Chapter 3750 — The Long Wait

Wei Zhao was still quietly disappointed, but Yu Jiang by now had been driven to such fury by the torment of pain that his face was twisted with it. What in the world was this wretched sorcery of a martial art? Its destructive force was not the most heaven-defying part—no, it was that lingering burning residue. Even channeling true qi could do no more than suppress it; for the moment, at least, it could not be rooted out.

"Fine! You went to all that trouble just to enrage me, didn't you? Well, let me tell you now—you've succeeded!"

Yu Jiang fixed his gaze coldly on Wei Zhao, who had withdrawn the instant his fist fell and was already in retreat, and spoke through gritted teeth: "But unfortunately for you, that's hardly good news. Because I've decided I'm done worrying about whatever top-grade Foundation Establishment Breakthrough Pill you're carrying. What I'm going to do next is cut you into ten thousand pieces!"

With that, Yu Jiang forced down the searing agony radiating through his chest and took one step forward. In an instant the heavens and earth around them, the mountains and the forests, all changed color; every thing, animate and inanimate alike, gave forth a rustling hiss as though a storm were about to break. The commotion was far more violent than when he had gathered the Life-Reaping Chain Sword, Twenty-Third Stance.

So the creature means to bring out his bottom-of-the-box killing move, does he? Wei Zhao's heart tightened. He circulated the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art to swiftly replenish the true qi he had spent on the Roaring Fire Fist, Twenty-Third Stance, then held his breath, gathered his spirit, and stood at full alert, waiting quietly for what would come next.

Had they been of equal grade, Wei Zhao might well have chosen to strike first and seize the upper hand—waiting to be slaughtered had never been his style. But as things stood, he was the acknowledged "weakling" here, and to make the most of that advantage, he had to endure for now.

Only after finding a one-hundred-percent opening could a bottom-of-the-box killing move truly deliver its decisive, final blow. To spend it needlessly in a contest of attrition against the opponent's powerful martial arts would be to expose one's own hidden cards ahead of time—and to no end whatsoever.

Seeing Wei Zhao braced like a man facing a great enemy, every nerve drawn taut in vigilance, Yu Jiang gathered an aura of unprecedented power and sneered in contempt: "A weakling is a weakling. So you schemed and scraped together a bit of the initiative—what of it? Before an absolute gap in strength, no amount of plots and tricks amounts to anything but a joke. Today, before you die, I'll show you what it means to be someone you cannot afford to provoke!"

Were it not for that ceaseless burning agony in his body, he might still have played a game of wits with Wei Zhao. But now, plainly, he had lost the patience for it.

In the end, it was strength that truly decided the course of a battle. Once one had strength sufficiently great, one need only crush the opponent to death outright—no need to waste any elaborate scheming at all!

The words had scarcely fallen when Yu Jiang's figure shot toward Wei Zhao once more like a cannonball, far faster than the speed he had displayed a moment before. In the blink of an eye he was already upon him.

Wei Zhao's heart lurched. The creature had indeed been hiding his strength. If that earlier strike had not been the Roaring Fire Fist, Twenty-Third Stance, but instead he had rashly spent the Roaring Fire Eight-Trigram Palm, Twenty-Second Stance—his single strongest killing move—then once his true qi was exhausted and the creature saw he had nothing left, the consequences would have been unthinkable.

For at the speed Yu Jiang had now revealed, that earlier strike, glaring as its flaw had been, would still have left him a fair chance of evading if he had gone all out. Had Wei Zhao simply and honestly cashed in the one killing move that might put the opponent down, the joke would truly have been on him.

Clearly, after falling into Wei Zhao's psychological trap, the creature had not been as panicked as he had let on; rather, he had turned it around and set a snare of his own. Had Wei Zhao believed he had spotted a fatal flaw and thrown everything into a desperate all-out assault, he would by now be a corpse on the ground.

A dangerous, cunning creature indeed—scheming in every last inch of him!

Closing on Wei Zhao, Yu Jiang raised the sword qi at his fingertips high, and from the set of his stance it seemed he meant to cleave Wei Zhao in two from head to foot with a single stroke.

And in truth, had he brought that stroke down so directly, and had Wei Zhao failed to evade it in time, such an end would have been all but certain—for this sword qi was sharper and mightier than the last, and even meeting it with the strongest of his arts, the Roaring Fire Eight-Trigram Palm, Twenty-Second Stance, Wei Zhao might not have matched it.

Unfortunately for him, why would Wei Zhao be foolish enough to stand there and let himself be hewn?

As the sword qi bore down on him, Wei Zhao's instinct was to twist aside and dodge. Yet before he could move, a lethal warning flared up from the depths of his instincts, and at the same moment the jade pendant's space began to signal incessantly.

Watching Wei Zhao's sidestepping motion, Yu Jiang's eyes took on a flicker of contemptuous mockery. As expected—before absolute strength, every scheme and trick was a superfluous joke. Bring out one's strongest killing move directly, and the opponent had no chance whatever of escaping this calamity!

Not to dodge meant death; to dodge meant death as well. This was his bottom-of-the-box strongest killing move: the Life-Reaping Chain Sword, Twenty-Fourth Stance.

A fearsome technique that could be cultivated only after reaching the mid Foundation Establishment stage. His opponent was nothing but a rootless rogue cultivator at the mere peak of the early Foundation Establishment stage—how could he possibly evade it so easily?

A single sword descending from on high seemed to grant the opponent a chance to dodge, but in truth it granted none at all—for the Life-Reaping Chain Sword, Twenty-Fourth Stance, did not end with this one sword. Behind it waited a second, still more lethal sword.

Sure enough, Wei Zhao had barely begun his motion to dodge right when he discovered that another "Yu Jiang" had been standing there all along, no one knew since when, sword qi of peerless sharpness likewise gathered at his fingertips. This "Yu Jiang" had been waiting here for some time!

It was not the true body, merely a phantom conjured for a time by the power of the Life-Reaping Chain Sword, Twenty-Fourth Stance. Yet though the man Yu Jiang was false, the sword qi was utterly real, its might identical to that gathered at the fingertips of the true body.

At a mere thought, this second, trailing sword qi and its phantom could appear anywhere within two zhang of him. Thus, however the opponent dodged, he might at best evade the first sword—but he could never, ever evade the second. This was the ruthless tyranny of the Life-Reaping Chain Sword, Twenty-Fourth Stance!

"Rest easy and die," Yu Jiang said with a faint smile at the "terror-stricken" Wei Zhao. Because Wei Zhao had dodged, the sword qi in his true body's hand had been cleanly split apart—but the one in the phantom's hand struck Wei Zhao squarely in the back.