be compared to a sprint, then this round was a grueling long-distance endurance race.

Examination Control Center.

Even though all the engineers and combat professionals across Dongjiang Province responsible for maintaining the stability of the national college entrance examination instances were working overtime and cooperating to investigate what had gone wrong with Lin Yi’s instance, they came up empty-handed!

From the data fed back by the backend system:

First of all, it could be confirmed that this candidate had not cheated.

All the skills he used originated entirely from himself, with no external assistance.

Moreover, all of his personal statuses and buff effects were under constant surveillance, completely ruling out any possibility of cheating.

Then was there something wrong with the Goblin Giant, which was set to have infinite health?

There was nothing wrong with it either!

Its numerical values and mechanics were all completely normal!

In an instant, everyone was utterly baffled.

The looks they cast toward Lin Yi's screen carried a hint of dread.

How on earth did he pull it off?

Li Yuanjing and Qi Guoguang were also pondering this question.

Soon, however, Li Yuanjing noticed a detail that took him somewhat by surprise.

"This kid doesn't seem surprised by the current situation at all?"

Reminded by this, Qi Guoguang seemed to realize something instantly.

He gasped in astonishment, "Wait a minute, Yuanjing, is the monster you guys created really equipped with infinite health?"

Li Yuanjing shook his head. "Of course it couldn't genuinely have infinite health; wouldn't that make it truly invincible? Even a Abyss Demon God wouldn't possess infinite health!"

"The instance used for the national college entrance examination was extracted from the Abyss plane by our Great Xia grandmaster, Elder Zhou Qianye, using spiritual crystal technology."

"After extracting it, he made sweeping modifications to the instance. Because it is no longer governed by the Blue Star Heavenly Dao or the Abyss Will, all numerical values within this instance can be altered at will."

"However, true, absolute invincibility is impossible to achieve."

"All the monsters and bosses we've encountered so far that possess an 'invincible' state are actually only 'conditionally invincible'!"

"They only possess certain damage-immunity and不死 (undying) mechanisms under a multitude of restrictive conditions and specific scenarios."

"This Goblin Giant is no different. Although its health is set to infinity, it must have a condition for its destruction. As for what that condition is, even I'm not entirely sure!"

Hearing this, Qi Guoguang fell back into deep thought.

Not long after, his eyes lit up, and he took a sharp intake of breath.

Then he said, "I think... I understand!"

"Tell the technical department to check the number of times that Goblin Giant was hit."

"If my guess is correct, although this monster's health is set to infinity, once the number of hits it takes exceeds a certain threshold, it will trigger an instant-kill mechanism!"

Hearing this, Li Yuanjing was also startled.

Then, he nodded in realization!

He remembered now.

In Abyss instances, some Boss invincibility mechanisms operated precisely like this.

As long as they didn't take a certain number of attacks, they would absolutely not die, and might not even lose any health.

Once the hit count was met, they would enter a defense-broken / vulnerable state.

That was the optimal window for damage output!

When dealing with such Bosses, most teams would bring along output classes with high attack frequencies to clear the threshold, while saving their burst skills.

Once the Boss's defense was broken, they would unleash their burst damage and take it down in one go!

Li Yuanjing took a deep breath.

He looked at Lin Yi on the screen.

If everything turned out as he and Qi Guoguang had deduced, this kid would once again create a record that no one had ever broken since the establishment of the Great Xia college entrance examination system:

He was the first person ever to conquer "Invincibility"!