Chapter 3679 — Internal Strife, Part 2

Meng Tong glanced over and curled his lip. "So long as I'm guaranteed first place, I'll cut you a share. Now get moving, you dawdling old woman!"

"Fine!" Li Zhengming swallowed his anger in silence and stepped straight out to meet Qiao Hongcai. "Save your strength. Just give it up—there's no escaping us."

"You never know until you try!" As Qiao Hongcai spoke, the last vestiges of true qi in his body gathered in an instant upon his palms. Iron Cold Palm, Twentieth Form!

To prevent mishaps, the trial forbade the use of heaven-grade divine weapons and treasure blades. And of course, someone of Qiao Hongcai's background could never have owned such a thing in the first place.

In a flash, colossal blades of flame—visible to the naked eye—blotted out the sky and came crashing down with a thunderous roar!

This was the trump card he had kept hidden at the bottom of his box. At full power it could have gravely wounded even an unguarded heaven-grade grand completion expert; weakened as it now was, it was still not to be taken lightly.

"Go, Xiao Ran!" Qiao Hongcai roared through gritted teeth. His strike was crashing down over the heads of Li Zhengming and Meng Tong—surely the two of them would have to fall back, and that would clear the road for Xiao Ran!

Yet before his voice had even faded, Li Zhengming did not dodge beneath the blaze of the flame blades. Instead he advanced to meet it, his face expressionless, and without the slightest warning drove a punch straight forward. Heaven Frost Fist!

Whoosh—!

A mighty, surging current of white true qi howled past, and in an instant the sky-covering flame blades vanished as though they had never been, leaving only shattered ice crystals strewn across the ground!

"I told you there was no use wasting your strength. You're no match for me now," Li Zhengming said, eyes half-lidded, regarding the dumbstruck Qiao Hongcai.

Both were twentieth forms, yet Qiao Hongcai's flame blades had been utterly routed by his Heaven Frost Fist—owing partly to the gap in their true strength, but above all to Qiao Hongcai's wretched condition.

For some reason, though, Li Zhengming did not strike at Qiao Hongcai himself. He had merely broken his Flame Blade Twentieth Form and nothing more.

Yet just as he moved to shatter the flame blades, Xiao Ran—who had been following behind Qiao Hongcai—vanished into thin air. By the time his figure reappeared, he had already slipped neatly around behind Li Zhengming.

So this Xiao Ran was no simple character either! Li Zhengming silently sharpened his guard, yet made no move to strike again. He had already fulfilled his task by blocking Qiao Hongcai; to go after Xiao Ran now would earn him no gratitude from the likes of Meng Tong—only resentment.

"Li Zhengming, what the hell are you doing? Letting someone slip right past you that easily—useless!" Meng Tong was cursing and grumbling from the rear.

Li Zhengming frowned and ignored him. Were it not for his deference to Meng Jueming, that managing senior brother, he would long since have lost his temper and struck out at this creature Meng Tong. Relying on a bit of kinship with Meng Jueming, the man ordered him about like a servant—did this thing truly fancy himself a lord?

If he were genuinely powerful, that would be one thing. But the fellow's strength was pitifully meager; he had once been effortlessly defeated by Wei Zhao with a single move before everyone's eyes. Heaven knew where he found the gall to act as leader of the Azure Cloud Pavilion's new disciples.

Still, grievances aside, Li Zhengming could only pinch his nose and endure it. After all, he would have to depend on Meng Jueming's goodwill going forward.

"Doesn't matter. Since that waste Li Zhengming couldn't stop you, I suppose I'll have to trouble myself to do it in person. Time to lose in style!" Meng Tong watched Xiao Ran closing swiftly on him, a cold sneer of contempt on his face.

Facing Wei Zhao, he might have felt some trepidation; but facing Xiao Ran—a bumpkin from the mortal world, just like himself—he did not regard the man as worth a glance. All the more so now, with Xiao Ran worn to exhaustion, his fighting strength a far cry from what it was in his prime.

"Thousand Legs, Twentieth Form!" Meng Tong bellowed and leapt into the air. His legs whistled and blurred into layer upon layer of mighty leg-shadows, impossible to distinguish and impossible to guard against. Wherever those shadows swept, grass and stone alike crumbled instantly to powder.

So his martial art was called Thousand Legs as well—exactly the same as the one Zhao Qibing had cultivated. Xiao Ran simply had no way of knowing it.

Meng Tong had indeed been felled by a single move from Wei Zhao, but to be fair, as a native heaven-grade grand completion expert of Cloud Terrace Island, his strength was genuinely formidable. Had he not run into a freak like Wei Zhao, other experts of his level would have found him a headache to face.

With power like that, even at full strength Xiao Ran might not have been able to take it head-on. Fortunately, what he needed now was not to defeat Meng Tong, but to flee.

Swoosh!

Just as Meng Tong's layers of leg-shadows were about to close over Xiao Ran, Xiao Ran's body gave an exceedingly bizarre twist. By his footwork he seemed clearly to be dodging left—yet the next instant he appeared abruptly on Meng Tong's right, slipping clean through the edge of the leg-shadows without the slightest obstruction!

"What! How is that possible?" Meng Tong was thunderstruck. He had been so confident of defeating Xiao Ran in a single move—who could have foreseen such an uncanny sight?

He would never in a thousand deaths have guessed that Xiao Ran, an unremarkable bumpkin from the mortal world, had mastered a peerless movement art like the Lost Trace Step!

By now the other new disciples had arrived one after another. A golden chance to show off, and Xiao Ran had simply slid right past—Meng Tong had truly disgraced himself beyond repair this time!

With skill in movement as refined as Xiao Ran's, so long as he could hold out a while longer, beating everyone to the rear-mountain hall before they caught up seemed no difficulty at all. At this, not only Meng Tong but even Li Zhengming and the rest were left staring in stunned disbelief.

"You stop right there! Or I'll cripple Qiao Hongcai and make him Qiao the Good-for-Nothing for the rest of his days—never to rise again!" Meng Tong jabbed a finger at Qiao Hongcai, who was ringed tightly by them, and shrieked in fury.

At those words, Xiao Ran—who had already made good his escape—came to a dead halt.

And the new disciples, Li Zhengming among them, now looked at Meng Tong with open disbelief. Was the man in earnest, or merely bluffing?

The trial rules did not expressly forbid crippling another's cultivation, but anyone with half a brain knew such a thing was utterly despicable. A man who would stoop to such cruelty against his own fellow disciples—even if the sect imposed no punishment, others would surely shun him in fear, or even rouse public fury and earn him the contempt and curses of all.

If he truly did it, Meng Tong would destroy Qiao Hongcai and himself along with him—and not even Meng Jueming could save him then!

Meng Tong looked reckless, but surely he was not so foolish as to miss that much. Yet even with ten thousand reasons to believe the man was bluffing, Xiao Ran still dared not gamble with Qiao Hongcai's fate. Compared with a paltry trial reward, Qiao Hongcai was plainly far more important!RS

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