Chapter 4097 — Swiftly Wanted
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
"No need. They won't let it go that easily, and this way we move faster." Wei Zhao spoke without turning his head, pouring all his strength into the Butterfly Microstep. Even carrying a person on his back, he was still far faster than Xue Li, a peak Earth-Rank cultivator, could ever have been on her own.
Exquisite as the Butterfly Microstep was, it took only a moment before Wei Shenjin's figure came trailing close behind.
Carrying someone on his back ultimately cost him too much speed, and his pursuer was, after all, an expert of the early Golden Core stage—an early Golden Core cultivator who excelled at lightness skills, no less.
"Die, the both of you!" Wei Shenjin let out a savage laugh, and his already prodigious speed surged even higher. In an instant he shot up behind the pair and drove a palm strike at them, intent on piercing through both bodies at once and killing them in a single blow.
But Wei Zhao had long since prepared for this. True qi gathered at his fingertips, and without so much as a glance backward, guided solely by his divine sense, he loosed a single Furious Flame Finger at the man's thigh. Caught completely off guard, Wei Shenjin took the hit dead-on.
The Finger technique was the martial art Su Zhaohu had used to kill Chen Muzhuang. Its power was considerable, though it was hardly profound. Wei Zhao had grasped it easily after a single look and refined it into the Furious Flame Finger. Now it happened to serve him perfectly—and later he could simply pin the blame on Su Zhaohu. The man was already dead, after all, and the dead could not testify.
By the time these people sensed something was wrong and began to suspect him, he would long since be back on North Island.
"Aagh!" A sharp pain stabbed through his thigh, and Wei Shenjin's face went dark at once. His leg buckled, and he crashed into a heap of garbage at the roadside, forced to watch helplessly as Wei Zhao and Xue Li fled into the distance, unable to rise and give chase. He could only grind his teeth and snarl, "That treacherous bastard—if I'd known, I'd have drawn my sword and run him through!"
As a core disciple of the Snow Sword Sect, the sword was where Wei Shenjin's true strength lay. But drawing his sword would raise a snow omen, and this was the busy district of Cloud Rank Island, where brawling was strictly forbidden by law. Add to that a moment's carelessness, and he had decided to settle the matter with his palms—only to be wounded instead.
"Senior Brother Wei, how did you get hurt?" Situ Qian, catching up from behind, froze at the sight of Wei Shenjin sprawled in the garbage, a sorry sight from head to toe.
Wei Shenjin was a core disciple whom the Snow Sword Sect's higher-ups regarded as a pillar of the sect, a full-fledged Golden Core expert. In Situ Qian's eyes, hunting down Ling Yi and Xue Li should have been effortless—a matter of simply reaching out and taking them.
That Ling Yi had only just recovered from grave injuries, and was even carrying the dead weight of Xue Li on his back—such an obvious target. It would have been a wonder if he could escape from Wei Shenjin's grasp. And yet, who would have thought the boat really would capsize in the gutter?
"It's nothing. I just let him catch me off guard with a cheap trick." Wei Shenjin's face darkened, unable to hide his embarrassment as he answered in a voice thick as stagnant water.
Situ Qian helped him up from the ground, half-believing, half-doubting, and ventured, "So what do we do now? We can't just let that despicable pair run off, can we?"
She could not help but suspect that Wei Shenjin still harbored illusions about that wretched woman and had therefore gone easy on her just now—otherwise there was no way the other side could have escaped so easily. But if that were true, her own position became rather awkward.