Chapter 3679 — Internal Strife, Part 2
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
Facing Wei Zhao, he might have felt some trepidation; but facing Xiao Che—a bumpkin from the mortal world, just like himself—he did not regard the man as worth a glance. All the more so now, with Xiao Che worn to exhaustion, his fighting strength a far cry from what it was in his prime.
"Thousand Legs, Twentieth Form!" Meng Zhou bellowed and leapt into the air. His legs whistled and blurred into layer upon layer of mighty leg-shadows, impossible to distinguish and impossible to guard against. Wherever those shadows swept, grass and stone alike crumbled instantly to powder.
So his martial art was called Thousand Legs as well—exactly the same as the one Zhao Qibing had cultivated. Xiao Che simply had no way of knowing it.
Meng Zhou had indeed been felled by a single move from Wei Zhao, but to be fair, as a native heaven-grade grand completion expert of Cloud Terrace Island, his strength was genuinely formidable. Had he not run into a freak like Wei Zhao, other experts of his level would have found him a headache to face.
With power like that, even at full strength Xiao Che might not have been able to take it head-on. Fortunately, what he needed now was not to defeat Meng Zhou, but to flee.
Swoosh!
Just as Meng Zhou's layers of leg-shadows were about to close over Xiao Che, Xiao Che's body gave an exceedingly bizarre twist. By his footwork he seemed clearly to be dodging left—yet the next instant he appeared abruptly on Meng Zhou's right, slipping clean through the edge of the leg-shadows without the slightest obstruction!
"What! How is that possible?" Meng Zhou was thunderstruck. He had been so confident of defeating Xiao Che in a single move—who could have foreseen such an uncanny sight?
He would never in a thousand deaths have guessed that Xiao Che, an unremarkable bumpkin from the mortal world, had mastered a peerless movement art like the Lost Trace Step!
By now the other new disciples had arrived one after another. A golden chance to show off, and Xiao Che had simply slid right past—Meng Zhou had truly disgraced himself beyond repair this time!
With skill in movement as refined as Xiao Che's, so long as he could hold out a while longer, beating everyone to the rear-mountain hall before they caught up seemed no difficulty at all. At this, not only Meng Zhou but even Li Zhengming and the rest were left staring in stunned disbelief.
"You stop right there! Or I'll cripple Qiao Hongcai and make him Qiao the Good-for-Nothing for the rest of his days—never to rise again!" Meng Zhou jabbed a finger at Qiao Hongcai, who was ringed tightly by them, and shrieked in fury.
At those words, Xiao Che—who had already made good his escape—came to a dead halt.
And the new disciples, Li Zhengming among them, now looked at Meng Zhou with open disbelief. Was the man in earnest, or merely bluffing?
The trial rules did not expressly forbid crippling another's cultivation, but anyone with half a brain knew such a thing was utterly despicable. A man who would stoop to such cruelty against his own fellow disciples—even if the sect imposed no punishment, others would surely shun him in fear, or even rouse public fury and earn him the contempt and curses of all.
If he truly did it, Meng Zhou would destroy Qiao Hongcai and himself along with him—and not even Meng Jueming could save him then!
Meng Zhou looked reckless, but surely he was not so foolish as to miss that much. Yet even with ten thousand reasons to believe the man was bluffing, Xiao Che still dared not gamble with Qiao Hongcai's fate. Compared with a paltry trial reward, Qiao Hongcai was plainly far more important!RS