Chapter 2104 — A Contest of Martial Techniques

Han Xiaohu had seen Wei Zhao unleash the Myriad Transformations of the Forest technique before. Its third stance could be delivered as three separate punches, and if those three punches landed on this boulder, the damage would surely be far worse than what a single stance from anyone else could achieve. So Han Xiaohu was full of confidence!

"Boss, give it your all!" Han Xiaohu cheered Wei Zhao on.

"Heh..." Wei Zhao smiled faintly and strolled over to a boulder he had picked at random.

The boulder stood about a man's height and some three meters wide. Yet after arriving beside it, Wei Zhao did not rush to unleash his martial technique. The contest limited each contestant to a single stance, but set no time limit, so there was no hurry. He wanted to observe how the others fared before deciding which technique to use himself.

Wei Zhao held still, but the young contestants from the other hidden families and sects had already begun circulating their mental cultivation formulas, preparing to unleash their techniques. Wei Zhao glanced back at the old masters of the families and the sect leaders present, his gaze sweeping across each of their faces in turn, and he caught a few hints.

Among these family elders and sect masters, the Pi family elder was the calmest and most excited, while the rest wore expressions of expectant tension and worry. From this, Wei Zhao could essentially judge that the predetermined champion of this contest was meant to be the hidden Pi family!

As for the other families and sects, they were fighting over second and third place.

What Wei Zhao had not expected was that at this very moment, the Pi family's contestant also turned his head, his gaze fixed on Wei Zhao's side! And in that gaze, Wei Zhao saw shock, bewilderment, and a thick, concentrated hatred!

This scion of the hidden Pi family was none other than Pi Zhitao! Wei Zhao had seen him once during the Ice Palace trials—that Earth-rank expert who had been expelled by Elder Li of the Ice Palace right at the start of the trials!

Back at the Ice Palace, Wei Zhao had gone by the alias Ling Yi, and he had crossed swords with the two Pi brothers. When Pi Zhifeng and Pi Zhitao had their trial qualifications revoked for concealing their true strength, Wei Zhao had merely laughed—and the Pi brothers had vented their fury on him for it.

Naturally, Wei Zhao did not fear them. For one thing, there was no longer any need to conceal the identity of Ling Yi; for another, even under his own name, Wei Zhao had irreconcilable blood feuds with the hidden Pi family. A whole string of the Pi family's experts had either been crippled by Wei Zhao himself or killed by his underlings!

So when he met Pi Zhitao's astonished gaze, Wei Zhao bared his teeth in a grin, turned his head away, and paid him no further mind.

Pi Zhitao had not taken part in the Ice Palace trials, so naturally he knew nothing of what had happened there. The scions of the hidden families had all been placed under a gag order by the Ice Palace, so Pi Zhitao was ignorant of later events, and no word of them had reached the hidden Pi family either.

Thus Pi Zhitao did not think Wei Zhao was anything remarkable. He was merely puzzled: had not Wei Zhao been crippled during the Ice Palace trials by Zhang Naipao, an expert of the Tomorrow Upon Tomorrow sect? How did he now seem to have recovered his strength?

Moreover, Wei Zhao was a great enemy of the hidden Pi family. Pi Zhitao channeled all his hatred into power, preparing to spend it in this contest! He had heard that Wei Zhao had already won two rounds, so in this match, Wei Zhao absolutely must not be allowed to win again!

Pi Zhitao drew a deep breath, swept out both hands, and summoned the spiritual energy of heaven and earth around him, preparing to unleash the external-school martial technique, the Heaven and Earth Divine Fist.

The Heaven and Earth Divine Fist was an advanced technique of the Divine Fist Hall. At mastery, it possessed the power to split mountains and cleave seas with a single punch. Though Pi Zhitao had learned only the first three stances, he could still unleash formidable might. He relied on the brute force of external-school boxing, so in this contest of martial techniques, he privately reckoned no one was his match!

"Boom—" Pi Zhitao drove out a punch, and the boulder before him instantly shattered, bursting outward in every direction from the center of his fist. A boulder of that size was in an instant reduced to countless fragments!

Pi Zhitao glanced around at how the others were doing, then smiled in satisfaction at his own handiwork!

True, many of the techniques brought out by these scions of the hidden families were genuinely formidable—but formidable only in combat against an opponent. Against a plain boulder, many of them were helpless. The weakest scion of a hidden family managed only to smash his boulder into two halves with a single stance!

Pi Zhitao, however, had shattered his boulder into at least seventy or eighty pieces—over a hundred, counting the smaller shards. He was plainly the victor beyond any doubt!

Having done all this, Pi Zhitao turned his gaze back to Wei Zhao—yet Wei Zhao had not made a move, and was merely watching him with a half-smile. This behavior left Pi Zhitao baffled. The man was not unleashing any technique, so what was he doing standing there watching him?

Pi Zhitao frowned, then suddenly saw Wei Zhao give him a strange smile and turn his head away, looking at him no more.

Wei Zhao's behavior made Pi Zhitao all the more bewildered, and somewhat uneasy as well. Seeing his boulder smashed into so many pieces, Wei Zhao was neither anxious nor alarmed—he was actually smiling? Could this fellow be holding some formidable trump card?

Wei Zhao had no formidable trump card. He was merely wavering between the Frenzied Fire Fist and the Myriad Transformations of the Forest—but now it appeared neither would do. Pi Zhitao's punch had genuine skill behind it!

Wei Zhao's Frenzied Fire Fist and Myriad Transformations of the Forest were formidable enough, but he could not guarantee a hundred-percent victory. After all, Pi Zhitao's technique was also of the highest grade, in no way inferior to his own! Moreover, external-school techniques enjoyed a certain advantage.

So if Wei Zhao wanted a complete victory, he could not use a martial technique. With that thought, Wei Zhao began compressing his true qi... What he had not expected was that of these three matches, two would have to be won with true-qi bombs!

Only, Wei Zhao had grown ever more adept at using these true-qi bombs, and the nervousness and fear of before were gone. So long as he controlled it properly and did not condense that ultimate bomb that gathered all the true qi in his body into one, it posed no danger to him!

Unless he encountered an enemy he could not defeat, there was no point in Wei Zhao using the ultimate bomb either.

This boulder, large as it was, could in Wei Zhao's estimation be blasted to fragments with but a tenth of the true qi in his body!

In the trial grounds, the outcome was all but decided. As things stood, Pi Zhitao was far ahead of his rivals—yet watching Wei Zhao, who had still not made a move, the Pi family elder felt an inexplicable tension!