Chapter 4578 — Stepping In
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 3
As the words fell, Ma Dangfeng applied a touch more pressure underfoot, and at once everyone heard again that familiar, scalp-numbing crack of bone. Just how many fingers on Qiao Hongcai's pinned hand were still intact was now anyone's guess—quite possibly not a single one.
Feeling that inhuman agony shoot straight to his scalp, Qiao Hongcai's face flushed crimson in an instant, the veins at his temples leaping and pounding madly, yet he clenched his jaw and did not make a sound. His bloodshot eyes fixed hard on Ma Dangfeng, and word by word he forced out through his teeth: "You'll pay for this! You will most certainly pay for this! If you don't kill me today, I'll repay you a thousandfold, ten thousandfold in the days to come!"
"Oh my, I'm so scared!" Ma Dangfeng put on a deliberate show of fright, then threw his head back and laughed loudly. "Seems I misspoke earlier. I shouldn't have said you were boring—I should have said you're very interesting! I won't kill you today; no amount of goading will work. But I will cripple your meridians one by one, and I'd rather like to see just what a pack of cripples like you plan to rely on when you come seeking revenge in the future. Hahahaha!"
At that very moment, not far away, Xiao Che and Li Zhengming suddenly struck as one, their movement techniques instantly pushed to the utmost limit, bearing not the slightest sign of having just been gravely wounded by the ground spikes. Once a cultivator's meridians were crippled, he was reduced to a total wreck for life. They would rather risk everything in a desperate struggle than watch Qiao Hongcai be crippled before their eyes—and still less were they willing to become cripples themselves!
"Hmph! Seeking death!" Killing intent congealed in Ma Dangfeng's gaze. Though he had sworn up and down that he did not wish to kill, if these lowly scum, no better than ants, insisted on charging headlong to their deaths, he would show them no mercy either. Killing a few insignificant outer sect disciples—in his eyes, that did not amount to a fart.
That ground spike attack earlier had been no more than a show of force. Once he truly set his heart on killing, not a single person present could escape disaster—and now he intended to begin the slaughter in earnest!
At the mere flicker of a thought, Ma Dangfeng was about to unleash his killing move. To ordinary eyes, Xiao Che's and Li Zhengming's movement techniques were already fast, but to him, a Nascent Soul expert, they were as slow as turtles crawling, so feeble they could not withstand a single blow.
As killing intent flared, alarm bells clanged wildly in Xiao Che's and Li Zhengming's hearts, yet neither of them slowed in the least, still pressing forward without a thought of retreat. One who roams the jianghu will surely take a blade—and even if it meant death, what was there to fear?!
Watching this, Lu Bianren, Miserable Senior Brother, and Qiao Hongcai felt their eyes blaze with blood as they saw the two about to rush headlong to their deaths. Then, all at once, a clear breeze swept across the field, and a figure appeared out of nowhere without the slightest warning, saying mildly, "Even killing a man, one need only bow his head to the ground. You bear them no grudge, Brother Ma—why bring trouble upon yourself?"
Everyone was struck dumb at once. Even the unbridled Ma Dangfeng could not help but let his pupils contract slightly at the sight of this person. It was none other than the Azure Cloud Pavilion's senior brother in charge of the inner sect, Jia Mufan.
With the formidable strength of a Nascent Soul cultivator, Ma Dangfeng could treat anyone present like so much grass, killing or crippling them at will. But faced with this Jia Mufan, even he had to rein himself in somewhat—not only because the man was the senior brother in charge of the inner sect, but also because he, too, possessed Nascent Soul strength, equal to his own if not greater!