Chapter 4473 — Blown Away

The Qingtian Escort Agency had a full one thousand and seventy points to its name. Eleven consecutive challenges were all it would take to transfer that absurd score onto his own head. By then, Qingtian would be eliminated outright, and his own Longzhou Escort Agency would rise as the new overlord of the trade, with no one left to contend against it!

"Yes, yes, killing him in one blow would be letting him off too easy. At the very least we ought to leave him half-dead ten or eight times over first!" Cheng Haonan nodded along from the side.

"No problem." Hai Wuliang gave a sinister cackle, baring his teeth in a ghastly grin. "That brat dared to put on airs in front of me before. If I don't beat the shit out of him this time, my name isn't Hai Wuliang."

With that, Hai Wuliang rose and stepped up onto the platform, trailing an eerie, unnameable air of wickedness. He came to a stop before Wei Zhao—near, but not too near—and simply fixed him with those slanted triangular yin-yang eyes of his, neither yin nor yang, watching Wei Zhao in that ambiguous, unreadable way.

At the same moment, Wei Zhao looked at the creature and could not help but feel a surge of delight, for the thought in his heart was the very same line the other man was thinking: *Worn-out iron shoes search everywhere in vain, yet the prize comes to hand without the slightest strain.*

"Boy, tell me the trick you used to hide the escort token back then, and I'll spare your life," Hai Wuliang suddenly spoke up with a cackling laugh. He had no real interest in Wei Zhao to begin with; the only thing still gnawing at him was that business with the hidden token. He genuinely could not work out what trick could possibly have slipped past his Ten Thousand Things Mutual Annihilation.

"You want to know? Go figure it out yourself. But I'm afraid you haven't much time left. If you set off on the road with an unanswered question weighing on you, I fear you'll die with your eyes still open." Wei Zhao responded with a faint smile.

Inwardly, however, Wei Zhao had not relaxed in the slightest. He had absolute confidence in his own strength, but he was never one to be blindly conceited, still less to underestimate an opponent. And beyond that, he could sense something faintly unusual emanating from the other man.

This demonic cultivator, Hai Wuliang—he was likely not as simple as he appeared.

"Heh heh, cocky little brat, aren't you." Hai Wuliang broke into an unbridled, grotesque laugh. He pointed at Wei Zhao with a look of supreme disdain. "Doesn't matter. When I set my mind to something, no one can stop me. It's fine if you won't tell me your little token-hiding trick now—soon enough you'll be begging to tell me. It'll just cost me a bit of trouble, that's all."

"Oh. Then I'll wait." Wei Zhao's face was all serene detachment. In Hai Wuliang's eyes he was already a dead man—but then, was Hai Wuliang, in his eyes, really a living one?

In terms of strength, both sides were formidable beings capable of instantly killing Nascent Soul-stage experts across a major realm of cultivation, merely cloaked in the outward guise of the Gold Core stage. Each held absolute confidence in himself, and yet neither knew the other's true depths. After all, they had never crossed swords directly; whatever little they knew of each other was mere hearsay.

Before the fight had even begun, the air between them was already thick with gunpowder. The spectators below all perked up with interest. Among them were no few sharp-eyed folk, and while Wei Zhao, who had shone so brightly earlier, needed no introduction, even Hai Wuliang, cloaked in his eerie aura, was in their eyes anything but an ordinary figure.

This match, quite naturally, became the focal battle. Everyone was privately speculating that since these two on stage carried such an imposing presence, their true strength must surely be extraordinary.

At the presiding referee's command, a long stick of incense was lit at the edge of the arena as customary, and the showdown between Wei Zhao and Hai Wuliang—the duel both sides had long awaited—officially began.

Strike first to seize the advantage! Wei Zhao was the first to unleash his power, executing the Butterfly Microstep beneath his feet. His form was like a phantom, tracing a profoundly mysterious arc as he shot swiftly toward Hai Wuliang.

"Heh heh, such big talk—and here I thought you might actually be strong. In the end you're nothing but a little minnow of the mid Gold Core stage. Even if you hop about, how far can you hop? What a disappointment." Hai Wuliang cackled at the sight. Facing the swiftly closing Wei Zhao, he neither dodged nor retreated; a sinister black qi abruptly surged from his body, and he raised his hand and threw a punch.

Since the other man had made it plain he wanted a head-on clash, Wei Zhao naturally would not let the opportunity slip. With his strength, facing a Gold Core perfection expert in a straight exchange, the difficulty of coming off worse was considerable indeed—after all, Wei Zhao was never the kind of arrogant fool who underestimated his opponents.

A thick layer of fiery shadow abruptly enveloped his swift, wind-like leg. Without a moment's pause, Wei Zhao immediately swept out a Frenzied Blaze Thousand Legs. That kick was something an ordinary Gold Core perfection expert simply could not withstand, and it would be more than enough to test Hai Wuliang's true measure.

Bang! On one side Wei Zhao's Frenzied Blaze Thousand Legs, on the other Hai Wuliang's eerie black fist—accompanied by a muffled crash like iron bones colliding, a violent, surging wave of qi instantly erupted across the arena. The crowd below all changed color at once: these two were strong, all right!

Amid the qi wave, a figure on stage was flung violently backward, finally managing to land barely at the very edge of the arena. Had he not been quick-eyed and quick-handed enough to drive a fist into the arena floor to add resistance, he would likely have been thrown clean off the platform. In other words, this duel had nearly been decided in a single exchange.

"Brother Ling!" Qi Wenmo's eyes flew wide. At the same moment, everyone in the Qingtian Escort Agency turned ashen in unison, for the figure sent flying was none other than Wei Zhao!

Because of all the miraculous deeds that had come before, the Qingtian Escort Agency, from top to bottom, held a confidence in Wei Zhao that could only be called peerless—so much so that it had reached the point of blind worship.

After all, this was a figure who had crippled even old Kong, an expert at the peak of the early Nascent Soul stage. Even a man like Qi Wenmo, who bore the title of "Little Unrivaled of the Gold Core," considered himself inferior. So now, facing a mere Gold Core perfection expert, how could he possibly lose?

And yet this very same invincible figure had just been sent flying in a single exchange by that eerie, sinister Hai Wuliang!

Qi Wenmo did not believe it. Qi Mingyuan did not believe it. Steward Song did not believe it. No one in the Qingtian Escort Agency, high or low, believed it—but the facts lay plainly before their eyes, and believe it they must. Wei Zhao really did seem to be no match for Hai Wuliang.

Qi Wenmo stamped his feet in frantic anxiety. The points could go hang—but nothing could be allowed to happen to Wei Zhao!

Just as had been said before, if it truly came to the worst, he could seize the moment to leap straight off the arena and concede—at least that would guarantee his life. Unfortunately, such a course was destined to be utterly at odds with Wei Zhao's character.

On the arena at that moment, Wei Zhao steadied himself and rose to his feet. Apart from a numbness in his leg, he had suffered no serious injury—he merely looked a little bedraggled.

"The strength of this thing is actually no less than that of a mid Nascent Soul expert!" Wei Zhao watched Hai Wuliang from afar, and a chill of alarm ran through his heart.