Difficult? Then Forget It!

Seeing that he remained silent, Li Guanqi slowly turned the lightning sword in his palm. Blood welled out in steady streams. Wei Qian knelt on the floor with both hands braced against the flagstones, fear gripping his chest and leaving his hands and feet ice-cold. His throat bobbed slightly as he gritted his teeth and spoke. "I was put up to this!" "The goal was to make Qianqiusui come to the Luoxia Domain in person!" *Swish!* Holding the sword in his left hand, Li Guanqi slashed with astonishing speed! *Splurt!* "Aaargh! Why?! Didn't I tell you already?!" The man writhed in agony as his entire right arm flew into the air, splashing blood all over the floor. Li Guanqi sat cross-legged on the man's back and scratched his chin. "Yeah, you said something, but you didn't finish speaking." "I really don't like this attitude of yours. Xiao Wei, you aren't being honest with me..." The sight left onlookers completely flabbergasted. Wei Qian had clearly given his reason, yet Li Guanqi had severed another of his arms regardless! Suddenly! Li Guanqi halted what he was doing and looked toward the doorway. A young man wearing the robes of an inner sect disciple slowly walked inside. The elders in the hall were startled and immediately began barking reprimands. "Get out! Do you have no sense of decorum?!" "Sun Zhen! As an inner disciple, you have no right to come here! Leave at once!" Listening to the low, sharp scoldings from the white-haired old men below the dais, Li Guanqi showed a playful smirk. His white eyes seemed capable of seeing through everything. He looked up and chuckled. "Why not keep up the act?" The young man in purple robes raised a hand to his brow, looking somewhat helpless. "I can't keep it up anymore." Their exchange baffled the crowd, but beneath Li Guanqi, Wei Qian's eyes filled with sheer terror. When Sun Zhen finished speaking, a faint smile tugged at the corner of his lips, yet his gaze remained fixed entirely on Li Guanqi. *Hum!*— A surging, torrential aura began to rise wildly. In the blink of an eye, his cultivation broke through the shackles of the Core Formation Realm, soaring straight toward the Void Refining Realm! Very quickly, that immensely powerful pressure reached the peak of the middle Void Refining Realm! He looked at Li Guanqi with great interest and said playfully, "You are very strong." As he spoke, Sun Zhen reached up and gave a fierce yank at his own neck. A hair-thin strand of lightning was pulled free. With a sudden clench of his fist, he crushed it into nothingness. "This little trick you left on me wasn't particularly clever." "Still... I am rather curious about how you managed to spot me." Li Guanqi curled his lip and slowly rose to his feet. Looking down at the other man from above, he said softly, "A mighty Void Refining Realm cultivator, concealing his cultivation to mingle with a bunch of low-status little runts." "It was hard not to suspect something..." "As for how I noticed, perhaps your acting just wasn't good enough." Hearing that reason, Sun Zhen couldn't help but smile faintly. His gaze shifted toward Qianqiusui. Suddenly, he lunged out with a hand! *Whoosh!* Li Guanqi's figure vanished from the spot, interposing himself between the two as he threw a ferocious punch with his right fist! *Boom!* A dull, thunderous detonation echoed, and the bluestone beneath their feet shattered with a deafening roar! The blast wave ripped up the floor of the hundred-zhang hall, sending debris flying in all directions. Sun Zhen's feet were forced back dozens of zhang in an instant! His body crashed straight through the threshold, thrown completely out of the hall. Li Guanqi glanced down at his scraped fingers, frowning slightly. Sun Zhen, looking equally grave, stared at his own deformed fingers... "A body cultivator?" Li Guanqi shrugged without a word, though his vigilance toward the man rose several notches. He could sense that his opponent was not a pure body cultivator, yet the man's physical strength was not lacking in the least. Looking up at him, Li Guanqi tilted his head, pondered for a long moment, and said softly, "Someone from an Ancient Clan?" At those words, Sun Zhen's pupils instantly shrank to the size of pinpricks! He had never expected that after concealing his identity for so long, the other man would deduce it after a single exchange! Neither of them had bothered to lower their voices. Every elder of Baizhang Prison in the hall was utterly dumbfounded. They exchanged glances, having no idea what was going on. "What is happening... Sun Zhen... didn't he join the sect a long time ago?!" "What Ancient Clan? Could he not be Sun Zhen?" "What, what, what is all this?? What on earth happened?" Up on the dais, Wei Qian was now slumped on the ground, his head hung low. He had only recently stepped into the Void Refining Realm, and even that had been achieved by forcefully breaking through with a Void Shattering Pill. The auras these two were displaying were countless times more powerful than his own. Back when Sun Zhen first approached him, it had been just like this—a deep sense of powerlessness that gave him no room to resist. From that moment on, Baizhang Prison... had become Sun Zhen's Baizhang Prison. As for Qianqiusui, looking at the man standing before her, she felt an immense sense of security. Just by standing there, he gave her profound peace of mind. Sun Zhen gave his fingers a flick, snapping them back to their original shape. Placing one hand behind his back, he turned to glance at Qianqiusui before looking back at Li Guanqi and speaking softly. "Fellow Daoist Li, are you sure you want to meddle in this matter?" Li Guanqi shrugged and gave him a wink with a grin. "I have to. After all, I took her money." Sun Zhen's mouth twitched. He did not believe that someone like Qianqiusui, an early Soul Formation cultivator, could possibly hire a mighty cultivator of Li Guanqi's caliber. Moreover, he could tell that Li Guanqi harbored no romantic feelings toward Qianqiusui whatsoever. On the contrary, it was the woman whose gaze lingered on him with soft, glistening affection. Sun Zhen lowered his head and let out a helpless sigh. "Fellow Daoist, doing this makes things very difficult for me..." The corner of Li Guanqi's mouth curved. With a flash of his body, he appeared right before Sun Zhen, shifted his footing, and drove a lightning-wrapped fist straight forward! Sun Zhen raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms before his chest as primal energy surged to take the blow head-on. *Boom!* Fissures tore across the sky. The punch sent Sun Zhen flying several hundred zhang, Li Guanqi's derisive sneer ringing in his ears. "Difficult? Then forget doing it!" Sun Zhen's face flushed crimson. Across his torn sleeves, a purplish-black fist print was left pressed into his arms. "All I wanted was her Zen Sound Fruit, and it's not like I wasn't going to pay. Was that really necessary?" The moment Qianqiusui heard Sun Zhen mention the Zen Sound Fruit, her pupils contracted sharply! Her hands instinctively clenched the corners of her robes, her red lips parting slightly. Li Guanqi frowned. This was the first time he had ever heard of any Zen Sound Fruit. "Still, as things stand now..." Sun Zhen licked his lips, his eyes ablaze with frenzied battle intent as he looked at Li Guanqi. "All I want now is to have a fight with you!" Li Guanqi was amused by this sudden turn. This fellow had apparently been hiding in Baizhang Prison for quite some time. His conduct was rather different from the Ancient Clan scions Li Guanqi remembered. Ancient Clans... shouldn't the people who came from them be arrogant, overbearing, hedonistic young masters?