Chapter 4387 — Are You an Idiot?

"Oh-ho? Getting cocky now, are we?" The scarred man laughed instead of taking offense, and the scar slashed across his face grew all the more savage and hideous. Leaning in closer, he sneered, "You won't take the gentle cup, so you'll drink the bitter one. You brought this on yourself, boy—don't blame me for having no mercy!"

With that, the scarred man shot out a hand to grab at Wei Zhao, ready to search him on the spot, while the rest of the dungeon crowd looked on coldly, and quite a few were even gloating over his misfortune.

When they had first been dragged in here, they too had suffered this same miserable treatment. Now, watching someone follow in their footsteps, they felt not a shred of fellow feeling—on the contrary, they thought it only right. If Wei Zhao weren't bullied by the scarred man, they would have felt it unfair.

From beginning to end, not a single person favored Wei Zhao. The scarred man was an expert of the mid-Nascent Soul stage, and though this newcomer had yet to reveal his strength, by any measure he did not look like the scarred man's match.

This was not pure contempt for Wei Zhao. The saying "judge by appearances" may carry a pejorative ring, but in truth it often holds good—after all, as the old saying goes, the face reflects the heart.

In the world of cultivation, if a person has practiced exquisite and profound techniques of mind and martial skill, his features and bearing will naturally change with them. Anyone who looked as crude and boorish as Wei Zhao was bound to be the sort whose cultivation fell short—and such people were generally none too strong.

Even Lu Bianren was thoroughly unimpressed with Wei Zhao. A wise man does not eat a loss before his eyes; since his strength fell short, he would do better to play the fool for now and store up his power. To brazen it out at a moment like this could be summed up in one word: foolish.

Yet what happened next made every jaw in the dungeon drop—even Lu Bianren needed a long moment before he could collect himself.

Without the slightest warning, Wei Zhao lashed the scarred man across the face with a Frenzied Fire Eight-Trigram Palm. The scarred man had expected this fellow to be a thorn in his side and had been on guard against a strike, but when the moment came he found he had no time to react at all. One palm strike sent this proud mid-Nascent Soul expert spinning three full circles on the spot, utterly dazed.

Then, before the scarred man could recover his senses, Wei Zhao lifted a leg and drove a Frenzied Fire Thousand-Leg strike squarely into the center of his back.

Boom! With a thunderous crash, the scarred man was slammed spread-eagled against the wall, and the whole dungeon shook violently. Had it not been reinforced by protective formations, the entire place might well have come crashing down.

A dead silence fell over the crowd. Every mouth hung open, and for a long while no one could utter a word; only the ebb and flow of sharp indrawn breaths gave voice to what they were all feeling.

They had been locked in this dungeon not for a day or two but for several months at least, and had long since grown used to the scarred man's bullying. Strength ruled, and the fist was king; the scarred man was the strongest, so naturally this place was his to command, and no one could defy him.

Of course, there had been exceptions before. There were always hot-blooded men who refused to submit so meekly, but their fates were all the same. Whoever dared to resist ended up beaten half to death by the scarred man, and after that never dared so much as breathe a word—while the two guards outside paid it no mind at all, which only fed the scarred man's arrogance.

Who could ever have imagined that such a scene would unfold today? The scarred man had kicked a steel plate and wound up drawing his own blood!

In an instant, the fear the crowd had felt for the scarred man shifted entirely onto Wei Zhao. As for the once-overbearing scarred man, after barely scraping himself off the wall, he lay there coughing up blood, and the look in everyone's eyes as they regarded him was one and the same: gloating satisfaction.

You lorded it over the dungeon for so long—you had this coming, Scarface. Heaven really does have eyes!

"You... you're Nascent Soul too?" After coughing up a horrifying pool of fresh blood, the scarred man finally recovered a little and raised his head to stare at Wei Zhao in disbelief.

He was plainly just a crude brute—how could he be such an expert? Since when had Nascent Soul experts become so cheap?

"Hmph!" Wei Zhao gave a cold, noncommittal snort, looking down at him with disdain, neither confirming nor denying it.

To everyone else, the scarred man's question was utter nonsense. A mid-Nascent Soul expert like him had nearly been crippled in a single exchange—if this ruthless fellow wasn't a Nascent Soul expert, was he supposed to be a Golden Core expert?

It was plain as day: this newcomer was not only a Nascent Soul expert but one at least above the mid-Nascent Soul stage. Dealing with a mere Scarface would be child's play for him.

"You... you..." The scarred man had meant to toss off a few harsh words to save face, but a single casual glance from Wei Zhao made him shrink his neck right back. The little momentum he had scraped together scattered into nothing, and that torn expression—scared to death inside yet still trying to puff himself up—was truly enough to make anyone laugh.

"You what?" A faint, ambiguous curl hung at the corner of Wei Zhao's mouth.

"I yield, I won't provoke you—but don't you get any grand ideas either. If you think you can push me around from now on, you're badly mistaken!" The scarred man staggered to his feet and put on a show of toughness. "Just now I was caught off guard, that's all. I'm a mid-Nascent Soul expert, after all—if we really went at it tooth and nail, it'd only leave us both broken. So I'll take a step back: I won't provoke you, and you don't provoke me. Our waters stay separate from yours!"

"Are you an idiot?" Wei Zhao shot him a look as though at a halfwit, then casually flicked out a true qi bomb.

He had been secretly gathering it all this while. From the moment the man provoked him of his own accord, Wei Zhao had never intended to let this thing off lightly. Since he had delivered himself up to be made an example of, he would have to be crippled if not killed outright.

Boom! Another thunderous crash, and the scarred man let out a miserable shriek as he was once more embedded in the wall, where he hung motionless for a long while.

The crowd exchanged glances, thinking Scarface had been killed on the spot—but a moment later, the scarred man suddenly gave a wail and, trembling all over, dug himself out of the wall once again.

His head was drenched in blood, his skull blown into a veritable gourd of gore. Looking at the sorry state he was in now, even the people he had bullied could not help feeling a twinge of pity. (To be continued...) R527