Chapter 4510 — Kill!

Meanwhile, no one else present had yet realized what had happened—but the Old Sect of the Western Mountains, standing on the platform, suddenly gave a twitch of his dark brows. A titan of a heretic cultivator at the Mountain-Opening Stage now, to the astonishment of all, betrayed a flicker of wariness. In the eyes of the crowd, that was rarer than the sun rising in the west!

But before anyone could begin to murmur, what happened next struck every soul present dumb. The top-grade bomb Wei Zhao had been charging from the very first moment he laid eyes on Cheng Haonan unleashed its full force in an instant, sweeping the entire arena!

With the Moleng Plaza at its center, the whole Moleng Sea region convulsed—earth shook, mountains swayed—and a tsunami of unimaginable fury reared up out of nowhere. A vast mushroom cloud rose over Moleng City, majestic and quaking, the end of days come down.

And the Moleng Plaza, the heart of the blast, was now drowning in dust and ash, sky and sun blotted out. Even those facilities that had seemed intact, guarded as they were by layers upon layers of meticulous formations, were scoured away in a single breath. The crowd on the spot was flung into chaos, bodies tumbling, a scene of utter ruin.

The injured, caught in the bomb's afterwave, were everywhere; the worst cases lay at death's door on the spot. Yet the one mercy in the calamity was that everyone attending today was at least a Golden Core expert—had it been a gathering of ordinary spectators like the Southern Continent Escort Agency's grand assembly before, hundreds, even a thousand, would surely have died here. That would truly have been to die for nothing.

The whole arena dissolved into pandemonium, and at the rate the dust was rising, the confusion would have taken several hours to settle. But just then a black wind sprang up out of nowhere and swept the dust away in a heartbeat. The Moleng Plaza saw the sun again, and the full wreckage of the scene lay bare at a glance.

Wounded and unwounded alike, everyone's first instinct was to look toward where Wei Zhao had stood. Even an expert at the peak of late Nascent Soul like Hai Wuliang wore plain, unmistakable terror on his face—and so did every other soul there.

Because of Wei Zhao's formidable showing in the earlier matches, everyone present had already rated him highly. At the very least, no one treated him as an ordinary mid-stage Golden Core expert; in their minds his standing had vaulted a full major realm, enough to rank him alongside mid-stage Nascent Soul masters.

Yet none of them had ever imagined that even so, they were still vastly underestimating this freak of nature!

The power of that heaven-defying blast just now—stand a little too close, and even a peak late-stage Nascent Soul master like Hai Wuliang would have been torn to shreds in a matter of moments. There was not the slightest doubt of it.

At the thought that he had once set his heart on trampling such a madman into the ground, Hai Wuliang broke out in a cold sweat, frightened by himself. Thank heavens he had not gone up to face the man in person—otherwise he would have died without ever knowing how.

And not only Hai Wuliang: even Wei Zhao's own people, Qi Wenmo and the rest, were struck dumb with shock. They had always thought Wei Zhao remarkable, but they had never known he could be remarkable to such a degree.

Yet at this moment, even had they wished to show their awe, they had no chance—for Wei Zhao had long since vanished without a trace. Not even a shadow of him remained.

As for Cheng Haonan, who had stood in that same spot, he too had disappeared. The crowd was trading helpless glances when someone suddenly cried out, voice strained low yet unable to hide the shock: "Look!"

All eyes followed the sound, and at last they found Cheng Haonan. Blood streamed from his seven orifices; a full dozen or more transparent holes, large and small, riddled him from head to foot. He was dead beyond any doubt.

That was no surprise. He had been less than a fathom from Wei Zhao; caught in the blast at such close range, that a body reasonably intact should remain at all was a miracle of no small order. Survival was out of the question—unless he had been an expert of the Mystic Ascension Stage, perhaps.

However mighty Cheng Haonan was, however often he struck above his realm, his body was still fundamentally that of a Golden Core cultivator, and its defenses were what they were. Being blasted to death was nothing strange.

Cheng Haonan's death had been expected by all; what truly stunned them was where he now was—held aloft in one hand by a single man, none other than the ashen-faced Old Sect of the Western Mountains.

The whole Moleng Plaza lay in wreckage, yet the ground beneath the Old Sect's feet alone was left wholly unscathed—a Mountain-Opening Stage heretic titan was, after all, no ordinary being. Even so, that could not change one awkward fact: the Old Sect had clearly acted just now, and yet had failed to save Cheng Haonan.

The instant Wei Zhao spread his palm and released the top-grade bomb, the Old Sect knew things had gone badly. He knew that at this rate Cheng Haonan was doomed—and this was the disciple he had just taken in. To let a disciple die before his very eyes—would the Old Sect of the Western Mountains not be laughed to death for it?

So in that instant, the Old Sect chose to act and save the man. Alas, he had still been too late. Cheng Haonan had indeed been snatched back—only as a battered, broken corpse.

"How dare you, you little wretch!" The Old Sect's face was livid, his hoarse, shrill voice grating against every eardrum in the hall, driving the crowd to bow their heads and dare not meet his eye.

Even the dullest among them understood: this Mountain-Opening Stage heretic titan had swallowed a silent loss at Wei Zhao's hands and was now in the throes of humiliated rage. Should anyone show the slightest disrespect, the Old Sect might well slaughter everyone present.

He might speak of cultivating his mind and nature, but a heretic cultivator was a heretic cultivator—without a grand bloodbath now and then, how could he do justice to the title of heretic titan?

Qi Wenmo and the others watched this scene with secret exultation. They might not know the particulars, but one thing at least was certain: Wei Zhao seemed to have gotten away unscathed.

To escape from under the nose of a Mountain-Opening Stage heretic titan—never mind a Golden Core expert, even a Nascent Soul master would not dare imagine such a thing, and yet Wei Zhao had gone and done it. The crowd could only sigh: truly, wherever he went, miracles were everywhere.

At this moment every gaze in the hall stole toward the Old Sect of the Western Mountains. They were all wondering how this Mountain-Opening Stage heretic titan would react—would he fly into a humiliated rage outright, or put on the airs of a lofty master?

But what none of them expected was that no sooner had their eyes fixed on him than the Old Sect's figure vanished from where he stood without the slightest warning, never to be seen again. Had it not been for the corpse of Cheng Haonan, riddled with holes, left lying on the ground, the crowd would have thought the man had never been there at all.

Meanwhile, fifty li away, Wei Zhao—ignoring the churning injuries within his body—was doing his utmost to employ the Super Butterfly Microstep, speeding away from Moleng City. (To be continued.)