And when it came to raw frontal lethality alone, among ordinary martial techniques there was simply nothing that could hold its own against the Iron Cold Palm—not even the Thousand Legs.

Every other aspect of the Iron Cold Palm was third-rate; its frontal killing power alone was first-rate. And so Meng Tong, without doing anything else, had gone straight at his opponent head-on. Had he not been crushed for that, there truly would have been no justice in the world.

In the end, it was not that the Thousand Legs had lost to the Iron Cold Palm. In that first exchange, Meng Tong's loss had come purely from underestimating his enemy. He had assumed that disposing of Qiao Hongcai would be easy and pleasant, and had meant to conserve some physical strength and true qi to take back and use in cultivating the spiritual herb seeds.

"Is that all you've got?" Meng Tong finally came to his senses and said with a cold sneer, "Qiao, you useless piece of trash, don't think that just because this lord was careless for a moment and let you get a bit of an advantage, you can really climb up onto my head and shit and piss on me. I'm telling you, you're trash, and you'll never be able to turn things around in this life! So what if you're at the early Foundation Establishment stage? You think this lord can't kill you? How naive!"

With that, Meng Tong leaped up once more, pushed his movement technique to its utmost, and lunged straight at Qiao Hongcai.

In that unexpected exchange just now, Meng Tong had taken some injury while caught off guard, but after all he had met Qiao Hongcai's Iron Cold Palm head-on with the twenty-first form of the Thousand Legs; even if he could not overpower it, that was enough to cancel out most of the Iron Cold Palm's force. So at this moment his injuries were not serious, and he still had the strength to fight.

"Hmph, then kill me and let's see it!" Qiao Hongcai answered with a cold laugh.

Seeing Meng Tong, shamed into rage, start fighting for his life and once again conjure layer upon layer of leg shadows to envelop him, Qiao Hongcai's response this time once again made jaws drop all around.

He sank his qi into his dantian, rooted himself firmly in a horse stance, and paid no heed whatsoever to however many leg shadows Meng Tong conjured from all directions. To all appearances, Qiao Hongcai did not seem to regard Meng Tong's Thousand Legs as worth a glance at all; the only thing he meant to do was find a chance to unleash a single Iron Cold Palm, twenty-first form.

Clumsy, inflexible, and slow to strike—these were the greatest and most fatal flaws of the Iron Cold Palm. If he were in some other setting where he could coordinate his strikes with a partner, it would be another matter, but in a one-on-one challenge match like this, he was at an absolute disadvantage.

Qiao Hongcai's response looked foolish and idiotic, but it was the only option he had. If he truly tried to follow Meng Tong's leg shadows and spin around with them, he would probably spin himself dizzy—practically crippling his own martial arts—and in the end there was a very good chance he would be finished before he could even get off a single Iron Cold Palm.

As things stood, holding his little patch of ground like this and waiting for Meng Tong to come to him before delivering a palm—this strategy looked utterly helpless and passive, but it was not necessarily ineffective.

"Haha! With an idiot pose like that, you dare fight this lord? Do you know how a pig dies, Qiao, you trash?" Meng Tong laughed wildly as he kept using the Thousand Legs to confuse his opponent and leave him at a loss.

"How a pig dies? That I don't know, but in a moment we'll see how you, Meng the newcomer, die, and then it should be quite clear!" Qiao Hongcai replied without betraying any emotion.

"Hmph! A dead duck's bill stays hard!" Meng Tong snorted coldly. With a thought, several leg shadows, impossible to tell true from false, swept straight at Qiao Hongcai.

But Qiao Hongcai simply would not move. He took the damage of those phantom shadows head-on, still holding the same pose, gathering his force and waiting to strike.

The phantom shadows of the twenty-first form of the Thousand Legs dealt no light damage, but to a skilled hand at the early Foundation Establishment stage like Qiao Hongcai, they were not enough to injure bones or sinews.

Meng Tong could not help but be taken aback at the sight. Once the Thousand Legs reached the twenty-first form, even the layered leg shadows carried considerable power, and so they had become truly impossible to distinguish true from false. Apart from Meng Tong himself, his opponent had no way at all to tell which leg shadow was real and which was false.

To deal with the Thousand Legs there were only two methods: either use a still more powerful martial technique to shatter all the leg shadows at once, or else rely on guessing. Beyond these, there was no third way.

Yet seeing Qiao Hongcai's stance now, unmoved as if by thunder, Meng Tong could not help but feel some puzzlement at heart. Could this fellow have some way of telling the true leg shadows from the false?

Otherwise, if he had not already determined that those leg shadows just now were phantoms, how would this bastard dare to ignore them so recklessly?

After all, the twenty-first form unleashed by a skilled hand at the early Foundation Establishment stage was the same in kind; even if the Thousand Legs was slightly inferior to the Iron Cold Palm in frontal lethality, the gap was limited. Once struck by a real leg, one would be severely wounded if not killed outright—this was no joke!

No matter how Meng Tong feinted and probed from all directions, Qiao Hongcai simply refused to move, giving no reaction at all. Even when Meng Tong afterwards flung several more phantom shadows at him in succession, he remained utterly motionless, giving the impression of an old monk sunk in meditation, completely cut off from the outside world.

Meng Tong grew suspicious and paranoid. After more than a dozen such probes in a row—several times even sending a real leg sweeping past the back of Qiao Hongcai's head—Qiao Hongcai still showed no reaction at all!

Only then did Meng Tong's heart settle. So this Qiao trash was just putting on an act, nothing more than aping the posturing of that poseur leader of theirs. In truth he could not tell at all whether the leg shadows were false or real—and to think Meng Tong had actually believed this bastard might have some clever counter for his Thousand Legs!

But on second thought, the Thousand Legs was acknowledged throughout the cultivation world as a superior martial technique, first-rate at the very least among common martial arts. In both attack and defense and in its power to confuse, once unleashed with full force it was an unsolvable existence. How could Qiao Hongcai, with nothing but that worthless, idiotic Iron Cold Palm, possibly cope with it?

Damn it, this was purely a case of him having been too suspicious and overthinking after that trash had gotten the better of him once while he was careless!

Once he had thought this through, Meng Tong immediately began laughing wildly and smugly again.

In the end, trash was trash. Even if by some fluke he had succeeded in reaching Foundation Establishment, he still could not escape his lousy fate of being trampled underfoot by Meng Tong!

Since the layered leg shadows had once again densely enveloped Qiao Hongcai, on the field Qiao Hongcai had once more fallen into absolute passivity. As long as Qiao Hongcai kept not striking, he could only keep foolishly holding his horse stance like this, not daring any other movement.