Chapter 4577 — The Legendary Newcomer King

Crack! Qiao Hongcai's eyes were bloodshot, his face twisted with madness as he sank his teeth into Ma Dangfeng's foot. Even knowing the boot was cowhide, even knowing it would do the man no harm at all, he did not care—this was the only counterattack left to him, and it was enough if he could make the bastard feel pain. If he could bite through the leather and tear off half a foot before he died, that would be a profit!

Lu Bianren, Xiao Che, and Li Zhengming could hold back no longer. Gritting their teeth against the pain, they rushed toward their wretched senior brother and caught hold of him before his entire right leg could snap. If the leg broke completely, then even if he lived through today, he would be a cripple for the rest of his life—better dead than that.

"Hahaha! So this is one of Wei Zhao's little underlings? This weak, this useless—a rabble, nothing more! Seems either his judgment is rotten, or the man himself is. Birds of a feather flock together, after all!" Ma Dangfeng eyed the sorry spectacle before him, making no move to finish them off at once. Instead he doubled over, roaring with laughter.

Ever since he had entered the Welcome Pavilion a year ago, tales of Wei Zhao's legendary exploits had nearly worn calluses on his ears. If not for Wei Zhao's constant absence, he would have sought the man out long ago to settle the matter then and there—to show the world once and for all who truly deserved the title of strongest newcomer king.

But since the real target could not be found, venting his spleen on Wei Zhao's little underlings was fine enough. He had wanted to do this for a long time, only there had never been a fitting opportunity. Now that these people had delivered themselves to his door, nothing could be more perfect!

Faced with the venomous stares of the crowd—eyes blazing, wishing they could swallow him whole—Ma Dangfeng was utterly unruffled. On the contrary, he laughed with keen relish and said, "No need to be so tense. I told you before, I've killed my share, but I'm not really the bloodthirsty sort. Relax—I'm in a good mood today, so I won't kill you! Only... death may be spared, but punishment cannot be avoided. I intend to cripple every last one of you, one by one. And when that so-called Wei Zhao of yours comes back, I'll savor the look on his face. Hahaha!"

"You—!" The group ground their teeth in fury. Many against one, and yet they were utterly helpless before this Ma Dangfeng. That single exchange had made the gap in strength between them painfully clear. Even if their numbers were doubled, they would still be no match for him.

Among them, Lu Bianren was the strongest—and even he had not survived a single blow. As for Foundation Establishment experts like Xiao Che, they were even more hopeless, for the man facing them, Ma Dangfeng, was a Nascent Soul expert!

A newcomer who had joined the Welcome Pavilion barely a year ago, and he was a full-fledged Nascent Soul expert? The very notion overturned everyone's understanding of cultivation and of life itself. Yet it was fact—publicly confirmed at the recent inner sect tournament, beyond any doubt!

Were it not so, Ma Dangfeng could never have crushed and swept his way through an inner sect tournament crowded with powerhouses—even when he finally faced a Golden Core peak expert from the Soaring Heaven Pavilion whom many had favored. He had dispatched him in a single effortless move, displaying the overwhelming strength of a Nascent Soul expert for all to see. They said the entire hall had been struck dumb, frozen for the time it takes an incense stick to burn—not a single soul dared utter a word!

True, once one reached the Nascent Soul stage, one was no longer permitted to enter the inner sect tournament—but that rule applied to official inner sect disciples. Ma Dangfeng had been a newcomer then, and so naturally fell outside it.

Sucking in cold breaths through clenched teeth against the searing pain, their wretched senior brother and Xiao Che exchanged a glance, both seeing shock and helplessness in each other's eyes. The scene before them was all too familiar—they had lived through it many times before.

Of those present, Lu Bianren had done nothing but report to the higher-ups and seclude himself in cultivation ever since returning from the Southern Continent seas, with almost no contact with the outside world. Li Zhengming and Qiao Hongcai both belonged to the outer pavilion, and both were diligent cultivators who rarely concerned themselves with outside affairs. Only these two—the wretched senior brother and Xiao Che—had dealt most with Ma Dangfeng, and only they truly knew how terrifying the man's strength was!

In truth, when Ma Dangfeng first joined the Welcome Pavilion, aside from a somewhat prickly temperament, he had been no different from any other new disciple of the Azure Cloud Pavilion. His initial strength had been merely Heaven Rank peak, and he had shown no especially outrageous behavior in daily life.

But afterward, who knew what happened—the impression this creature gave the two of them was that overnight, his strength had surged wildly. From an obscure Heaven Rank peak, he had leapt all at once to the lofty heights of Golden Core peak! And after that, he had become a Nascent Soul expert.

Such a thing was utterly unprecedented, unheard of. After all, in everyone's eyes Wei Zhao was already a freak whose cultivation speed was infuriating to behold—and yet even he had climbed step by step, one footprint at a time. Shocking as it was, people could ultimately accept it, saying at most that this was simply the gulf between genius and mortal.

But Ma Dangfeng was different. From Heaven Rank peak to the lofty heights of Nascent Soul, the whole process had taken a single night—without the slightest warning!

Advancing three levels in one night might be acceptable—but from Heaven Rank peak to Nascent Soul spanned three entire major realms!

This was no case of smoke rising from an ancestral grave—this was a mushroom cloud about to go off!

Behind anything that seems unreasonable there must lie a reasonable explanation. After the shock of that sight, the wretched senior brother and Xiao Che, like everyone else, soon found one: from the very beginning, this creature Ma Dangfeng had been a Nascent Soul expert—he had simply been hiding his strength for some unknown reason.

This was the explanation accepted by common consent, and Ma Dangfeng himself was noncommittal—neither confirming nor denying it to anyone's face. And so it was taken as tacit admission.

Since Ma Dangfeng himself said nothing, no one could truly explain the matter. Everyone speculated about his motive for concealing his strength, but in the end it was all speculation. Yet on the very night Ma Dangfeng went from Heaven Rank peak to Nascent Soul, the wretched senior brother and Xiao Che discovered something exceedingly strange.

Overnight, the Soaring Heaven Pavilion, the Mysterious Mechanism Pavilion, and the Azure Cloud Pavilion—the three stacked pavilions of the Northern Isle—had each lost several disciples at the same time. Fifteen in all, and every one of them of no small strength; some were even inner sect core disciples regarded as the hope of their pavilions! (To be continued...)