Chapter 3717 — The Formation Breaks Down
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 3
After the newcomers of the Newcomer Welcoming Pavilion had departed, Shangguan Lan'er left along with them. Xu Lingchong alone remained behind, on the pretext of inquiring after his friends in the Law Enforcement Hall—his true purpose, of course, being to ferret out what had really happened.
"What on earth were you lot playing at? Did you take my words for nothing but wind past your ears? Don't tell me you couldn't even deal with a single Wei Zhao!" Xu Lingchong looked at the bedraggled Law Enforcement Hall experts, and his anger surged up from nowhere.
He had given Shangguan Lan'er his solemn word today that he would deal with Wei Zhao, and what a fine result it was: Wei Zhao not only emerged unscathed, but walked off in glory with a full score. Where was Young Master Xu supposed to put his face now?
Shangguan Lan'er had never paid him much mind to begin with; now that he had lost face today, she would give him even less of a kind look in the days to come!
Little did he know—had he but said the word that he meant to deal with Wei Zhao, Shangguan Lan'er, however much she loathed him, would have come trotting along all the same. After all, she was the young senior sister determined to shield Wei Zhao!
The Law Enforcement Hall experts exchanged a helpless look. This Young Master Xu, for all his deep background and the fact that he could not be provoked, was not someone before whom they had to tremble and quail as they had before Gongyang Jun; their faces could not help but show something of their displeasure.
The man at their head replied in a low voice, "Young Master Xu, we did indeed give it our all just now—otherwise we would never have driven the grand formation out of control. And you saw the situation with your own eyes: if Hall Master Gongyang had not come to our rescue in time, the several of us would be corpses by now!"
"Then how is Wei Zhao still completely unharmed? You all gave it your all, and you still let him take a full score?" Xu Lingchong asked, baffled.
In truth, he did not believe these men had ignored his words either. They were old acquaintances of long standing, and these men owed their present posts in the Law Enforcement Hall—which all regarded with awe—to his grandfather Xu Yuanzheng's connections. There was no reason for them to slight and offend him like this over a newcomer they had never even met.
This question puzzled not only Xu Lingchong but the Law Enforcement Hall experts themselves. If the grand formation had already slipped beyond their control after the twelvefold pressure, then what of before that? Everything had plainly been well within their grasp!
If Wei Zhao, a mere newcomer at the early Foundation Establishment stage, could calmly withstand twelvefold pressure, that would be far too absurd! Such a possibility simply did not exist. Something must have gone wrong in the process—something they had failed to notice at the time!
The men exchanged glances for a good while, and one of them thought it over and said, "Young Master Xu, brothers, at the fourth stick of incense, that Wei Zhao tried to stand and withdraw. Judging by how he looked then, he was clearly at the end of his tether—but midway through, for some reason, he sat back down! Doesn't that strike you all as very strange?"
"Now that you mention it!" The others clapped a hand to their heads at once. At the time they had taken Wei Zhao for a reckless fool greedy for points; thinking back on it now, it was indeed most peculiar.
"So I say, it is quite likely that by then the grand formation had already gone wrong and slipped beyond our control—perhaps from that moment on he bore not the slightest pressure at all, which is why he could appear so at ease. And we, never noticing, kept steadily raising the pressure, and that is what drove the grand formation utterly out of control and brought the backlash down on all of us." So the man summed up his analysis.