Chapter 3752 — He Got Away
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
Though from first to last Wei Zhao had toyed with his opponent through psychological warfare, he had made one miscalculation: he had underestimated the power of the twenty-second stance of his Frenzied Fire Eight-Trigram Palm.
True, the twenty-second stance could not outright kill an expert of the mid-Foundation Establishment stage, but given that perfect opening, that palm strike had unleashed virtually its full ten-tenths of power. Having taken that blow, Yu Jiang might not be dead, but he was gravely wounded beyond measure.
And then, using the powder to set off the dust explosion, he had inevitably been wounded all the more in the process; it was utterly impossible for him to have escaped far in such a short span of time.
Yu Jiang knew well that if he could reach a place where people were present, Wei Zhao would not dare pursue him further no matter how bold he was. But the problem was this: he had followed Wei Zhao all this way and deliberately chosen such a remote, out-of-the-way corner before launching his sneak attack.
To return to the main road where people came and went, he would have to flee at least two li. And in his injured state, it was utterly impossible to run that far without Wei Zhao sensing him. So he could only seek survival amid danger, staying where he was and, taking advantage of the dust explosion, burying himself deep in the earth. His only hope of life lay in gambling that Wei Zhao would not linger here too long.
This was a truly ruthless move. Never mind how long Wei Zhao might stay—doing this first of all drove Yu Jiang himself to a dead end.
Buried deep in the earth, an ordinary person could not possibly survive. As a mid-Foundation Establishment expert he was naturally not in that category, but one must not forget that he was now gravely wounded and on the verge of death. Bury him a little too long, and he would suffocate just like any ordinary man.
And even if he did not suffocate, he might not have the strength to struggle his way out of the earth—and that, too, meant death.
But Yu Jiang had not considered any of this; he simply did it, seeking life in death—and amazingly, he had grasped that final thread of survival!
Of course, that thread of survival owed something to luck. Had no one happened to pass by at that moment, Wei Zhao would surely have stayed to search the area thoroughly, and would never have let him off so easily.
One could only say that heaven never seals off all paths. Though Yu Jiang had been wrong from start to finish, from the moment he set his sights on Wei Zhao today, his luck at the end had not been bad. Even if he had kicked an iron board and shattered all his teeth, he had at least managed to save his miserable hide.
"Huff—huff—"
Finally seeing the light of day again, Yu Jiang gulped down breath after breath greedily. Though his injuries were severe enough that he might drop dead at any moment, with the vitality of a mid-Foundation Establishment expert, so long as no outside force intervened and he himself did not wish to die, he still had a chance to live.
Heh, good thing I had a trump card, or I really would have been beaten to death today by that one strike I never saw coming!
Swaying unsteadily, he barely managed to push himself up from the ground. Yet Yu Jiang did not leave at once; instead, he gazed in the direction Wei Zhao had gone, and said in a weak but puzzled voice, "That way leads only to the Welcome Pavilion. A common rootless rogue cultivator shouldn't be heading in that direction. Could this fellow actually be a new recruit of the Welcome Pavilion? Unlikely—when has the Welcome Pavilion ever had a newcomer at the peak of the early Foundation Establishment stage? Or else... is this fellow an administrator of the Welcome Pavilion?"
After pondering for a long while, Yu Jiang, weakened by his grave injuries, grew so dizzy that he nearly fell to the ground. Only after barely steadying himself did he stagger away. RS