Seeing Ma Pingchuan collapse, Zou Feng quickly darted over and expertly snatched the contents of his pockets.
But then, Zou Feng didn’t leave right away. Instead, he remained crouched by the body, appearing as if he were trying to find something else on the corpse.
After a few moments, the sudden sound of something slicing through the air came from behind him.
’They’re here, just as I thought!’
Zou Feng wasn’t the least bit surprised by the sudden ambush.
The whole reason he hadn’t left immediately was to continue fishing for his targets.
Ma Pingchuan could have been a double agent, playing both sides for his own gain. How could the remnants of the Ten Directions Sect not have been prepared for that?
It was therefore highly likely they would send someone to follow him and, depending on the situation, decide whether to silence Ma Pingchuan or let him continue acting as a mole in the Black Flood Dragon Gang.
Thus, Zou Feng, who had anticipated this and was already on guard, easily dodged the ambush with a single roll.
On the surface, however, he feigned shock and panic, making his dodge look clumsy and desperate.
"Who the hell has no honor, ambushing your grandpa!?"
Zou Feng cursed, feigning a look of shock and anger.
This, of course, was just a ploy to stall for time...
The ambushers were two young men dressed as common farmers.
The two were expressionless, and they looked at Zou Feng as if he were already a dead man.
It was worth noting that their weapons were also quite deceptive.
One held a hoe, and the other, a pitchfork.
The one with the pitchfork made Zou Feng the most wary; after all, it was clearly an Enchanted Weapon.
To Zou Feng’s slight disappointment, however, the fluctuations of Inner Qi emanating from the two men indicated they were only Ninth Grade Martial Artists.
Originally, Zou Feng had hoped to bait out an Eighth Grade practitioner to test the waters.
This wasn’t arrogance on his part. Once a Cultivation Skill was trained to the level of Refined Skill, one would naturally possess the strength to clash with an Eighth Grade opponent.
But disappointment was one thing; Zou Feng wouldn’t let his guard down in the slightest. He knew that even if they were in the same Realm, the gap in their actual strength could be enormous.
He himself was a prime example—practically the king of all Ninth Grade fighters.
Their first strike having missed, the two had no intention of wasting words on Zou Feng. Everything else could wait until after they had captured him.
But just as the two were preparing their next assault, they felt a strange disturbance at their feet.
"A hidden weapon!"
The man with the pitchfork reacted first, shouting a warning as he leaped into the air.
BOOM!!
Ma Pingchuan’s body, which had been lying at their feet, suddenly exploded with a muffled bang.
This was, of course, Zou Feng’s handiwork. A moment ago, while pretending to search the body, he had actually used his Five Poison Palm to turn Ma Pingchuan’s corpse into a human bomb.
But these two men, likely remnants of the Ten Directions Sect, were incredibly fast to react.
Only the man with the hoe was a fraction too slow and was grazed by the blast’s shockwave.
"You sinister, vicious bastard!"
The man with the pitchfork, having leaped into the air, pushed off a treetop to change direction and darted toward Zou Feng.
Meanwhile, the man with the hoe crouched low and charged forward, his speed even greater than that of his companion.
Seeing that his trap had failed, Zou Feng "panicked" and turned to flee.
"You mutts from the Ten Directions Sect! If you have any guts, come at me one-on-one and face your grandpa! Two dogs ganging up on me? What kind of skill is that?"
"By the way, did your Ten Directions Sect switch careers to shoveling shit?"
"Oh, wait, that’s not right. You were beaten into homeless dogs by the Celestial Essence Sword Sect, so I guess you have no choice but to scrounge for food in a shit pit..."
As he fled, Zou Feng hurled a constant stream of insults and provocations.
The two men ground their teeth in fury, silently vowing that once they caught him and got the information they needed, they would rip out his tongue.
Then they would stuff it up his ass.
The only problem was, why couldn’t they catch up to him?
