Chapter 3752 — He Got Away

Just as Wei Zhao was about to pick a direction and try his luck, a sound of footsteps came drifting from afar, and his heart instantly tightened. If anyone stumbled upon his pursuit and killing of Yu Jiang, the matter would become truly troublesome.

After all, the man was, by any reckoning, an inner disciple of the Soaring Heavens Pavilion. If Wei Zhao dared to kill him in front of witnesses, it would be nothing less than an open challenge to the Three-Tiered Pavilion—even seeking death had its proper methods, and this was not one of them.

Hearing the footsteps draw nearer and nearer, Wei Zhao could not help but feel a wave of helplessness. In his current state he might be somewhat better off than Yu Jiang, but not by much. Setting aside the fact that being caught would mean he could no longer continue the pursuit, if the one approaching happened to be someone with a crooked heart, harboring thoughts of robbing a man while he was down, then there would truly be no escape.

To be safe, Wei Zhao could only abandon his plan of pursuit, swiftly quitting the scene while sighing and lamenting all the while.

This thing was truly cunning and hard to deal with—even this had failed to kill him, and he had actually gotten away. Could the fellow be a weasel by birth?

And on top of that, apart from that death-dealing twin strike he had split in two just now, the bastard actually had this strange, powerful powder tucked away as his final trump card. Truly full of tricks and schemes, not to be taken lightly.

Still, having escaped such a golden opportunity this time, it would be very difficult to get rid of the man in the future. After all, though he knew the other was an inner disciple of the Soaring Heavens Pavilion, he did not even know his name; such a chance with no one else around would be hard to come by again.

Moreover, even if such an opportunity did arise in the future, given the cunning, caution, and formidable strength the man had displayed, unless Wei Zhao could crush him outright with even greater power, wanting to toy with him through psychological warfare the way he had this time would be almost as hard as ascending to heaven.

"Forget it. Since he got away, there's nothing to be done. It seems that in the future, when I use the Thousand-Silk Mask and the identity of Lin Er, I'll have to be more careful."

Wei Zhao shook his head helplessly. Fortunately, today he had worn the Thousand-Silk Mask and concealed his identity; otherwise, had he made an enemy of the man under his true identity, he would never know peace again.

He already had a pack of deadly foes like Xu Lingchong and Meng Jueming. Add a cunning, vicious Yu Jiang to the mix, and his days at the Welcome Pavilion would, barring accidents, be spent wasting time on that bunch of idiots every single day. What room would be left for focusing on cultivation?

Avoiding the eyes and ears of others along the way, Wei Zhao made it safely back to his cave dwelling in the Welcome Pavilion and immediately set about healing his wounds. Though he regretted not having killed Yu Jiang, successfully purchasing the Star-Ink Stone today was already a great success.

A supreme treasure capable of helping one achieve a perfect breakthrough to the Golden Core stage—if word of this got out, it would be a tremendous stroke of fortune that would set the whole world's eyes burning with envy!

Though Wei Zhao could not use it for the time being, that day would come eventually. A matchless Golden Core expert—from this point on, step by step, he would ascend into the ranks of Cloudstep Island's top powers. Just thinking about it was enough to set the blood racing!

What Wei Zhao did not know was that a full incense stick's time after he left, not far from the center of the dust explosion, beneath the thick yellow earth, something half-dead and covered in wounds struggled its way out—and it was none other than Yu Jiang.

Though from first to last Wei Zhao had toyed with his opponent through psychological warfare, he had made one miscalculation: he had underestimated the power of the twenty-second stance of his Frenzied Fire Eight-Trigram Palm.

True, the twenty-second stance could not outright kill an expert of the mid-Foundation Establishment stage, but given that perfect opening, that palm strike had unleashed virtually its full ten-tenths of power. Having taken that blow, Yu Jiang might not be dead, but he was gravely wounded beyond measure.

And then, using the powder to set off the dust explosion, he had inevitably been wounded all the more in the process; it was utterly impossible for him to have escaped far in such a short span of time.

Yu Jiang knew well that if he could reach a place where people were present, Wei Zhao would not dare pursue him further no matter how bold he was. But the problem was this: he had followed Wei Zhao all this way and deliberately chosen such a remote, out-of-the-way corner before launching his sneak attack.

To return to the main road where people came and went, he would have to flee at least two li. And in his injured state, it was utterly impossible to run that far without Wei Zhao sensing him. So he could only seek survival amid danger, staying where he was and, taking advantage of the dust explosion, burying himself deep in the earth. His only hope of life lay in gambling that Wei Zhao would not linger here too long.

This was a truly ruthless move. Never mind how long Wei Zhao might stay—doing this first of all drove Yu Jiang himself to a dead end.

Buried deep in the earth, an ordinary person could not possibly survive. As a mid-Foundation Establishment expert he was naturally not in that category, but one must not forget that he was now gravely wounded and on the verge of death. Bury him a little too long, and he would suffocate just like any ordinary man.

And even if he did not suffocate, he might not have the strength to struggle his way out of the earth—and that, too, meant death.

But Yu Jiang had not considered any of this; he simply did it, seeking life in death—and amazingly, he had grasped that final thread of survival!

Of course, that thread of survival owed something to luck. Had no one happened to pass by at that moment, Wei Zhao would surely have stayed to search the area thoroughly, and would never have let him off so easily.

One could only say that heaven never seals off all paths. Though Yu Jiang had been wrong from start to finish, from the moment he set his sights on Wei Zhao today, his luck at the end had not been bad. Even if he had kicked an iron board and shattered all his teeth, he had at least managed to save his miserable hide.

"Huff—huff—"

Finally seeing the light of day again, Yu Jiang gulped down breath after breath greedily. Though his injuries were severe enough that he might drop dead at any moment, with the vitality of a mid-Foundation Establishment expert, so long as no outside force intervened and he himself did not wish to die, he still had a chance to live.

Heh, good thing I had a trump card, or I really would have been beaten to death today by that one strike I never saw coming!

Swaying unsteadily, he barely managed to push himself up from the ground. Yet Yu Jiang did not leave at once; instead, he gazed in the direction Wei Zhao had gone, and said in a weak but puzzled voice, "That way leads only to the Welcome Pavilion. A common rootless rogue cultivator shouldn't be heading in that direction. Could this fellow actually be a new recruit of the Welcome Pavilion? Unlikely—when has the Welcome Pavilion ever had a newcomer at the peak of the early Foundation Establishment stage? Or else... is this fellow an administrator of the Welcome Pavilion?"

After pondering for a long while, Yu Jiang, weakened by his grave injuries, grew so dizzy that he nearly fell to the ground. Only after barely steadying himself did he stagger away. RS