Chapter 4577 — The Legendary Newcomer King
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
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...)