Chapter 3749 — A Contest of Minds

But now that he had seen through Wei Zhao's intentions, none of that existed any longer. The initiative was wholly in his hands, and Wei Zhao was no more than fish on his chopping block, to be put to death at his pleasure.

"Clever enough in your small way, but unlucky enough to run into me—you're not living past today!" Yu Jiang grinned savagely at Wei Zhao's fleeing back, having already calculated the direction of his flight. Sword qi burst from his fingertips with a shriek, and wherever it passed, stone and jade alike split asunder and none could stand against it: the Life-Reaping Chain Sword, Twenty-Third Stance!

BOOM! The earth shook and the mountains swayed. That mighty sword qi swept aside all before it like rotten wood, cleaving the forested hill ahead clean in half, its force towering to the heavens.

Yet at this moment, no trace of satisfaction showed on Yu Jiang's face. Instead it was ashen, and beneath it lurked something very like panic.

For no other reason than this: the strike he had been so certain of had missed.

At the instant of the strike, the distance between him and Wei Zhao had been less than a zhang, and because he had anticipated Wei Zhao's gambit in advance, he had been fully prepared—in theory there had been no possibility whatever of missing.

But the fact was that he had missed, cleanly and completely. That fearsome sword qi had destroyed half the mountain forest and yet had not so much as brushed the hem of Wei Zhao's garment. Faced with such a result, even a man of Yu Jiang's deep cunning could not help but be stung into furious humiliation.

The reason he had missed was in truth quite simple: Wei Zhao's feint, that frontal lunge with an eye to escape, had been deliberately revealed to him. In Wei Zhao's own words—sorry, I lied.

From first to last it had been a deception, a classic contest of minds.

Though Wei Zhao, relying on his many formidable hidden cards, felt no fear of his opponent, he was not foolish enough to pit himself head-on against him. He was, after all, only at the peak of the early Foundation Establishment stage, a full grade below his opponent, and in a straight clash the odds of coming off worse were plainly greater.

In a challenge across stages, however capable and confident the apparent weakling might be, to choose a direct confrontation is always the poorest strategy. The true highest strategy is always to attack the mind—to lure the opponent into exposing a flaw by every means possible, then in an instant unleash one's hidden strength and kill him with a single blow.

In his days in the mortal world, Wei Zhao had often crushed opponents of higher rank head-on, but those had been paper tigers—empty of stage, hollow of true strength. Against a formidable enemy of genuinely high rank such as the one before him now, there could plainly be no such simple and direct course.

Among the disciples of the Threefold Pavilion of the Northern Island of the Heaven Rank, how many were mediocrities? Those of the Soaring Heaven Pavilion in particular were all powers to be reckoned with.

The contest of minds was only the opening greeting; the battle had barely begun.

In that instant just now, Wei Zhao had merely made a feint. Against something slow-witted like Meng Zhou, such a feint would have fooled no one—not because it was clever, but because Meng Zhou simply could not react in time, still less perceive the intention Wei Zhao had deliberately let slip.

But facing Yu Jiang, it was precisely because his reactions were too quick and his mind too sharp, because he had early on convinced himself he had grasped Wei Zhao's intention, that he had fallen into Wei Zhao's trap.

Put plainly, this contest of minds was a psychological snare Wei Zhao had tailored for clever men like Yu Jiang. Against ordinary folk it might not work at all, but against clever men so sure they could grasp everything, it never failed.

The moment Yu Jiang grasped this, his face turned unspeakably ugly.

At this very moment, only a single body's width separated him from Wei Zhao. By rights, with his superior strength preying on the weaker, this was the perfect distance to kill Wei Zhao—there was no possibility of escape.

Yet simply because he had fallen into this one carefully designed psychological snare, the situation had lurched violently about, and the one truly holding the upper hand was now Wei Zhao, this "weakling"!

Having missed his sure-kill strike, his move spent and its force not yet renewed, Yu Jiang—a worthy expert of the mid Foundation Establishment stage—had, in the space of a single exchange, exposed a fatal flaw before this "weakling" Wei Zhao!

Such a carefully crafted opening was not one Wei Zhao could let pass. At once he closed his hand into a fist and, seizing the moment when Yu Jiang's follow-through faltered, drove a punch straight at his face. Blazing, fiery fist intent surged forth and in an instant slammed unimpeded into his opponent's chest.

The Frenzied Flame Fist, Twenty-Third Stance!

"Hah! All that scheming to make me fall for it, and this is all you've got!" Having taken the blow, Yu Jiang seemed none the worse—but before his words had died away, his body convulsed with a great shudder.

WHOOSH! The cloth over his chest was burned to ash in an instant, and the flesh revealed beneath it was blackened and charred, a sight to make the heart quail.

More horrifying still, the blazing fist intent of the Frenzied Flame Fist did not disperse. Like fire clinging to his body, it went on searing him. Though Yu Jiang used his formidable true qi to suppress it and keep it from spreading further, the stricken flesh still burned with unrelenting pain.

This was a new variation Wei Zhao had only lately mastered after cultivating the Frenzied Flame Fist to its twenty-third stance.

The first twenty-two stances had always followed the path of utmost yang and utmost rigidity. That gave them devastating power, but left little room for variation and a certain lack of spirit; once their killing force failed to tell, one easily fell on the defensive in a duel between high ranks.

The twenty-third stance, however, for all its fierce and domineering heat, had bred a thread of unbroken after-force—and it was precisely this after-force that left Yu Jiang, having taken the blow, suffering an additional burning wound.

Thus the practical value of the Frenzied Flame Fist was greatly increased. Against a high-ranked opponent, even if its killing force could not inflict fatal damage, its lingering burn remained very useful indeed.

For a burn means agony, and under agony even the profoundest schemer often loses his ordinary reason.

Of course, the burn could only cause agony. Forbidding as it looked, and though it might well be fatal to an ordinary man, for a formidable mid Foundation Establishment expert like Yu Jiang, to burn him to death by such means was simply impossible. (To be continued)