Chapter 3789 — Blinding the Dog's Eyes

The martial art he specialized in was as blunt and unsubtle as his own temperament: seemingly an ordinary, run-of-the-mill technique, yet in truth formidable. Among the common martial arts of the cultivation world, it ranked as the foremost of the hard and unyielding—Iron Cold Palm.

Qiao Hongcai was a cultivator of the ice attribute, and Iron Cold Palm was likewise one of the martial arts reserved for ice-attribute cultivators!

Seeing Qiao Hongcai take that stance, Meng Zhou burst out laughing. "Iron Cold Palm? You dare trot out a scrap of chicken ribs like that, and think to answer my Twenty-One Forms of a Thousand Legs? Qiao the Waste, you're begging for death—don't blame me for kicking a man when he's down!"

With that, the thousandfold leg shadows already encircling Qiao Hongcai tightened abruptly. Never mind that amid so many shadows true and false were all but impossible to tell apart—even if the smoke of his ancestors' graves did rise and he somehow guessed right, dodging the single lethal leg, every remaining shadow stacked together would still pack more than enough killing force to snuff out a peak Heaven-Rank expert outright!

Of all the common martial arts, Iron Cold Palm's destructive power ranked among the first tier—but that was all. Beyond raw lethality, Iron Cold Palm fell short in every other respect, not even measuring up to the bottom rung, and its straight thrusts and lack of variation were especially damning. If it could not so much as land a blow on a man, what use was all that force?

Thus Iron Cold Palm had long been acknowledged in the cultivation world as a martial art of chicken bones, bottom of the barrel even among ordinary common techniques. Even a rootless, resourceless lone cultivator at the very bottom of the pile would turn up his nose at such scraps—unless he happened to have a hole where his brains ought to be.

By contrast, the Thousand Legs that Meng Zhou had cultivated was in a far loftier class: in offense and defense alike, and in the natural boost it lent to body speed, it ranked among the rare and excellent choices. Between the two lay the difference between heaven and mud.

Put simply, strip away the matter of innate body attributes, set Thousand Legs and Iron Cold Palm side by side, and let ten thousand cultivators choose—at least nine thousand nine hundred and ninety would pick Thousand Legs without a moment's hesitation. As for the remaining ten, nine of them would still choose Thousand Legs after a brief pause; only the last one might conceivably entertain some sudden whim for Iron Cold Palm, and in the end he would probably give up on it too.

It is no exaggeration to say that between experts of the same tier, a Thousand Legs user facing an Iron Cold Palm user could not be called absolutely superior—but he could be a hundred percent certain of holding absolute initiative.

Under normal circumstances, a master of Iron Cold Palm might brim with killing force yet never so much as graze the hem of a Thousand Legs expert, left only to be toyed with at his opponent's pleasure. Such was the advantage that the martial art itself conferred.

If experts of the same tier suffered so great a disadvantage, how much worse when one stood at peak Heaven-Rank and the other only at early Foundation Establishment? To anyone with an ounce of common sense, such a matchup held not the slightest suspense.

Qiao the Waste was bound to die this time—that was the thought that leapt into the minds of nearly every Qingyun Pavilion newcomer in the crowd below. Naturally, Wei Zhao and his companions were the exceptions.

In the span of a breath, Qiao Hongcai's plain and unadorned Iron Cold Palm met Meng Zhou's gathered thousandfold leg shadows—and then a tremendous quake shook the stage, as a giant golden palmprint flashed forth and tore straight through the leg shadows!

Bang! A figure went tumbling backward in utter disarray, and when the newcomers below—Meng Jueming among them—finally made out who it was, every one of them was struck dumb.

That battered figure hurled backward through the air was none other than Meng Zhou!

My god! How could that be Meng Zhou? Did we see wrong?

Meng Jueming and his group rubbed their eyes in unison without meaning to, then looked again at the man sprawled in such sorry state on the stage—and it was still Meng Zhou, beyond doubt. Only then did the truth sink in, to their universal disbelief.

In that single exchange just now, Qiao the Waste—a man who by every reckoning should have been dead—had truly shattered Meng Zhou's Twenty-One Forms of a Thousand Legs with one palm, and then, backhand, had thrashed this early Foundation Establishment expert so thoroughly. It was enough to make jaws drop to the floor!

After that one exchange, which left every jaw in the hall hanging, Meng Jueming and the others stood numb for a long while. Only Wei Zhao and his companions had foreseen it.

Wei Zhao had discovered that his golden finger still remained. Though, without circulating the mental cultivation formula on the spot, he could not yet clearly read cultivators stronger than himself, those weaker than him, or of equal strength, he could see through at a glance!

To be sure, a peak Heaven-Rank Iron Cold Palm user facing an early Foundation Establishment Thousand Legs expert could never have had any hope of victory. But what if that Iron Cold Palm user was likewise at early Foundation Establishment—and held the element of surprise?

Everyone else, Meng Jueming included, had assumed from the outset that Qiao the Waste was still the same contemptible peak Heaven-Rank cultivator, and none of them had ever considered that the man might have rushed his Foundation Establishment breakthrough before this very round of the challenge tournament—and succeeded!

Once that realization dawned, Meng Jueming and his group drew a collective sharp breath.

Knowing full well that in three short days he would face the challenge of Meng Zhou, an early Foundation Establishment expert, he had still dared to attempt his Foundation Establishment breakthrough in that sliver of time barely enough to wedge between one's teeth—this Qiao the Waste was an absolute madman!

The crowd below was merely astonished, but at that moment, up on the stage, Meng Zhou's heart was gripped by genuine terror—one might even say terror beyond bearing!

He had taken the man for worthless trash to be trampled at will, expected to crush him in a single effortless move, and never imagined that in the end his opponent would emerge without a scratch while his own teeth were shattered. This inexplicable turn of events had frightened Meng Zhou silly!

Wasn't this waste supposed to be peak Heaven-Rank? How had he suddenly become an early Foundation Establishment expert? This—this made no sense at all!

And never forget: Meng Zhou's own successful breakthrough had cost him not merely a Foundation Establishment Pill, but—more crucially—a dose of Foundation Establishment Liquid secured through the channels of Xu Lingchong, young master Xu, a treasure one could encounter but never seek out. Taken together with the pill, it had vastly raised his odds, and only then had he scraped through by sheer luck!

But what did a mere Qiao the Waste have to rely on? Never mind the liquid—he could not even get his hands on a Foundation Establishment Pill. How could trash like that possibly break through? Such a thing was simply incomprehensible!

In the space of three short days, a mere peak Heaven-Rank cultivator had been turned, by this waste's remarkable reversal, into an early Foundation Establishment expert—this was enough to make one think he had seen a ghost with his own eyes!

Unfortunately, whether or not it could be comprehended, Meng Zhou could now be certain of at least one thing: his own dog eyes had been well and truly blinded by Qiao the Waste!