Chapter 4611 — About to Need an Amputation

At these words, a great swath of the surrounding crowd suddenly came to their senses. Nine out of ten of them had bet on Ma Dangfeng to win, and now they had lost everything in a single stroke. One after another they took up the cursing, each of them wishing he could drown the useless pretty-boy in a single mouthful of spit.

"What the hell do you know! Bro Qiang is obviously feigning weakness before the enemy—just wait till he unleashes his peerless martial arts, and that has-been new champion Wei Zhao will be begging for death!" Ma Dangfeng's lackey shouted indignantly.

"That's right, that's right! Bro Qiang is invincible—how could some early-stage peak Nascent Soul nobody possibly be a match for him? You blind, witless fools!" The same lackey who had been slapped into the crowd by Wei Zhao earlier joined in the shouting—only to be trampled underfoot once again by the furious mob. Another stampede, just like that.

Hearing the two lackeys' bluster, Wei Zhao glanced blandly at the wretched, bedraggled Ma Dangfeng and shook his head with a sigh. "I could accept it if the leader were a madman, but I never imagined the two hangers-on would be even madder. Truly, birds of a feather flock together! Your leader is already in such a sorry state, and you still have the stomach to stand here deceiving yourselves? Get him to a hospital, and fast! Don't say I didn't warn you—wait a little longer and he'll be needing an amputation. I may not have practiced medicine for many years, but I still know that much."

"Amputation?" The lackey shot Wei Zhao a look and was just about to unleash a torrent of mockery when Ma Dangfeng's furious roar erupted from beside him—a bellow forced out through gritted teeth against piercing agony: "You worthless trash! Get me to the Pill Hall, now! Do you actually want me to die here!"

Wei Zhao's words had been teasing, but every one of them was true. Ma Dangfeng could feel exactly how badly wrecked his knees were now; if he delayed any longer, not even a miracle doctor would be able to save them, and he would be a cripple for life. He did not dare even to imagine such a miserable fate.

At Ma Dangfeng's roar, the lackey was struck dumb. So it wasn't anything like what they had imagined after all? He stood frozen for a moment, then hurriedly rushed forward, hoisted Ma Dangfeng onto his back, and without another word barreled out of the crowd, stumbling all the way toward the Pill Hall.

From first to last, Wei Zhao showed not the slightest intention of stopping them. When he had learned earlier that Ma Dangfeng had once nearly killed Miserable Senior Brother and the others, a flicker of killing intent had indeed stirred in him—with his strength, killing Ma Dangfeng would have been child's play—but on second thought he had tamped that sliver of intent back down.

Whether Ma Dangfeng lived or died hardly mattered. Given Wei Zhao's present strength and standing, even killing him in public would not have drawn any serious pursuit from the Threefold Pavilion—this was a challenge match, after all, and Ma Dangfeng had been the one to initiate it. If his strength fell short, whose fault was that?

Wei Zhao did not care a whit whether that clown Ma Dangfeng lived or died, but he did want to know who was backing him. He had only just returned and did not yet understand much, but even a fool could guess that someone stood behind this man, and that the power behind him was not to be taken lightly. Otherwise, why would another top-ranked Nascent Soul new champion have popped up out of nowhere right after Wei Zhao? Did they really think the Qingyun Pavilion's ancestors had sent up a curl of good smoke and that martial fortune simply rained down on them?

They watched helplessly as Ma Dangfeng and his men fled in disgrace. The rest stood speechless for a long while, every one of them still gripped by a sense of unreality, exchanging glances despite themselves. A showdown between the previous and current new champions, hyped to the heavens—and it was over just like that...

Before this, Ma Dangfeng had always been an invincible figure in their eyes, and public opinion had been almost unanimously of the view that he would effortlessly crush Wei Zhao, the former new champion. The man himself had bellowed it everywhere, in public and in private alike, swearing up and down that he would grind Wei Zhao underfoot and make him eat shit. So how was it that when it came to the real thing, he turned out to be the sort to be finished off in a single move?

Looking at Wei Zhao's calm, unruffled air, everyone present could not help swallowing hard. More than half of them were in fact Threefold Pavilion disciples, and many were inner sect disciples whose seniority ran far deeper than Wei Zhao's—yet at this moment they no longer dared even to meet his eyes on level terms. They were looking up at him, wholly and utterly.

By the unwritten rules of the Threefold Pavilion, reaching the Golden Core stage automatically admitted one to the inner sect; and once a disciple's strength reached the Nascent Soul stage, he could rise above his fellow disciples to seek the posts of managing senior brother and elder—or at the very least become a big name in one of the important halls.

And Wei Zhao, a transcendent figure who could kill a mid-stage Nascent Soul expert in a single blow, was in everyone's eyes a shoo-in for the Pavilion's upper echelon. Whether he would become an elder or a hall boss in the days to come depended entirely on his own preference. At the thought that Wei Zhao might one day be their direct superior, the crowd naturally felt they ought to act deferential and strive to leave a good impression on him.

"Pavilion Master Ku San, it's been a long time—how have you been lately?" At that moment someone in the crowd finally came to his senses and, plastering on a fawning smile, stepped forward to greet Miserable Senior Brother.

The others were no fools either. Seeing this, they too quickly caught on, and one after another followed suit, grinning as they crowded in to ingratiate themselves with the people around Wei Zhao. They were not close to Wei Zhao himself and dared not approach him lightly to strike up a conversation—but the people around him were another matter.

It was not only Miserable Senior Brother; Lu Bianren, Xiao Che, Qiao Hongcai, and Li Zhengming—not one of them escaped either, and in an instant a crowd had gathered around each of them. After all, one does not strike a smiling face, and though they were vexed at heart, they could not show it. They could only force wry smiles and put up with these people.

Wei Zhao himself, the man of the hour, had for the moment no one bold enough to come curry favor with him. Though he was the one everyone most wished to please, the crowd still had a measure of self-awareness: to speak with an existence capable of killing a mid-stage Nascent Soul expert in a single blow, one needed at least to be of the Nascent Soul level. These people present simply did not qualify—they were not even on the same plane, so how could they possibly hold a conversation?

Making a fool of oneself would not only invite ridicule, but might well breed disgust in Wei Zhao's heart—that truly would be courting death, and when the time came one would not even be able to cry.

Wei Zhao watched this scene with a smile. It was no bad thing that Miserable Senior Brother and the others should be so popular, and he was glad to see it. More friends means more roads; once one has sufficient strength of one's own, a wide web of connections only makes it easier to get things done. As for catching up with everyone, there was no harm in putting that off a little while longer.

The cultivators' guild on North Island was a scene of hubbub, as bustling as a vegetable market—and yet the focus was not on those bounty missions at all! (To be continued...)