Chapter 4418 — Uproar

In the end, the duel concluded with the Qingtian Escort Agency winning a sweeping victory. They successfully seized the escort goods, and not one of their four men died. At the cost of two severely wounded and two lightly wounded, they managed to kill two of their opponents, and their final score was sixty points!

Such a record was already considered quite high across the entire field. After all, the participants were restricted to Golden Core stage experts, and the gaps between escort agencies could not be fully reflected—it was very hard for a completely one-sided situation to occur.

One had to know that even the strongest agency on the field, the Sihai Escort Agency, had only scored fifty points in its escort-seizing battle—ten points lower than the Qingtian Escort Agency!

However, when the escort-defending battle and the escort-seizing battle were added together, the Sihai Escort Agency instead pulled far ahead, because in its escort-defending battle against the second-string lineup of the Yongxing Escort Agency, it had won a sweeping victory and taken seventy points. Added together, that made one hundred and twenty points!

As for the Qingtian Escort Agency, although it had shone brilliantly in the escort-seizing battle, on the other side, the performance in the escort-defending battle that Qi Wenmo personally took charge of could only be described as dismal.

The reason the escort-seizing battle had gone so brilliantly was entirely thanks to Wei Zhao's on-the-spot command. Otherwise, forget about scoring sixty points—they likely would not even have been able to snatch the escort goods, would not have gotten a single point, and would have had to send several lives to their deaths.

On the escort-defending side that Qi Wenmo was responsible for, however, there was not the slightest trace of Wei Zhao's kind of command awareness. Like the other escort agencies, the most they did was instruct everyone to look out for one another; there was no properly formed or effective tactic to speak of. The only role the young master Qi Wenmo played in supervising the battle on the spot was to boost morale.

The strength of the Wuma Escort Agency was a notch above even that of the Yongxing Escort Agency, and this agency's style had always been to fight people to the death regardless of the cost. So every year, whenever they had a match, it would always develop in the direction of ever greater brutality—and this time was no exception.

In the end, of the four men the Wuma Escort Agency sent onto the field, three died on the spot, and the remaining one was gravely wounded and on the verge of death. On the Qingtian Escort Agency's side, although they had gone through untold hardships and finally managed to defend the escort goods, they had likewise paid the price of three lives!

In the span of a single stick of incense, within that small patch of ground, six lives had been snuffed out one after another. Everywhere the eye fell was dazzling fresh blood. Even though everyone present had long since grown accustomed to all kinds of slaughter in the Southern Continent's waters, their nerves long since numbed, they still could not help but find it hard to look directly at such a bloody scene—it was even hair-raising.

Qi Wenmo's face was ashen, and for a long time he could not speak. Although he had expected this match would not be easy to fight—after all, the Wuma Escort Agency was universally acknowledged as an extremely tough bone to gnaw—he had never imagined it would reach such a degree!

One had to know that in order to ensure scoring in the escort-defending battle, he had sent out all of the first-rate experts in the agency who had volunteered. The lineup's strength was a notch above even the escort-seizing lineup Wei Zhao had led. Yet the result had been such a cruel outcome—how could anyone bear it?

Looking at the shocking corpses on the field, not only Qi Wenmo but everyone else in the escort agency wore grave expressions. They could not help but feel a sense of fellow feeling for the fallen—just one stick of incense ago, they had all been chatting and laughing together. Yet now they were separated by life and death, and worse, they had been butchered before everyone's very eyes. That feeling was truly hair-raising.

Because if it had not been those people who had taken the field, but themselves instead, they would likely already have become corpses on the ground.

There was no helping it—this was the style the Southern Continent's escort agency grand gathering had always had: extremely bloody, extremely cruel. Any escort agency that wanted to rise to prominence needed not only formidable strength, but also had to gamble with human lives. If one was not willing to pay a sufficiently great price, then by what right should one rise to prominence?

By this time Qi Wenmo's face was so dark it looked as though water could drip from it. Among the agency's few first-rate experts, three had died outright in a single match. The price was simply too heavy. The only thing that could serve as some consolation was that, at the cost of three lives, this round of the escort-defending battle had passed without mishap after all, and they had ultimately obtained forty points.

That score could not be called high, but if one did not quibble over the cost, it was just barely acceptable. Still, compared with Wei Zhao's record over here, it was completely unimpressive.

Wei Zhao had not only led his four men to withdraw whole and intact, but had also successfully obtained a high score of sixty points. That gave the whole of the Qingtian Escort Agency, which had been weighed down with heavy hearts, a much-needed shot in the arm, and the young master Qi Wenmo, who had suffered such a blow, was at last no longer so gloomily frowning. He thanked Wei Zhao repeatedly—Wei Zhao had truly bailed him out of a tight spot.

This was the first time he had led a team to the Southern Continent's escort agency grand gathering. It was precisely the moment to display his leadership ability and establish his prestige. If he had no presentable results, then even if he was Qi Mingyuan's only son, he would inevitably be gossiped about behind his back, and it would be hard for him to truly take over the Qingtian Escort Agency.

But now, thanks to Wei Zhao saving the day, regardless of anything else, at least where scoring was concerned, they had already far exceeded expectations—enough to make everyone in the agency rejoice and cheer.

Adding the escort-defending battle and the escort-seizing battle together, their total score for the first round was one hundred points. Although it could not compare with the one hundred and twenty points of a top dog like the Sihai Escort Agency, it was definitely among the top ranks. Even compared with the other five great escort agencies, they were not the least bit inferior—they were even slightly better than some.

The Sihai Escort Agency was unquestionably ranked first, while the second place was unexpectedly a tie between two escort agencies: the Shenfeng Escort Agency and the Qingtian Escort Agency!

The Shenfeng Escort Agency was one thing—for so many years it had always been among the five great escort agencies, a universally acknowledged traditional powerhouse whose strength and foundation were on par with even the Sihai Escort Agency. No one would find it strange for it to be ranked second. But that the Qingtian Escort Agency could also tie for second—this truly made many people's jaws drop.

Although nominally speaking, the Qingtian Escort Agency was also one of the five great escort agencies, it had barely managed to board the last train last time; in the past it had always hovered outside the top seven or eight.