“Is he dead?”
Everyone stared at the billowing dust in the distance. Under that single finger tap, the man in the bamboo hat had been slammed brutally into the ground. Trees within a radius of several meters had completely collapsed, leaving the scene in absolute ruins.
Jiang Moran stood on tiptoe, lightly balancing on the very tip of a distant bamboo shoot. He looked down with an indifferent gaze, his surging killing intent tinting the sky with a faint crimson hue.
At this moment, the scene looked like a living purgatory.
As the dust dissipated, the figure of the man in the bamboo hat was revealed once more. Only this time, his injuries were far more severe. His clothes hung on him like tattered rags, and a bone protruded directly from his elbow.
Even with such horrific injuries, he remained standing with his knees slightly bent, his mouth half-open. They could see that he was gently biting down on a pill with his teeth.
“That pill...” Qiu Zhiya's pupils dilated in shock as she stared at the shape of the medicine. “It's him! He's the one who gave Xu Qing that medicine!”
What?
Hearing this, the other three were stunned.
On the other side, the man in the bamboo hat bit down hard, instantly crushing the pill in his mouth.
At the exact same moment, the pain wracking his body vanished.
With an expressionless face, he forced the bone back into his elbow before looking up at Jiang Moran atop the bamboo once again.
“Number One in the World,” he murmured quietly, as if speaking to himself, or perhaps just repeating the words.
But Jiang Moran was already too annoyed to waste any more words on him. Seeing that the man was still alive, he intended to deliver a few more strikes. With a flash, he lunged to kill again. Since he was barely suppressing his killing intent, his eyes even began to take on a faint scarlet glow.
Seeing this, Qiu Zhiya desperately struggled to get up from the ground. “He can't die!!”
A streak of red light flashed through the air, coming to a sudden halt right before the man in the bamboo hat.
Jiang Moran's fingers pinched a bamboo leaf, which had already sliced half an inch into the man's neck. Had he not reined in his strength at the last second, the man in the bamboo hat would have been decapitated by now.
Regardless of what Qiu Zhiya said, Jiang Moran hadn't actually planned on stopping. The only reason he did stop was because the man in the bamboo hat had suddenly dropped to his knees.
This sudden turn of events not only dumbfounded Jiang Moran, but also left Ning Qingzhu and the others completely bewildered. When he swallowed that pill, they had all thought he was gearing up for a counterattack. Instead, he simply knelt.
“I can't beat you. I surrender,” the man in the bamboo hat said.
“Oh,” Jiang Moran nodded. He then slid the bamboo leaf a few fractions of an inch deeper.
“Wait! I'm willing to fix the medicine thrall—no, the problem with that guy named Xu Qing!” Seeing that Jiang Moran was still going to make a move, the man in the bamboo hat cried out in a hurry.
“Tsk, where's your backbone?”
The man in the bamboo hat squeezed out a stiff smile. He was fucking about to die. What did he need backbone for? What was the difference between having pride now and a eunuch entering a brothel?
...
When the old physician and Old Chen returned from gathering herbs in the mountains, they saw from afar that the wooden cabin, which had been perfectly fine earlier, was now a complete wreck. The old physician was so furious that his beard and eyes twitched on the spot.
Fortunately, Zhang Wuji and the others had worked nimbly to quickly construct a thatched hut.
Seeing that the medicinal herbs stored in the jars weren't severely damaged, the old physician finally let the matter go.
The group gathered around the only bed in the thatched hut, watching the man in the bamboo hat carry out the detoxification process. The old physician couldn't help but marvel; this method of utilizing poison was simply unheard of.
Using a stronger toxin to force out the poison within the body, his execution of this classic swap was practiced to sheer perfection.
Though the logic seemed simple, barely anyone in the world could actually pull it off.
“Done,” a moment later, the man in the bamboo hat let out a breath. “He will die from the poison within three days.”
???
Qiu Zhiya nearly broke down in tears again. Fortunately, Ning Qingzhu held her back, allowing the man in the bamboo hat to finish his next sentence.
“He just needs to take one detoxification pill every day for three days.”
Saying this, the man in the bamboo hat pulled a bottle of pills from his robes and handed it over. When the bottle was opened, it released a pungent, bitter odor rather than a medicinal fragrance.
“This smell... is Bitter Nine,” the old physician said with a slight frown.
“Correct, it is indeed Bitter Nine,” the man in the bamboo hat nodded. “Bitter Nine is toxic, but the toxicity isn't fierce. As an herb of extreme yin, it happens to perfectly counteract the severe poison in his body.”
