Chapter 1662 — What He Had Overlooked

"It can't be fixed. It's already broken." Wei Zhao laughed. "You won't be polite to me? And just how would you be impolite?"

"Enough of this nonsense with him. He only jabbed a few acupoints in my leg — my uncle can fix that! Just kill this brat for me!" Young Master You was a pill refiner and knew a little about medicine, and his uncle was well versed in the art of acupoint striking, so he was not overly alarmed. Besides, there was a cause for it now — if he killed Wei Zhao, no one would have anything to say about it!

Blue Hair nodded. "No problem, Young Master You!"

"You can kill me?" Wei Zhao could not help but laugh, half in disbelief. "You?"

"Yes. Me!" The instant Blue Hair's words left his mouth, the strength of an early Earth-rank expert was laid bare. "Kid, I hear you're quite the hand at the peak of late Profound rank? You think you're something, do you? And what do you think now?"

"Oh..." Wei Zhao answered flatly, and all at once the aura of Earth rank burst out from him as well. "Earth rank... is that supposed to be impressive? Seems I'm one too..."

Blue Hair's expression changed at once. He had never imagined that Wei Zhao would also be an Earth-rank expert — that his strength would be equal to his own!

The ones more shocked still, of course, were Yellow Hair and Young Master You. The two exchanged a glance, and then Yellow Hair said, his voice thick with terror, "You... you... you've been hiding your strength again?"

"I haven't been hiding anything," Wei Zhao said mildly.

"Impossible! When you fought me before, you were only early Profound rank. Then, when I saw you at the school gate, you were late Profound rank. At the resort, you were at the peak of late Profound rank. And now you're early Earth rank!" Yellow Hair said, refusing to believe it.

"Am I not allowed to level up?" Wei Zhao looked at Yellow Hair as though he were an idiot. "I've been leveling up the whole time."

"Rubbish!" Yellow Hair said. "How could you level up that fast?"

"Stop wasting words on him. I'll deal with him!" Blue Hair thought there was no point at all in what Yellow Hair was saying. Even if Wei Zhao had once been an early Profound-rank expert, he was now, beyond any doubt, an early Earth-rank expert, and so Blue Hair would have to handle him with care.

Fortunately, he had been famous for a long time, and if Wei Zhao really was, as he claimed, someone who had just broken through to Earth rank, then Blue Hair still had hopes of beating him.

But at this moment the old brimming confidence was gone. When Earth-rank experts clashed, it was not merely a matter of rank difference — other factors mattered just as much. For example, the quality of each man's mental cultivation method, the grade of each man's martial techniques, each man's actual combat experience, and luck besides.

Duels between Earth-rank experts of the same tier were not like Earth rank against Profound rank, where a one-tier difference in rank meant one side could crush the other outright. That sort of thing was common below Profound rank, but from Profound rank up to Earth rank was a watershed: victory did not come merely from rank advantage, unless the gap was especially wide.

For instance, late Earth rank against early Earth rank — or a tier higher still, Heaven rank against Earth rank. Even early Heaven rank against the peak of late Earth rank was a very great difference.

So against Wei Zhao he was not at all sure of himself — though neither was he especially worried.

"So you're Earth rank too. I hope you don't disappoint me!" A solemn look passed across Blue Hair's face. "It's been a long time since I crossed hands with an expert of my own level. The mess the Hidden Clan Arbitration Association has cooked up is truly a nuisance. Now that I've met you, I hope you're not a one-trick wonder."

"Ha... I'll certainly go all out, you can be sure of that." Wei Zhao smiled, though inside he was wound tight as a drum. This was his first time fighting an Earth-rank expert. That Rain Leader from before hardly counted at all — the creature was a coward, and after Wei Zhao blew him up once, he had been left with a psychological scar and never dared face Wei Zhao head-on again. It was simply ridiculous.

But this Blue Hair before him was plainly not that sort of man. He gave Wei Zhao the impression of being steady and deep — utterly at odds with his thuggish looks — and it stirred in Wei Zhao a strange sense of oppression.

"Bring out your weapon!" Blue Hair said, looking at Wei Zhao. Young Master You had told him to finish Wei Zhao quickly, but whatever else he was, the man before him was an expert of his own level, and he could not afford to take him lightly.

"Weapon? I don't have a weapon," Wei Zhao said mildly.

"Oh?" Blue Hair was taken aback; he had not expected Wei Zhao to say that. Studying Wei Zhao's expression, he could not for the moment tell whether the man truly had no weapon or was simply putting on airs. "Your martial techniques — they don't require a weapon?"

Some martial techniques, after all, truly did not require a weapon. Among the martial techniques Blue Hair had cultivated, there were those that needed none, so he did not find it too strange — he merely asked.

"Martial techniques? What martial techniques?" Wei Zhao was slightly startled in turn.

"You don't know?" Blue Hair was briefly dumbfounded, then regarded Wei Zhao with an odd look.

"Tell me..." Wei Zhao thought to himself that this was bad. It seemed he had overlooked something. He had only just broken through to Earth rank and knew nothing of many things — and he had not asked Ice Sugar about them either. When Blue Hair spoke of a weapon, Wei Zhao could still follow, but as for martial techniques, he did not quite understand.

"Haha, watch this!" Blue Hair offered no explanation. With a sudden laugh he leaped into the air, his hands taking the shape of eagle talons, a bizarre "coo coo" cry rising from his throat as he bellowed, "Frenzied Eagle Thunderclap Claw!"

At Blue Hair's cry, the true qi around his body gathered into a faint, shadowy blue, and his pair of claws seemed truly to become an eagle's talons, wrapped in a qi that flickered in and out of sight, rendered especially eerie by the refraction of the light.

Wei Zhao's brow knitted slightly. In an instant he understood what he had overlooked, and what martial techniques were. So this Blue Hair, besides cultivating an inner-energy mental method, had also cultivated martial techniques! Yet back when Wei Zhao was at Profound rank, he had never heard of anyone cultivating martial techniques — even among external-school experts, special martial techniques were rare.

Earlier, when Blue Hair asked what martial techniques he knew and Wei Zhao said he did not, Blue Hair had clearly been astonished. That meant martial techniques must be something very common — and the only possible reason Wei Zhao did not know of them was that martial techniques could only be cultivated by experts of Earth rank and above, and that Profound-rank experts could not cultivate them at all.

But in that single thought, Blue Hair's pair of claws was already hurtling toward Wei Zhao!

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