They were always just an inch away, but he would invariably slip from their grasp like an eel.
’Besides,’ one of them thought, ’I haven’t had anything to drink, so why do I feel so dizzy...’
’...This is bad!’
"Wait, he’s releasing poison!"
The man with the pitchfork quickly stopped and immediately warned his companion.
Yet before he could finish his sentence, the man with the hoe, who was charging in the lead, collapsed heavily to the ground with a THUD.
Foul blood was already trickling from his mouth and nose. He struggled to get back up, but could only stumble and fall repeatedly.
"Heh heh heh..."
Seeing this, Zou Feng naturally stopped fleeing and cursing.
He stared at the man with the pitchfork, who was still standing, and let out a sinister laugh.
’My plan worked perfectly,’ Zou Feng thought. ’Release a colorless, odorless poison gas while fleeing. Once they inhale enough of it, even an Entering Grade Martial Artist can’t hold out for long.’
’There was no need for a life-or-death battle with that brute and his pitchfork. A few simple tricks were all it took to deal with these two remnants of the Ten Directions Sect. It was child’s play.’
Of course, in the end, these two remnants of the Ten Directions Sect had simply underestimated their opponent.
That was only natural, though. The Ten Directions Sect was a relatively well-known Evil Sect, so its disciples would naturally look down on a gang-affiliated Martial Artist from a backwater place like Yuan Guang County.
"You... You’re despicable!"
His head was spinning, and the hand holding the pitchfork began to tremble. The man with the pitchfork was truly starting to panic.
Gritting his teeth, he mustered his remaining strength and turned to flee in the opposite direction.
’I just need to get out of the range of this poison gas,’ he thought. ’Then I might still have a chance to turn the tables...’
’This shameless bastard used all sorts of tricks to release his poison, all while deliberately taunting me to divert my attention!’
’Someone who schemes this much can’t have much actual strength, so...’
’I still have a chan—ce?’
"Ah!"
The next moment, the man with the pitchfork, fleeing in a blind panic, felt as if he had run straight into a thick iron post.
But in reality, it was the steel-like body of Zou Feng, who had activated his Tribulation-Indestructible Body.
The man’s eyes widened in disbelief. He couldn’t comprehend how Zou Feng had appeared before him as if teleporting, nor how a mere Ninth Grade practitioner’s body of flesh and blood could be this hard...
’He’s this strong, but the son of a bitch still insists on using poison!?’
Then, Zou Feng’s large, fan-like hand shot out, seemingly slow but in fact incredibly fast, and his finger tapped the center of the man’s forehead.
The Chaos Finger had the ability to stir an opponent’s desires, but by controlling the toxicity and combining it with his current Five Poison Creatures, it could also briefly induce a state of Dementia.
The instant the finger made contact, the man’s eyes rolled back into his head and his tongue lolled out, giving him the appearance of someone who had lost their mind.
"Speak. How many of you are left, and what are their Realms?"
"Also, who is Ji Changsheng?"
Zou Feng had already been "training" Ji Changsheng, but the man was incredibly durable; his name on the List of Gods hadn’t dimmed in the slightest.
This naturally led Zou Feng to suspect that Ji Changsheng held a high position in the Ten Directions Sect and was likely already a Seventh Grade Expert.
If he were targeted by an Eighth Grade Martial Artist, he truly had nothing to fear. But a Seventh Grade... that was another story.
At Zou Feng’s sharp question, the man’s mouth moved, subconsciously trying to speak. But his lingering shred of reason made him struggle intensely, and for a long moment, he couldn’t force out a single word.
Seeing this, Zou Feng could only shake his head in resignation.
’There’s always a gap between expectations and reality,’ he mused. ’It seems my Chaos Finger isn’t yet strong enough to inflict Dementia on an Entering Grade Martial Artist.’
’But perhaps once it reaches the level of Refined Skill, a Ninth Grade Martial Artist won’t be able to resist it.’