Chapter 3790 — Too Much Suspicion
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 3
But Qiao Hongcai simply would not move. He took the damage of those phantom shadows head-on, still holding the same pose, gathering his force and waiting to strike.
The phantom shadows of the twenty-first form of the Thousand Legs dealt no light damage, but to a skilled hand at the early Foundation Establishment stage like Qiao Hongcai, they were not enough to injure bones or sinews.
Meng Zhou could not help but be taken aback at the sight. Once the Thousand Legs reached the twenty-first form, even the layered leg shadows carried considerable power, and so they had become truly impossible to distinguish true from false. Apart from Meng Zhou himself, his opponent had no way at all to tell which leg shadow was real and which was false.
To deal with the Thousand Legs there were only two methods: either use a still more powerful martial technique to shatter all the leg shadows at once, or else rely on guessing. Beyond these, there was no third way.
Yet seeing Qiao Hongcai's stance now, unmoved as if by thunder, Meng Zhou could not help but feel some puzzlement at heart. Could this fellow have some way of telling the true leg shadows from the false?
Otherwise, if he had not already determined that those leg shadows just now were phantoms, how would this bastard dare to ignore them so recklessly?
After all, the twenty-first form unleashed by a skilled hand at the early Foundation Establishment stage was the same in kind; even if the Thousand Legs was slightly inferior to the Iron Cold Palm in frontal lethality, the gap was limited. Once struck by a real leg, one would be severely wounded if not killed outright—this was no joke!
No matter how Meng Zhou feinted and probed from all directions, Qiao Hongcai simply refused to move, giving no reaction at all. Even when Meng Zhou afterwards flung several more phantom shadows at him in succession, he remained utterly motionless, giving the impression of an old monk sunk in meditation, completely cut off from the outside world.
Meng Zhou grew suspicious and paranoid. After more than a dozen such probes in a row—several times even sending a real leg sweeping past the back of Qiao Hongcai's head—Qiao Hongcai still showed no reaction at all!
Only then did Meng Zhou's heart settle. So this Qiao trash was just putting on an act, nothing more than aping the posturing of that poseur leader of theirs. In truth he could not tell at all whether the leg shadows were false or real—and to think Meng Zhou had actually believed this bastard might have some clever counter for his Thousand Legs!
But on second thought, the Thousand Legs was acknowledged throughout the cultivation world as a superior martial technique, first-rate at the very least among common martial arts. In both attack and defense and in its power to confuse, once unleashed with full force it was an unsolvable existence. How could Qiao Hongcai, with nothing but that worthless, idiotic Iron Cold Palm, possibly cope with it?
Damn it, this was purely a case of him having been too suspicious and overthinking after that trash had gotten the better of him once while he was careless!
Once he had thought this through, Meng Zhou immediately began laughing wildly and smugly again.
In the end, trash was trash. Even if by some fluke he had succeeded in reaching Foundation Establishment, he still could not escape his lousy fate of being trampled underfoot by Meng Zhou!
Since the layered leg shadows had once again densely enveloped Qiao Hongcai, on the field Qiao Hongcai had once more fallen into absolute passivity. As long as Qiao Hongcai kept not striking, he could only keep foolishly holding his horse stance like this, not daring any other movement.