Chapter 4478 — Spare Your Life

Qi Wenmo's face stiffened, the veins on his forehead bulging, and he was on the verge of stepping into the ring to fight when a glance from Wei Zhao stopped him short, and he forced himself to hold back.

After spending this time together, he had come to understand Wei Zhao's character somewhat. For all that he was easy to get along with day to day, he was in truth a man of strong convictions; once he set his mind on something, ten oxen could not drag him back.

"Qingtian Escort Agency—I will be the one to answer the challenge. But by the rules, I should be entitled to a stick of incense's rest, should I not?" Wei Zhao said evenly.

"Granted." The presiding judge glanced at Wei Zhao. Someone had already lit a stick of incense at the edge of the ring to keep time, and scarcely half of it had burned; Wei Zhao could still rest for at least half a stick more.

"Hmph. Fine, then. I'll let you live half a stick of incense longer," Wu Baoliang sneered with an ugly cackle.

He knew better than anyone just how horrific the power of the Wild Sand Thousand Explosions Fist was, and so he was not the least bit worried about whether Wei Zhao could recover during the rest—it was simply impossible.

In fact, if he had not deliberately held back at the final moment, Wei Zhao would already be a corpse. How could he possibly still be alive now?

"Brother Ling, then I leave it to you. But I say it again—do not force yourself. Points can be lost, but nothing must happen to you," Qi Wenmo had no choice but to urge him.

"Rest easy. I know my limits," Wei Zhao nodded, then closed his eyes once more. To outsiders it looked like nothing more than a last-minute sharpening of the blade before battle in the remaining half stick of incense; little did they know that after the earlier half stick's worth of true qi treatment, Wei Zhao had already recovered to his full strength.

The reason he kept sitting in meditation on the ground was, apart from blinding Wu Baoliang and the others present, that Wei Zhao had another, more important matter to attend to: he was ceaselessly reconstructing in his mind Wu Baoliang's Wild Sand Thousand Explosions Fist from a moment ago.

Wu Baoliang was nothing but a demonic cultivator, and Wei Zhao had never truly taken the man seriously before. But after the fight just now, he had to admit one thing—this demonic cultivator was strong. His Wild Sand Thousand Explosions Fist in particular was no small matter in the sheer magnitude of its power.

This much could be seen plainly from the fact that Wei Zhao's thirty-strike Furious Fire Eight Trigrams Palm had failed to fully penetrate his opponent. The man's cultivation was merely at the peak of the Golden Core stage, yet the force he unleashed was on par with the mid Nascent Soul stage—an outrageous, heaven-defying extent that was in no way inferior even to the Furious Fire Eight Trigrams Palm that Wei Zhao relied upon most.

And more critically, Wu Baoliang's Wild Sand Thousand Explosions Fist was not merely astonishing in power; it was also highly practical.

Unlike other killing moves that required the right timing and conditions, the Wild Sand Thousand Explosions Fist left opponents essentially helpless once it was unleashed. Whether used one-on-one or against many, it was a rare and superlative choice.

In short, it was a killing move seldom seen in this world—and so Wei Zhao resolved to make it his own.

To suffer at the hands of an opponent's killing move and then want to learn it on the spot—in the eyes of others this was sheer fantasy, with not the slightest bit of feasibility.

Setting aside whether one even possessed the innate attributes required to cultivate another's killing move, even if the conditions were all right, how easy was it to actually master?

Others might toil at it for decades and still achieve only a minor success, and you want to master it in less than a stick of incense's time—how could that be possible? That was not just a brain addled by water; someone had dropped a brain into the water!

Yet while this was unrealistic for anyone else, on Wei Zhao—with his five elements and seven attributes, all of them true spirit-root attributes—it was another matter entirely.

With a deep, prodigious foundation like his set firmly beneath him, no matter what move his opponent used, Wei Zhao could take the martial techniques he already knew, combine them with the opponent's unique method of activation, and reconstruct and assemble it bit by bit; once he had gradually grasped and grown familiar with it, he could truly make it his own.

He had done this many times before—the Furious Fire Eight Trigrams Palm was a ready example. To advance one's strength swiftly, one had to walk on two legs: raising one's cultivation was one side of it, but on the other, one's martial techniques had to keep evolving as well. Neither could be dispensed with, and Wei Zhao clearly understood this principle well.

Of course, reconstructing and assembling any martial technique was an extremely complex and difficult undertaking, and the more exquisite, profound, and powerful the technique, the harder it was to reconstruct—so much so that even with Wei Zhao's wealth of experience, facing Wu Baoliang's Wild Sand Thousand Explosions Fist at this moment, he was lost in a thousand threads and ten thousand strands.

Over and over, like a film reel playing in Wei Zhao's mind, the scene on the ring replayed without cease. He disassembled the opponent's Wild Sand Thousand Explosions Fist piece by piece, and after combining it with his own understanding and insights, reassembled it bit by bit once more.

If conditions allowed, the best method would be to reconstruct it in his mind for a time and then try it out with his own body on the spot, for only thus could he truly know whether his reconstruction had succeeded, and where the problems lay.

But with so many people watching, Wei Zhao plainly had no means to do so. He could only silently rehearse it within his mind, relying on his rich past experience to judge whether the reconstruction had succeeded—a truly high-difficulty technical feat that ordinary people could not manage at all.

In the end, after the Wild Sand Thousand Explosions Fist had been disassembled and rehearsed countless times, it was finally reassembled successfully in Wei Zhao's mind—yet it had, remarkably, taken on an entirely different form. Once actually executed, it would likely be vastly different from Wu Baoliang's original Wild Sand Thousand Explosions Fist.

There was no helping it. To this moment, Wei Zhao still could not fully confirm whether that wisp of black qi about Wu Baoliang was a trait of demonic cultivators or some exceedingly rare variant spirit-root attribute. So even with his five elements and seven attributes, he had no way to fully replicate the black qi.

A stick of incense's time was not long. As the last bit of ash fell, the spectators perked up at once. Though nine out of ten of them were certain Wei Zhao was a dead man, watching such a sensational life-and-death duel still stirred an inexplicable, exhilarating thrill that left them unable to tear themselves away.

Wu Baoliang glanced sidelong at Wei Zhao below the ring and was about to offer a few taunts, but before he could open his mouth, Wei Zhao had already risen to his feet of his own accord and walked straight up onto the platform.

"Hmph. At least you know what's good for you." Wu Baoliang looked at Wei Zhao, who had come to a stop not far in front of him, and sneered, "Boy, it was only because I deliberately held back that you escaped with your life just now. By now you should have a clear picture of the gap in strength between you and me, shouldn't you? I'll say it one last time: tell me that little trick, and I'll spare your life!" (No update yesterday; nine chapters today as a burst to make up for it! Chapter 1.) (To be continued) R1071