Chapter 3729 — Eyes of Awe
But when it came down to it, even if the Bitter Senior Brother had sensed something was wrong, it was already too late—for the examiner, with a savage grin, had already struck Wei Zhao with a killing palm blow far beyond the peak of the early Foundation Establishment stage.
"Rest easy and die, you posturing little upstart."
Xu Lingchong, Meng Jueming, and the rest of their group all wore smug smiles at once. This newcomer Wei Zhao, who had come up from the mortal world, had pulled off one miraculous feat after another, but in the end his overreaching ambition could only carry him this far.
Though they were his opponents, even they had to admit that this Wei Zhao was truly a genius—given time to grow, he might well have become a real **thorn in their side**.
Unfortunately, the cultivation world had never lacked for geniuses, and the feeling of strangling one with your own hands—it was truly exquisite!
Yet in the very next instant, the smiles on those faces froze.
Bang! The examiner's palm crashed into Wei Zhao's chest with twice the force of before. He had expected Wei Zhao to fly farther and land harder than Meng Zhou had, but to everyone's astonishment, Wei Zhao merely gave a muffled grunt and took a single step back—and that was all.
At the same moment, the examiner himself, just as his momentum spent itself, suddenly felt a powerful backlash of true qi; instinctively he gave a muffled grunt and likewise retreated a step!
This was Wei Zhao's counterattack, launched in the midst of passively blocking and defending, using the formidable true qi within his body—the so-called offensive defense. Compared to purely passive true qi defense, it could offset the damage to a far greater degree!
Though the effect could not match a dedicated defensive martial skill, with sufficient mastery it could at least come close. This was a method Wei Zhao had hit upon on the spur of the moment, and he had never expected it to actually work!
The whole hall was instantly stunned into stillness—every last person, even Elder Zhao Hongbo and Xu Lingchong, Meng Jueming, and the others.
What on earth was going on?
The scene gave the impression that two experts of the same level had traded a palm blow head-on and each been forced back a step, evenly matched—but the problem was, this was no exchange between two experts of the same level! The examiner had simply struck Wei Zhao with a single palm, nothing more!
A full-force blow at triple the power of the early Foundation Establishment peak, delivered to an expert of the early Foundation Establishment stage—not only did it fail to kill the man outright, it had instead rebounded and knocked the striker back a step. This—this defied all reason!
"Many thanks for the instruction." Not only did Wei Zhao fail to die with every meridian shattered as everyone had expected, he said this without so much as a change of expression, then let out a long breath of foul air and sat down where he was to begin recovering from his injuries!
Heavens! The examiner stared at Wei Zhao in disbelief, then turned to look at Xu Lingchong and the others, who were likewise gaping. Every face wore the look of someone who had seen a ghost, mouths hanging open wide enough to hold a basket of eggs!
Xu Lingchong exchanged a dumbstruck look with Meng Jueming, and seeing the old man's ancient face flushed crimson with rage, he cried out in fury, "Impossible! Impossible! The boy must have taken a fatal internal injury—every meridian in his chest shattered—he's just holding on by his last breath!"
With all the scheming beforehand, with Young Master Xu clearing every obstacle, and with a fourth-grade Great Return Pill thrown in as capital, Meng Jueming simply refused to believe such a perfect plan could possibly fail!
If Wei Zhao had backed down in advance and forfeited the points for this match, that would have been regrettable but at least understandable. But the situation before his eyes was utterly incomprehensible!
An expert of the early Foundation Establishment stage, struck head-on by a killing palm at thirteen-tenths the power of the early Foundation Establishment peak, yet carrying on as if nothing had happened—was that even possible?
"Given how this thing postures and preens at every turn, it's not impossible he'll posture himself all the way to death—likely he'll just keel over dead where he sits!" Xu Lingchong was equally unwilling to believe such a perfect plan could end like this, and like Meng Jueming, he clung to one last shred of hope.
Zhao Hongbo stood frozen for a long moment before he finally came to his senses. He walked over to Wei Zhao and examined him, then nodded helplessly, his tone tinged with an astonishment he could not quite conceal: "That will do. There are indeed no visible injuries."
Even as an elder, he could not call black white in such a matter. If he lied through his teeth before the crowd, Wei Zhao could expose him with the greatest of ease—and then his reputation in his twilight years would truly be ruined.
How was this possible?
Hearing Zhao Hongbo's words, the last shreds of hope in Xu Lingchong and Meng Jueming were utterly shattered. They were so sick at heart they nearly spat out a mouthful of blood, and the two of them now looked as ashen as if their own fathers had died.
And at that moment, only one sound remained in the hall—the collective, uniform gasp of drawn breath!
Zhao Hongbo's words meant that Wei Zhao had not only earned the thirty points of combat credit that the early Foundation Establishment peak level represented, but also, by recovering within a single hour, gained recovery points equal to ten-tenths of his combat credit—that is, thirty recovery points.
Add the two together, and Wei Zhao's total for the second stage was sixty points!
And since the early Foundation Establishment peak was the highest difficulty in the second, endurance stage, that meant the sixty points Wei Zhao had just earned were the theoretical maximum for this stage!
Add the forty-five perfect points from the first stage of resisting pressure, and with only two stages of the trial completed, Wei Zhao already held two god-tier perfect scores, for a total of a godlike one hundred and five points!
By contrast, Meng Zhou—who had been so full of ambition earlier, so arrogant, so determined to trample Wei Zhao underfoot—was still sitting off to the side healing his wounds, his face the color of gold leaf, terrified that the slightest lapse would let the fourth-grade Great Return Pill's efficacy drain away and leave him with lasting aftereffects.
By the look of him, he would be lucky to recover within a single day. That meant that although his combat credit was thirty points, same as Wei Zhao's, his recovery points could at best be six-tenths of that—eighteen points—for a second-stage total of forty-eight points.
Add the twenty-four points from the first stage of resisting pressure, and across the two stages Meng Zhou had only seventy-two points total—a full thirty-three points behind Wei Zhao!
Not only had they failed to seize the chance to kill Wei Zhao, they had not even managed the most basic aim of closing the gap; instead, the gap had only widened further.
Under the gaze of the entire hall, every eye fixed on him in unparalleled shock, Wei Zhao strolled unhurriedly back to the Bitter Senior Brother's side. And this time, when all the newcomers looked at him, there was nothing in their eyes but awe—no trace of the mockery from before could be found.