Chapter 4480 — Fury-Fire Thousand-Blast Fist

Half a sky of black qi and howling sand, half a sky of firelight piercing the heavens—such was the scene on the arena platform at this moment, and the shock and immense oppression it brought to everyone present left them speechless for a long while.

Faced with such astonishing might, not to mention those Gold Core-stage experts, even the escort agency higher-ups—every one of them Nascent Soul-stage masters—could not hide the shock on their faces, and cold sweat broke out unbidden in their hearts.

If it were they standing on that platform, facing either Wu Baoliang or Wei Zhao, they feared they would have already crumbled—might even have lost their lives.

At this moment everyone harbored the same question: were these two madmen on the platform really Gold Core-stage experts? Had the world gone insane?

"The same move?" Below the platform, Zhao Shanying was suddenly dazed, and at the same time Qi Mingyuan, Hai Wuliang, and the others on the judging panel had noticed it too.

Though at first glance the two sides of the platform looked utterly different, a careful observation and sensing would reveal that their moves were in fact cut from the same cloth—if not wholly identical, then certainly of the same root and origin. To put it concretely, one could well regard them as two versions of a single technique.

Those below who had caught on were merely shocked, but Wu Baoliang himself, as the party involved, was already churning with monstrous waves in his heart—the man was on the verge of going mad!

"Impossible! How could this brat know the Raging Sand Thousand-Blast Fist?" Others could at best guess and suspect, but Wu Baoliang felt it with perfect clarity—the technique this brat opposite him was using was unmistakably a replica of his own Raging Sand Thousand-Blast Fist!

Had he not seen it with his own eyes, Wu Baoliang would never have believed such a thing could exist under heaven. Barely the time of a stick of incense ago, this brat had been defeated by his Raging Sand Thousand-Blast Fist, and now, in the blink of an eye, he was performing a passable replica of it—and the crux of it was that this was no mere posturing; the fellow could actually hold his own against him with it...

Such a thing would drive anyone mad. "Using a man's own methods against him"—that was a legend passed down only among mortal martial artists, something that could never happen to cultivators. Still less could it happen here on Cloud-Tier Island; in the past, anyone who voiced such a notion would have been dismissed as a lunatic and drowned in the spittle of everyone around him.

But now Wei Zhao had given Wu Baoliang—and everyone present—a vivid lesson, forcing them to reexamine an old saying: there is always someone above you, and always a heaven beyond heaven.

"Thank goodness, my guess was right after all—otherwise this would have been a real mess." At this moment Wei Zhao, standing amid the gigantic blaze, let out a long, foul breath, his heart surging with excitement.

To be honest, though he had run through and assembled the combination countless times in his mind, until just now Wei Zhao had had no confidence at all that he could actually pull it off. After all, he had never seen any technique like it before; even with the will to borrow from it, it was no easy matter.

With martial arts like the Fury-Fire Eight-Trigram Palm or the Fury-Fire Thousand Legs, all Wei Zhao had needed to do was find a way to mimic the activation method, and it would essentially come to hand—seventy percent imitation, thirty percent invention.

But the Raging Sand Thousand-Blast Fist this time was different. Neither Wu Baoliang's black qi nor the howling sand could Wei Zhao fully replicate; apart from the single point of essence at the very core of the technique, everything else had to be improvised on the spot—a difficulty akin to scaling the heavens.

Fortunately, the formidable foundation of the Five Elements and Seven Attributes was no mere decoration. Add to that his powerful creativity, and the fact that he had deliberately held back from striking just now, instead placing himself once more within the black qi and howling sand to observe and feel it out—after verifying his conjecture, Wei Zhao had in the end successfully brought forth the Raging Sand Thousand-Blast Fist.

Of course, after such a transformation, this move could no longer be counted a pure Raging Sand Thousand-Blast Fist. Wei Zhao decided to give it a more fitting name: the Fury-Fire Thousand-Blast Fist.

Watching the opponent's momentum swell ever greater, the giant blaze occupying more and more of the platform's territory, Wu Baoliang at last could no longer sit still. If he let this continue, his authentic Raging Sand Thousand-Blast Fist might truly end up losing to the other's knockoff.

"Bluffing! It must be bluffing!" Wu Baoliang suddenly burst into a cackling, neurotic laugh, his blurred figure shrouded in black qi and howling sand growing ever more eerie and sinister as he roared, "You stupid ape aping a tiger! So what if you can imitate an appearance? It is all hollow show—you think that frightens me? Heh heh, you do not understand the essence of the Raging Sand Thousand-Blast Fist at all. To pit such a piddling trick against me—you are hopelessly, incurably foolish!"

Hearing this, the crowd below could not help but frown. Though Wei Zhao's sudden production of this move was indeed shocking enough, they still believed Wu Baoliang had the greater chance of victory—this was, after all, the authentic original, and in a true clash there was no reason it should lose to a knockoff improvised on the spot.

But now, seeing Wu Baoliang in this hysterical state, the crowd quietly began to change their view.

In a duel between experts, nothing is more taboo than a restless, agitated mind. Whether Wei Zhao had known this move all along or improvised it, whether he had only its outward form or truly grasped its essence, at least judging by the fact that Wu Baoliang had lost his composure, Wei Zhao had clearly seized a sliver of the upper hand.

Amid the crowd's murmuring, Wu Baoliang's mad cackle rang out from the platform once more: "So you want to imitate, do you? Then I shall be merciful and teach you properly what the essence of the Raging Sand Thousand-Blast Fist really is—blow!"

With Wu Baoliang's wild laughter, the familiar thunderous boom erupted out of thin air on the platform once again. This time he held nothing back, to the point that even the platform, layered with powerful defensive formations, could scarcely bear it—great cracks visible to the naked eye were blasted open, spreading rapidly until they densely covered the entire platform.

Full power unleashed, a thousand sands in wild explosion—this was the true essence of the Raging Sand Thousand-Blast Fist!

Even though Wei Zhao had imitated it convincingly, Wu Baoliang simply did not believe the fellow could truly grasp this most vital essence. This was no ordinary skill, after all: it required not only mastery of the key tricks but also specialized training—decades of bitter cultivation at the very least, enough to reach the requisite level, before one could hope to succeed.

Wu Baoliang's confidence was not without cause, for to reach this step one must first have mastered another prerequisite martial art of the utmost importance—All Things Slay One Another.