Chapter 4311 — Taking Disciples in the Opening-Mountain Stage
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
But this only made it all the clearer just how vile Chu Bubai's intentions had been from the start. He had a powerful teammate like Chu Muqing right there—his own younger brother, no less—yet he had not sought him out. Instead he had gone out of his way to recruit Guo Dengtao, with whom he had no deep ties, and strangers like Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao. In the end it was all to fill out the headcount for the sacrifice, to trade all their lives for the infant ginseng.
Wei Zhao recalled how, all along that journey, Chu Bubai had lied to them, insisting over and over that they were from the Gu family. Yet now he was the only Golden Core expert among them—proof positive that he had harbored ulterior motives from the first. A man like that ending up savaged to death by the infant ginseng truly was a fate he had brought upon himself; the only pity was Guo Dengtao and Wang Feng and the rest, who had been kept in the dark.
Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao exchanged a glance, nodded at each other in tacit understanding, and said no more, lest others overhear and bring unnecessary trouble.
The crowd below murmured and buzzed with speculation, yet Chu Muqing in the arena showed no particular change of expression, as though he had long known he possessed a triple-attribute spiritual root. After giving the academy official a slight nod, he turned and walked toward the formation for the third round of assessment.
Throughout it all, the refined grace about Chu Muqing never diminished in the slightest; he carried himself with the breezy composure of a true expert. High on the platform, the assembled academy bigwigs nodded again and again, their gazes toward him unavoidably tinged with a little more approval and recognition.
After all, this was the first triple-attribute spiritual root to appear in the entire competition, and his unruffled composure in the face of both praise and humiliation was itself, to some degree, proof of his potential. Setting everything else aside, at equal strength, a temperament like Chu Muqing's would often give a man the upper hand in a fight. Temperament was itself a hidden kind of talent—it was just that many people overlooked it.
Under all those watching eyes, Chu Muqing walked step by step to the assessment formation. When the examiner nodded for him to begin, Chu Muqing's body sank slightly. Then he shot abruptly into the air, whipping one leg in a horizontal sweep, and a sharp arc of true qi tore through the air at a speed the eye could scarcely follow and slammed into the assessment formation.
Boom! The formation itself was unharmed, but the force traveled into the ground and set the whole arena trembling—a power so immense it was frightening to behold.
A simple, clean, and enormously powerful strike. It set the entire crowd abuzz once more; people looked at one another, and in every gaze there was unconcealable shock. If Chu Muqing had built such a great name for himself in the True Segment Sea, then his strength was clearly no idle boast.
He landed with composure, nodded to the examiner, then quietly stood aside to await the result.
Had it been anyone else—like that braided man from before—the examiner would have announced his elimination on the spot. This time, however, the examiner unexpectedly said nothing. Instead he turned to look up at the high platform.
It was obvious that, so far as he was concerned at least, Chu Muqing had already passed. Only, just whose command he would ultimately be placed under was not for the examiner to decide; he could only wait for the final judgment of the academy bigwigs on the platform.
One by one, the crowd unconsciously held their breath, their eyes fixed on every word and gesture of the academy bigwigs on the platform. If nothing unexpected happened, the first genius disciple to pass the selection today was about to be born.