Hearing this, the old physician's eyes lit up. The severe poison within Xu Qing's body was at the absolute peak of yang toxicity, while Bitter Nine grew specifically in damp, shady areas. Not only did the two neutralize each other, but they would also work in tandem to improve Xu Qing's constitution.
“This mastery of poison is beyond ordinary people. In this world, I fear only one person is capable of this.”
The old physician stroked his goatee, a trace of understanding appearing in his eyes as he looked at the man.
The man in the bamboo hat removed his hat, revealing an exceptionally plain and ordinary face.
“I am Li Lu.”
Which Li Lu? Was it the one he was thinking of? Zhang Wuji felt like he was dreaming. Two of the Four Supremes of the World had actually gathered in one place!
“Li Lu?!” Ning Qingzhu gasped. She remembered hearing a storyteller in a teahouse mention that Li Lu was the unrivaled sovereign of poison in the world.
She never expected they would actually encounter him here!
“But... how did you lose so easily?”
And even knelt? Of course, she didn't voice those words out loud. After all, it would hurt his pride too much.
Li Lu's eye twitched slightly. Though he maintained a calm facade, an irrepressible bitterness welled up in his heart.
What did she mean, “lose so easily”?
Today, he had finally realized what a true gap in strength felt like. He, one of the Four Supremes of the World, could instantly restore his body to normal no matter how severe his injuries were.
His poison arts were superb and supernatural, easily allowing him to take lives invisibly and silently.
Yet simply because he couldn't even survive a few moves from this man, it was called losing easily. This man was also one of the Four Supremes of the World, and despite having faked his death and vanished three years ago, his legend still circulated throughout the jianghu. One could only imagine how terrifying he was.
He had only lasted this long because his life force was stubborn. If it had been that woman Chu Hanyi, she would have been beaten to a pulp long ago.
“Ahem,” Fengqingzi stepped up next to Ning Qingzhu and lowered his voice. “Don't say that. When it comes to surviving a few moves, you have to look at who he's being compared to.”
“Even the Four Supremes of the World have their own hierarchy. Li Lu, that icy woman Chu Hanyi, and Du Jiugu—those three are existences that utterly crush first-class experts and are far stronger than super-class experts.”
“But while there is a massive gap between those three and first-class experts, the gap between your Young Master and those three is practically just as wide.”
“To put it plainly, there isn't a fifth person in the Tianwu Kingdom on the same level as Li Lu and the others, so they could only throw your Young Master into the mix to make up the numbers.”
Wearing his trademark dead-fish eyes, Zhang Wuji chimed in. “Actually, it didn't used to be this way. One of them was a descendant of Grandmaster Luban.”
A descendant of Grandmaster Luban? The two looked at each other. If it were truly his descendant, they indeed deserved that status.
“Then why is it Young Master now?” Ning Qingzhu asked, puzzled.
Facing their curious gazes, Zhang Wuji didn't say it immediately, deliberately dragging out the suspense.
“Are you going to speak or not?”
“Sssss—” Suffering a swift kick to the buttocks from Fengqingzi, Zhang Wuji hissed in pain.
“What's the rush... Don't you know a good story needs to simmer?” Zhang Wuji grumbled crossly.
“Back then, that Luban descendant was hailed as one of the Four Supremes. Many first-class or super-class experts went to challenge him, beating him so badly he fled from the southern mountains all the way to the western valleys. He barely managed to escape by throwing out his Luban mechanisms like they cost nothing.”
“Afterward, he flatly declared that if anyone dared to call him one of the Four Supremes again, he would employ every mechanism at his disposal to put them to death!”
Holy crap, that brutal? Just how driven to desperation was he?
“The Four Supremes of the World is not an empty title. It represents not only the peak of power but also absolute authority in a specific domain,” Li Lu said as he walked over.
Even someone like him would occasionally be challenged by certain poison masters or poison-refinement masters.
“So that's how it is...” Ning Qingzhu's eyes widened. Only now did she truly appreciate the weight of being one of the Four Supremes of the World.
“Will Young Master be challenged as well, then?”
As she asked this, the other two curiously turned their eyes to Li Lu. For someone of the senior's tier, there were certain things only others on the level of the Four Supremes would know.
Li Lu heard Ning Qingzhu's question and couldn't help but turn his head toward the man who, after kicking Xu Qing off the bed, had laid down on it himself to rest.
“Him?”
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