Chapter 161 — The Division of Strength
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
That male escort, spineless or not, and whether or not he was unwilling to offend a customer like the refined man, he stood for the bar. He was the bar's own man!
However overbearing the refined man might be as a customer, he still would not disregard the bar's face and simply drive the male escort away. At the very least he would give him a small tip by way of compensation, so that everyone could keep face.
But the moment the male escort saw the refined man, he had not spoken a single word — he had simply risen and left. That meant the refined man was very likely one of the bar's own people; which was why he had departed without an instant's hesitation.
Once he had settled that, Wei Zhao could not be bothered to keep playing games with the refined man. Beating him up would be simple enough — but inside the man's own bar, Wei Zhao had no wish to solve his problems by such crude and brutal means.
True, he could take down one man, even a whole crowd of them — but that would expose his strength under everyone's eyes. Not the whole of it, perhaps, but doing so might invite even more frenzied measures to follow.
These people were not the same as Zhong Yongliang and Bu Ruoming back at school. Wei Zhao could feel it: even Gu Pengzhan was somewhat wary of whoever was moving against Gu Mengyao. For it was not one person but a faction, a power bloc — and what had surfaced so far might be only the tip of the iceberg.
So Wei Zhao simply exposed the refined man's purpose outright, forcing whoever was directing him to step forward and speak for himself. That way he need not reveal his own strength too early, and he could also probe the other side's true depth.
To date, all Wei Zhao had shown was speed — nothing more. Blocking the bullet in the bank, stealing the gun in the car — none of it had betrayed his real strength.
And just now, as he rose and seized the refined man's arm, Wei Zhao had measured it precisely, using a strength only slightly above the refined man's own, feeding him false information.
Modern people divide the martial arts into four grades: Heaven, Earth, Mystic, and Yellow. Each grade is further divided into three levels — early, middle, and late.
In truth, this too was only a rough division for assessing strength. Since each family cultivated different arts, two men both at the early Yellow grade might still differ in certain subtle ways — though probably not by much.
Wei Zhao had learned this back in the special forces. His own old man and his master, however, did not use such ranks to measure strength.
What the old man emphasized was body-forging — what common folk called external skill — though he remade the body with traditional medicine of his own compounding. His master, by contrast, emphasized assassination; though the early stage likewise required body-forging, it centered mostly on ambush and speed.
Under the old man's forging, Wei Zhao's present strength roughly rivaled the peak of the late Yellow grade. Yet with assassination and surprise attack at his disposal, he could also bring down a good Mystic-grade fighter. Fighters of that level were already uncommon in the city; at least, on the battlefield Wei Zhao had met only one, and he was a foreigner.
As for the Xuanyuan Dragon-Abiding Formula that Wei Zhao practiced, it resembled somewhat the internal-school arts cultivated by certain families — though so far, the first layer had not raised his strength very noticeably.
Practicing the Xuanyuan Dragon-Abiding Formula had done no more than cleanse and refine his body to a degree. Old Man Wei's external medicine could at most alter muscle and sinew; it had no effect upon the organs. The Xuanyuan Dragon-Abiding Formula was different — it could remake the whole body.
So far Wei Zhao had discovered only that the Xuanyuan Dragon-Abiding Formula held an absolute advantage against fatigue, and what he had just found was that the energy elements within his body could be of some help to the sick.