Chapter 11669 — Xia Chao Really Did Favor Wei Zhao

And precisely for that reason, even though he was now forced to bow his head to Wei Zhao, deep in his heart Xia Qiyuan remained utterly convinced that he could still turn the tables.

Because the power of anti-rules held exactly that kind of heaven-defying possibility.

But now, watching Wei Zhao unleash the power of anti-rules with his own eyes, Xia Qiyuan could not help beginning to doubt his whole understanding of life.

Could it be that his master really had taught Wei Zhao before he died?

Xia Qiyuan could not keep the suspicion from rising.

While his heart churned with towering waves, back at the scene in the Son of Heaven's palace, everyone was holding their breath so hard they dared not even exhale.

By the trend of things up to that moment, in anyone's eyes Wei Zhao was already doomed beyond doubt.

Even though he could crush fortune itself to force a stalemate with three old monsters, given enough time he would inevitably still collapse in the end.

To say nothing of the four more old monsters who had entered the fray.

As the saying went, not one old monster who came out of the Inner Royal Court had ever been a cheap lamp to light.

Seven against one—by any measure, Wei Zhao could not escape a single word: death.

But now, the instant the power of anti-rules appeared, the whole situation flipped in a breath.

There was no other reason: the power of anti-rules restrained masters of the Venerable Realm far too severely.

Boom!

Watching with their own eyes as Wei Zhao blasted an old monster apart with a single punch, the entire hall fell into a silence like death.

Looking at that teetering headless corpse in the arena, everyone inside and outside the venue swallowed in unison without meaning to.

This was a peak Venerable of the early Heaven Tier!

If not for these peculiar times, in any ordinary era, such a being would have been an invincible, transcendent existence across the whole Inner Royal Court—and now he had been blasted apart by Wei Zhao with one punch, just like that?

Was there any justice left in the world at all?

And this was merely the beginning.

Wei Zhao's ensuing frenzy of a performance made everyone recognize with perfect clarity just where the gap between them lay.

With only the most ordinary of moves and techniques, relying solely on this power of anti-rules, Wei Zhao began a slaughter of the old monsters before him.

One against seven!

Every eye was stretched wide, and even figures of the caliber of the Qin Prince's Estate's decision-makers outside the arena all fell into a collective mode of holding their breath.

In the span of less than a quarter of an hour, all seven old monsters who had joined the siege on Wei Zhao lay fallen.

Not one was spared.

Those other old monsters who had been itching to move just moments before, lamenting only that they stood too far off and struck too slowly, now all shrank back.

Surely they were joking—faced with Wei Zhao in this blood-maddened, frenzied state, they could only count themselves lucky they had not entered the field, or their names would certainly have been added to the list of old monsters slain on the spot!

At this very moment, in their eyes Wei Zhao was no longer the opening-match gift package, but an out-and-out harvester of old monsters!

Touch him and you die.

It was a long while before Qin Siren dared to murmur, opening his mouth in lament: "So this is the legendary power of anti-rules? Isn't that just plain invincible?"

Old Qin corrected him quietly: "What's invincible isn't the power of anti-rules. It's the man, Wei Zhao."

The power of anti-rules was certainly formidable, and in a sense it truly did naturally counter masters of the Venerable Realm—but as an elder who had lived through the era of the Heavenly Gate, he knew very well that the power of anti-rules was not invincible.

In essence, the power of anti-rules and the power of rules were two sides of one body, two modes of manifesting power at bottom.

The power of anti-rules could naturally counter the power of rules, and the reverse was equally true: with sufficient skill, the power of rules could naturally counter the power of anti-rules just the same.

In fact, in that era when the Heavenly Gate ran rampant, by its later stages many top masters of the Inner Royal Court had already grasped the knack of this. Otherwise the Heavenly Gate would never have been suppressed, and Xia Chao would never have been forced to flee the Inner Royal Court.

At his level, it was not hard to see that these old monsters from the Inner Royal Court were indeed rich in practical combat experience; after their brief initial shock, they had already made corresponding adjustments.

Ultimately, rare as the power of anti-rules was, it was still far from lying beyond the ken of these old monsters.

The targeted adjustments they made contained no error at all.

Even Old Qin and the others—bystanders, and moreover men who had personally lived through the Heavenly Gate era—had to admit that these old monsters' countermeasures were the perfect countermeasures, with virtually no room left for improvement by the limits of their understanding.

And yet the final result was that they were still slaughtered by Wei Zhao without the slightest suspense.

To any true observer, it was clear that this was no longer a question of the power of anti-rules, but a question of the man.

Neatly arrayed before him in a single line lay the corpses of seven old monsters. Wei Zhao settled himself back onto the Son of Heaven's throne with perfect ease and swept his gaze over the whole hall.

"Anyone else want to join the fun?"

Not one soul dared make a sound.

Let alone the assembled civil and military officials present, even all the common folk of the Inner Royal Court watching this from beyond the venue had fallen utterly silent by now.

At this moment, no one dared resent or curse Wei Zhao any longer.

The public opinion that had been stirred up earlier looked utterly pale and powerless against this iron fist of strength pressed straight to their faces.

Wei Zhao spread his hands: "Don't look at me like that. I'm actually at the end of my rope right now—anyone who steps up might well be able to kill me. Want to give it a try?"

"..."

Everyone was cursing in their hearts.

With the cautionary example of seven old monsters laid out before them, anyone who still dared step forward now would truly be eating arsenic at the Longevity Star's feast—tired of living.

Little did they know, Wei Zhao was telling the truth.

For all that the arena looked one-sided, going one against seven had truly cost him enormously.

After all, this was the first time he had ever displayed the power of anti-rules before others. By his own standards, it was still only barely usable, far from masterful.

Then again, for all of this he had Zhang Tailing to thank.

Cultivating the power of anti-rules was an idea Wei Zhao had held for a long time; after all, the advantages of the thing were plain to the naked eye.

But Xia Chao had never taught it to him—more precisely, had never even mentioned it.

Because of that, Wei Zhao naturally had no way in.

Plenty of masters in this world coveted the power of anti-rules, after all. To fumble one's way to the power of anti-rules all on one's own?

Even in a dream, one should dream something a little more realistic.

Until, through the cheat-like perspective of the World Will during the Qi Prince's Estate incident, Wei Zhao observed the duel between the two god-tier existences—the suspected banished immortal Li Zui and the Great Ape King—and only then found his inspiration.

He discovered that the power the Great Ape King wielded was faintly, deeply akin to the power of anti-rules.

Only of a higher order!

Had this been in the past, no matter how clearly Wei Zhao saw it, he could never have stolen the technique simply by wanting to—his understanding of the essence of power had not been deep enough.