Chapter 2377 — Where Is Your Boss?

Wei Zhao sensed something was badly wrong. Piao Huotai seemed to be circulating some unknown inner art—or perhaps not an inner art at all, but rather something he had unlocked; in an instant, the skin across his entire body took on a metallic sheen.

When Wei Zhao's Furious Flame Heaven-Splitting Claw struck Piao Huotai, it was as though it had struck a block of iron. The recoil nearly crippled his hand with pain.

And that claw had spent the very last shred of strength in Wei Zhao's body, yet it had not injured Piao Huotai in the slightest. Now Wei Zhao had no way left to bar Piao Huotai's path. His head swam; the next moment he would collapse and be forced into the jade pendant's space...

But just then the door of the private room was thrown open, and Old Master Pi came charging in with Pi Zhishan, Pi Zhihai, Wu Chengtian, and Wu Gonggao at his heels.

"Keep him..." Wei Zhao saw the five figures burst in, forced out those last three words, and felt a surge of relief as he blacked out.

Old Master Pi, Pi Zhishan, Pi Zhihai, Wu Chengtian, and Wu Gonggao were aghast to see Wei Zhao collapse. Yet none of them moved to check his wounds; instead, all five unleashed their strongest martial techniques at once and hurled them at Piao Huotai.

"Heaven and Earth Divine Fist, Form Eleven!" Old Master Pi roared, and a divine fist of his own making shot straight at Piao Huotai.

"Heaven and Earth Divine Fist, Form One!" Pi Zhishan, Wu Chengtian, and Wu Gonggao simultaneously unleashed the first form they had drilled to fluency over the past two days.

"Heaven and Earth Divine Fist, Form Two!" Pi Zhihai, for his part, could already execute the second form.

They opened with their strongest moves. Having seen that even Wei Zhao could not match the man and had collapsed, they naturally held nothing back—and Wei Zhao's order had been to keep this man here. How could they not give it everything?

Piao Huotai had not expected Wei Zhao's reinforcements to arrive—and five of them at that—but he felt no alarm. He did not believe ordinary cultivators could do anything to him, so he kept channeling his demonic gu-poison art, rendering his body impervious to blade and spear.

"Bang!" "Bang!" "Bang!" "Bang!" "Bang!"

Five thunderous impacts, and Piao Huotai's fortunes turned wretched indeed. His skull was smashed open, his chest caved in, and not a single bone in his body remained intact.

"Masters of the external school's strongest attacks..." Piao Huotai realized at last that he had not died unjustly. These five who had come in after were all external-school experts—hand-refining experts at that—with fearsome attacking power, and they had combined it with martial techniques of uncanny precision. Killing him truly was no injustice.

He had cultivated demonic arts and bore gu poison in his body, but after all he had not reached great completion. As things stood, an ordinary early-to-mid Heaven-rank inner-school expert was helpless against him—but that did not mean cultivators of the external school, who trained their fists and nothing else, would be equally useless.

The inner school wounded foes with true qi; the external school wounded foes with a hard, fierce physique. The two seemed comparable in destructive power, yet inner-school true qi could not penetrate Piao Huotai's defense, while bare iron fists were another matter entirely. It was the old truth: one thing conquers another.

A single one of them arriving would have been more than he could bear—any one of them could have hurt him—let alone five at once. It was an instant kill.

Only, in the moment before death, he could not for the life of him understand: how had five hand-refining external-school experts appeared all at once?

With Piao Huotai finished, Pi Zhishan and Pi Zhihai rushed to Wei Zhao's side. "Boss, how are you?"

"The boss should be fine!" Wu Chengtian knew Wei Zhao better than the others and understood that Wei Zhao could recover on his own once injured. So he was not alarmed now; he waved Pi Zhihai and Pi Zhishan back and said, "No need to panic. We wait patiently and stand guard here—just don't let anyone disturb him."

"Right!" Pi Zhishan and Pi Zhihai answered at once.

"Young friend Chengtian, this man's corpse... hm, there's another corpse over there..." Old Master Pi paused in surprise, only now noticing that there was a second body in the private room. No wonder Wei Zhao had been so badly hurt!

He had been wondering—killing that man just now had been nothing special; a few of them working together had finished him in a single move. Wei Zhao should not have taken such grave injuries. Now it seemed Wei Zhao must have been wounded while fighting someone else.

"Leave it for now." Wu Chengtian waved a hand, but his eyes were on Chen Xi on the floor. He thought to himself, Don't tell me this is another sister-in-law? She looks a bit young, though—a high schooler, maybe? Still, Wu Chengtian did not dare be careless. He carefully lifted Chen Xi and laid her on the sofa nearby, then untied the ropes around her wrists and ankles.

Old Master Pi and Old Master Wu both nodded. Though the two of them were older, they still deferred to Wu Chengtian's orders—after all, Wu Chengtian had followed Wei Zhao the longest.

"All right, so what should we do now..." Old Master Pi asked.

"Go find the boss of this place and ask him what on earth happened here!" Wu Chengtian knew they could not disturb Wei Zhao, but Wei Zhao had come to harm in this establishment, so the owner could hardly escape blame—and he might well know the inside story. The best course, then, was to ask the owner just what had happened.

"Right, I'll see to it!" Old Master Pi nodded. His veneration of Wei Zhao was beyond measure. At first he had submitted to Wei Zhao because Wei Zhao had healed Pi Zhihai—a matter of profit more than feeling. But now, having witnessed Wei Zhao's formidable powers, and above all having been elevated by Wei Zhao into an expert versed in both inner and external schools, his initial gratitude had turned into heartfelt admiration and worship.

The world of cultivation revered the strong—that was its law. Old Master Pi, seasoned and shrewd with age, understood this rule well. Wei Zhao's potential and strength in particular had shown him that if he held fast to Wei Zhao, the Pi family's future path need not stop at remaining a hidden clan. An ancient clan—it was not impossible!

So long as he, Pi Zhishan, and Pi Zhihai all became Heaven-rank experts versed in both inner and external schools, he was confident the Divine Fist Hall would be the first to court and support them—and at the councils of the ancient tier, back the Pi family's rise to ancient-clan status!

With that, Old Master Pi rose and went straight out of the private room. There was no one near the room at all, but at the far end of the corridor a waiter was peeking furtively at the goings-on.

"You—come here!" Old Master Pi pointed at the waiter.

"Ah... I... May I ask what you require, sir?" The waiter started in fright and asked, flustered and cautious.

"Where is your boss?" Old Master Pi asked bluntly.

"Our boss... Might I ask what this is about?" the waiter asked, trembling.

"Tell him to appear before me within a minute, or I'll smash up his establishment!" Old Master Pi was, after all, the head of a family and usually a man of great authority—but at present his role was Wei Zhao's underling, so naturally he had to play the swaggering henchman.

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