Chapter 4265 — The Conflict Erupts

"Who am I? Hmph—a mere ant in the early Foundation Establishment stage, do you really think you have the right to know?" The gray-robed man sneered with a harsh, grating laugh, his tone dripping with contempt. "Save your strength. If you think you can play tricks with me, you are far too green! Hand over the infant ginseng now, and I might consider letting you live!"

"It is true that we came for the infant ginseng as well, but there is one thing you have gotten wrong, sir. The infant ginseng is not in our hands—if it were, we would have fled long ago. Why would we still be lingering in a godforsaken place like this?" Wei Zhao said, his expression unchanging.

"Heh heh, I told you not to play games with me, and you still will not take the warning, boy?" The gray-robed man burst out laughing, a laugh steeped in murderous intent, his already ugly face twisting into something even more ferocious and hideous. "The infant ginseng is not in your hands? Do you mean to tell me it ran off? Hmph—the mist is the infant ginseng's protective shroud. While the ginseng lives, the mist remains; when the ginseng dies, the mist disperses. And now the mist has scattered completely, which can only prove one thing: the infant ginseng must have fallen into your hands. Besides, I heard you from up in the sky just now—you said it might bring trouble. If you had not taken the ginseng, what would you have to feel guilty about?"

Listening to the gray-robed man's grating laughter, Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao could only exchange a speechless glance. This man was not only ferocious in appearance and formidable in strength—even his powers of analysis were rather formidable. With things having come to this point, it seemed there would be no peaceful end today.

"This…" Wei Zhao deliberately put on an expression of having his petty scheme seen through, of guilty alarm, while the hand gripping Huang Xiaotao's tightened ever so slightly.

Though Huang Xiaotao was nervous at that moment, her rapport with Wei Zhao was beyond doubt. Feeling the pressure from his hand, she understood at once.

"What? Still want to keep arguing?" A hint of smugness crept into the gray-robed man's expression. In his eyes, Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao were merely two early Foundation Establishment cultivators—insignificant ants, not worth mentioning. If it truly came to blows, a casual slap would be enough to swat them dead.

But with the gap in strength so plain before him, simply killing them outright would be no fun. A cat, having caught a mouse, must always toy with it a while. The gray-robed man had always considered himself brilliantly clever, and at a time like this, of course he had to crush his opponents with sheer intellect—only thus could he savor a pleasure out of the ordinary.

Yet just as the gray-robed man was about to relish another round of intellectual superiority, Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao—who had seemed so cowed and hesitant ever since his sudden appearance—struck without the slightest warning!

An instant before, both had still worn expressions of shock, still mice being idly batted about by a cat's paw. But in the next instant, the sharp, biting aura around them surged skyward, and without a word they drove their cultivation to its absolute limit—the Frenzied Fire Eight-Trigram Combined Palm!

Two little mice driven to desperation had, in the blink of an eye, transformed into wolves fighting desperately for their lives. The ruthless resolve radiating from the pair at that moment made even the gray-robed man's heart skip a beat, and a chill rose within him.

As a cultivator of the Nascent Soul stage, he would never in his wildest dreams have imagined that two little ants of the early Foundation Establishment stage, instead of trying to flee, would dare to strike at him first. If word of this got out, it would be utterly unbelievable—was the world going mad?

What he did not realize was that while flight was the only option in the eyes of ordinary people, in Wei Zhao's eyes the only option that offered any chance of survival at this moment was to meet the foe head-on!

As for the infant ginseng they had worked so hard to obtain, Wei Zhao would never hand it over just like that. This was no ordinary natural treasure, after all, but a truly priceless thing with no market price—a supreme treasure that no amount of spirit jade could buy, one simply not to be found on the open market.

This was the key to him and Huang Xiaotao making their breakthrough to the Nascent Soul stage in the days to come—how could he possibly hand it over?

Though the two of them could not use it just yet, the day would surely come when they would. If they gave it away now, they might well forfeit any chance at the Ginseng-Condensing Golden Core for the rest of their lives—and that would be a grief too bitter for tears.

So for this gray-robed man, Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao had only one course of action: to fight for their lives without mercy. After all, with the might of their Frenzied Fire Eight-Trigram Combined Palm, even against a Nascent Soul cultivator, it was not as though they had no power to fight!

Seeing the two of them charge at him in frenzy, the gray-robed man flew into a rage. From beginning to end, he had never taken these two little ants seriously. Facing their Frenzied Fire Eight-Trigram Combined Palm, he neither dodged nor flinched; unhurriedly he raised both hands and sent out two palms of his own.

"Hmph! You dare trade palms with me? Then let me send you to your deaths with your eyes open!" The gray-robed man gave a confident snort. Apart from speed, the martial art he excelled in most was palm techniques!

The Yuan-Shattering Palm—this was the palm technique he had painstakingly studied from the very day he first set foot on the path of cultivation. It could well be called the innate martial art he was proudest of, its destructive power enough to strike terror into anyone who heard of it.

When the Yuan-Shattering Palm was cultivated to its higher reaches—especially now that he had reached the Nascent Soul stage—it could not only shatter the physical body but also carry a divine sense attack, powerful enough to crush the opponent's primordial spirit. This was the origin of the name Yuan-Shattering Palm.

Wounds to the body are easy to heal; wounds to the primordial spirit are not. One blow of the Yuan-Shattering Palm, and even if the opponent survived by some stroke of luck, the grave damage to their primordial spirit would consign them to eternal ruin, trapped in an abyss of suffering and torment, never to rise again.

A martial art so treacherous would give even a fellow Nascent Soul cultivator a splitting headache, let alone two ants of the early Foundation Establishment stage. Not to speak of a direct hit—if they so much as grazed the faintest wisp of its residual force, death was certain.

Bang! Four palms clashed, and a thunderous explosion burst out of nowhere across the silent Lu Feng Forest, whipping up a towering wave of qi. Within a radius of several li, every blade of grass and every tree—including ancient towering trees dozens of zhang tall—was uprooted in the blink of an eye and swept into the surging wave of qi. The spectacle was truly jaw-dropping.

At the heart of the qi wave, Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao both staggered back several steps after the palm exchange, losing their footing and tumbling to the ground. The gray-robed man fared no better—he too was forced back more than a few steps.

This time, when the gray-robed man turned his gaze back to Wei Zhao and the other, he could no longer conceal the shock in his eyes, and for a moment he was stricken with doubt and alarm.