Chapter 4332 — No Need to Hold Back
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
"Naturally. I could carve you up in broad daylight and no one would stick their nose in—hahahaha!" Cackling viciously, the man in blue suddenly slashed downward from above. His scimitar was far shorter than an ordinary blade, normally kept hidden flat against his back where outsiders could scarcely spot it—and once he moved, it struck without warning.
Yet Wei Zhao showed not the slightest surprise. He simply tilted his head and pivoted slightly on the ball of one foot, and the utterly sudden first strike went wide. The blade whistled past, grazing his cheek—a hair's breadth from disaster.
"Much obliged for the reminder. It seems I needn't hold back against you either." Wei Zhao smiled, serene as a drifting cloud.
"Hmph—so you do have some skill!" His sure-kill blow so easily evaded, the man in blue was startled. And the aura Wei Zhao had flashed in that instant was no early-stage Golden Core at all—it was solid mid-stage Golden Core. That was a gap of two whole levels.
Before the words had even faded, Wei Zhao seized the opening left by the missed strike and drove a palm straight at him—the twenty-eighth form of the Raging Fire Eight Trigrams Palm!
"Haha, a fool's a fool! I only feigned an opening for you, and you fell for it hook, line, and sinker. So what if you're mid-stage Golden Core—you're still just an ant for me to butcher as I please!" In the man in blue's hand, the scimitar suddenly split from one into two, meeting Wei Zhao's Raging Fire Eight Trigrams Palm with a double slash. His scimitar was in fact twin blades joined as one—another unforeseen shift in technique, and any opponent caught off guard would pay dearly for it.
And with the gap in their cultivation right there before him, in the man in blue's eyes this head-on clash held no suspense whatsoever. There could be only one outcome: Wei Zhao's palm, and his body with it, would be cut clean in two at the waist.
But in the next instant, the man in blue's vicious grin froze solid. Before his twin blades could reach Wei Zhao, his whole body was already engulfed by the blazing true qi of the Raging Fire Eight Trigrams Palm's twenty-eighth form.
Bang! A great hole burst open in the man in blue's chest, and he was flung backward, crashing onto the deck not far off. His eyes went dull, and he sprawled limply on the boards—a corpse through and through.
He never could have imagined it—that a peak late-stage Golden Core expert like himself, trading blows face to face, would prove no match at all for a mere mid-stage Golden Core opponent. Truly, he died with his eyes wide open.
There had been only a single exchange, one clean, decisive killing blow. The people outside had not even noticed the disturbance—and even if someone had, then, just as the man in blue had said, no one would come to stick their nose in. In the Zhenduan sea lanes, the price of meddling was usually a life—your own dragged down along with it. So no one did such foolish things.
Wei Zhao glanced at the man in blue's mangled corpse, showing not the least intention of covering it up, and simply left it sprawled there. He himself, perfectly at ease, found a sheltered corner in the cabin and sat down out of the wind. He was an assassin by training, after all—a corpse brought him not the slightest discomfort; he had long since grown used to such things before he ever set foot in the world. (To be continued...)