Need a solution to handle 100 parallel requests in nginx

Question

I have Nginx (in a 16 core, 64GB RAM, centos 7 box) that has to handle more than 100 parallel requests.

I tried the following:

1. set the ulimit using /etc/systemd/system/nginx.service.d/override.conf ([Service] LimitNOFILE=65536).
2. in the nginx.conf : worker_processes auto; worker_rlimit_nofile 25000; worker_connections 10000;
3. edit /etc/security/limits.d for soft-nofile-10000, hard-nofile-25000

My nginx-status never goes beyond 20 and looks like:

Active connections: 15

server accepts handled requests 322 322 5428

Reading: 0 Writing: 1 Waiting: 13

Am I missing something?

Thanks in advance.