Chapter 3949 — To Fight or Not to Fight

"New steward, you seem rather frightened. All you wanted was to use that pill-fire bomb of yours to finish me off, wasn't it? So how about we play a little game? We stand right here without moving, and see who dies first." Wei Zhao laughed, his face full of mockery.

"Wh-what? Stand right here without moving! Are you out of your damn mind, or just a fool?" Kang Jingming's face went pale with fright. If before this Wei Zhao had merely been a formidable enemy in his eyes, then now the man had become an outright lunatic!

Kang Jingming dreamed day and night of killing Wei Zhao. The stronger Wei Zhao's cultivation grew, the fiercer his own desire for revenge. But when his opponent was a madman with no regard for his own life, that was another matter entirely. Who in the hell would willingly stake their life in a death struggle against a lunatic?

Yet no matter how Kang Jingming struggled, Wei Zhao simply held him there, effortlessly, one hand locked around him, not shifting a hair.

The gap in their strength was simply too vast. Wei Zhao was already an expert of the mid-Foundation Establishment stage, while Kang Jingming remained at the early stage—two full tiers apart. If he could not even handle an expert of his own level, how could he possibly break free of Wei Zhao's grip?

"Hey, hey, you madman, let go of me, quick! I really can't hold it in anymore!" This time Kang Jingming was well and truly scared out of his wits.

To hold a bomb in your hand that could go off at any moment, beyond your control—there was no feeling more horrifying in the world. And the crux of it was that this pill-fire bomb was of his own making; he knew exactly how powerful it was.

If it truly exploded, what would become of that madman Wei Zhao he could not say, but of one thing he was certain: this time he himself was dead for sure. He would not even leave a whole corpse behind.

Even more crucial was the fact that pill fire was irreversible. Once triggered, it could not be drawn back in. That was a far different matter from Wei Zhao's true-qi bomb!

"Can't hold it in? Then just let go. I doubt you've ever had a taste of your own pill-fire bomb, have you?" Wei Zhao said, his expression as calm and flat as ever.

But to Kang Jingming's eyes at this moment, he was more devilish than any devil could be. For the first time, he felt a chill, bone-deep terror radiating from Wei Zhao. Even if he somehow managed to scrape through this calamity today, he feared this trauma would haunt him for the rest of his life.

"He won't retreat, and he won't fight—just what are those two playing at?" Watching the bizarre spectacle of the two men locked motionless, the crowd below the stage could not help but frown.

Only Kang Jingming and Wei Zhao knew about the pill-fire bomb. The crowd below was completely in the dark; all they saw was Wei Zhao suddenly seizing Kang Jingming's left hand, after which the two of them, inexplicably, simply stopped moving.

They had been full of anticipation for a fierce clash between two rising newcomers, one that would leave both sides battered and broken—if not outright dead, then at least crippled for life, never to rise again, which would have been thoroughly satisfying. But what was this sorry state of affairs supposed to be?

"Huff... huff..." Before anything had even happened, Kang Jingming was already panting like a bellows. Amid the panic and terror, he had finally come to understand one thing: Wei Zhao was not playing around this time.

That was right—Wei Zhao was not playing around at all.

He knew full well just how powerful Kang Jingming's pill-fire bomb was. After all, his own true-qi bomb was virtually the same sort of move. If this had been before, an explosion at such close range would have killed not only Kang Jingming, but himself as well.

But now, having surged by a great margin in strength, Wei Zhao felt little worry in his heart. And because there was a strong chance Meng Jueming had already seen through his identity, his need to prepare for crisis made him all the more eager to test just how strong he had become.

With his own strength and true qi shielding his body, a pill-fire bomb of Kang Jingming's caliber should not pose a lethal threat. Just how far that protection could hold out—that would show exactly how much strength he now possessed.

At last, Kang Jingming could no longer withstand the crushing pressure and spoke up to beg for mercy: "Wei Zhao—no, Head Wei Zhao, I know you're formidable, so stop toying with me, would you? Just let me go, and I'll concede right now, this instant, without a word of complaint!"

"Let you go?" Wei Zhao raised an eyebrow and smiled with amusement. "What good does that do me? Once you're dead, your cave abode naturally falls into my hands anyway. What benefit is there in sparing you? Oh, that's right—I heard your cave abode is the number one on the mountaintop. It sounds rather nice. I wouldn't mind living there myself."

"I'll die, but won't you die too? You madman, do you even know what kind of power the pill-fire bomb in my hand really has?" Kang Jingming was goaded into hysteria.

Among humankind there might be those who did not fear death, but Kang Jingming was absolutely not one of them. Not only did he fear death, he feared it desperately—otherwise he would never have gone to such lengths, shamelessly fawning and clinging to others' coattails.

He had finally latched onto a towering tree like Xu Lingchong, thinking that from then on he could summon wind and rain on Cloud Terrace Island. If he were to be killed by Wei Zhao now—killed by his own pill-fire bomb, no less—then he would truly have no place left to weep. The words "die with regrets" might as well have been a farewell speech tailor-made for him.

Having heard this much, the crowd below the stage had more or less caught on. The term "pill-fire bomb" was unfamiliar, but given Kang Jingming's identity as a pill refiner and his previous performance in the newcomers' challenge tournament, such a technique was not hard to understand.

What baffled the crowd, however, was this: judging by the situation, Kang Jingming's trump card had not only failed to display its might against Wei Zhao this time—it had become a hot potato he could not shake off no matter how he tried, and Wei Zhao had forced him into a position where he could neither advance nor retreat.

For a moment, everyone could not help but exchange glances. Looking at Kang Jingming's bedraggled, sweat-drenched state on the stage, then at Wei Zhao's light and breezy expression, it was clear this was no climactic duel between newcomers at all. This new steward Kang Jingming, who had always strutted about flaunting his power, did not amount to a fart in Wei Zhao's presence!

Kang Jingming struggled with all his might to break free, yet Wei Zhao maintained an unshakable, utterly composed expression throughout, as though the pill-fire bomb that Kang Jingming himself feared like a tiger truly amounted to nothing in his eyes.

It was as if he were holding nothing more than a tiny firecracker that could not even crack a layer of skin—that, and nothing more.

His desperate struggle having failed, Kang Jingming was finally in despair this time. His earlier begging for mercy had merely been a little scheme, an attempt to fool Wei Zhao into loosening his grip so he could seize the chance to escape. But now he had at last recognized one thing.