Wei Zhao had only made a cursory study of the Thousand Blades Sect's foundational cultivation method, but he knew well enough where its difficulty lay — and the greatest difficulty of all was dividing the mind. Every weapon under one's control demanded a thread of attention devoted solely to it. For an ordinary person, even splitting the mind in two was no easy feat; to command a hundred weapons at once, one would have to split the mind a hundred ways. Anyone with half a brain could see that such a thing was beyond the human capacity altogether.

Yet the Ling Tianyou before him was a puzzle. Unlike the other disciples of the Thousand Blades Sect, he had not opened with a great array of weapons. Instead he produced only a single ribbon, which looked utterly harmless. What was the meaning of this?

Was he concealing his strength? Or was this wholly unremarkable ribbon in fact his trump card?

Wei Zhao did not stir rashly. He simply stood where he was and quietly waited for Ling Tianyou's next move. At his level, he could not possibly regard the other as a genuine threat, but neither would he underestimate him. He watched Ling Tianyou, holding fast to stillness while awaiting whatever change might come.

And as Wei Zhao observed Ling Tianyou, so too did Ling Tianyou observe his reaction. As he had said himself, he was genuinely curious about this man Wei Zhao.

A primal-spirit expert of formidable power, an uncle-master of the Cangwu Sect of the Northern Isle — to all the disciples of Taigu, this Wei Zhao was an existence wrapped in mystery. Though Ling Tianyou had made no move throughout the previous ten months, in both the short and the long view he felt it necessary to ascertain just who and what Wei Zhao was. Otherwise, if nothing else, the coming Taigu Trial would have one more unpredictable factor to reckon with.

Suddenly, the ribbon fluttering in midair snapped taut with a sharp crack. Then came a shrill shriek of air being split, as it hurtled straight at Wei Zhao like a loosed arrow.

The onlookers' expressions shifted at the sight. To carry such force — this ribbon was plainly no ordinary thing.

Faced with the ribbon rushing at him, Wei Zhao's expression remained unmoved. Only when it was less than half a foot from his face did he extend two fingers and calmly catch it.

Xin Yi'an nodded to himself. The scene looked wholly unremarkable, but to achieve such composure and fearlessness as Wei Zhao's was no easy matter. Among those present, at least, few could have managed it — even he, a cultivator of early Golden Core, would not dare to stake his word on it.

Yet once caught, the ribbon did not stop. Instead it thrashed wildly like a serpent. To the onlookers, however, it seemed merely futile struggling — what harm, after all, could a limp scrap of cloth do?

But Wei Zhao's expression flickered slightly, and without hesitation he let go. In almost the same instant that his fingers opened, a dense swarm of flying needles burst from the ribbon!

The move came so abruptly that the whole crowd drew a collective sharp breath, every face stricken with alarm. Nearly all of them had been deceived by the ribbon's innocuous appearance — who could have imagined that such a multitude of flying needles lay hidden within?

Had it been any of them in his place, they would by now have been punctured into a pincushion; that single move would have been the end of them.

But Ling Tianyou's opponent was Wei Zhao. Even though the needles were concealed with extraordinary cunning, virtually fused with the ribbon so that under normal circumstances not even a spiritual sense could detect them, Wei Zhao possessed not only a spiritual sense far keener than ordinary men but also the feral instinct for danger honed since childhood. Had he not sensed it beforehand, why would he have suddenly let go?

"What a formidable movement art!" Ling Tianyou's eyes lit up. What stunned him was not that Wei Zhao had sensed it in advance, but that against such a close-range needle assault, Wei Zhao had been able to evade it with perfect composure — and without suffering a single scratch.

Given Ling Tianyou's station, even his sparring partners in the Thousand Blades Sect were at least of Golden Core strength. Yet even a Golden Core expert, facing this surprise assault of flying needles, could at best have hardened his protective true qi and taken the blow head-on; no one had ever evaded it as completely as Wei Zhao had. Such a movement art was simply unheard of, unseen.

"The honor is mutual. To have mastered the legendary Thousand Blades in Flight — you are no ordinary man yourself," Wei Zhao said with a faint smile.

"Thousand Blades in Flight?!" The crowd was startled anew. They counted carefully the needles now swarming densely through the air, and then cried out in stunned amazement: "Nine hundred and ninety-nine flying needles, plus that one ribbon — it really is a thousand blades in flight!"

"How is that possible? Isn't Thousand Blades in Flight just a baseless legend? Ling Tianyou actually achieved it?" Even with the evidence before their own eyes, the crowd could scarcely believe it.

After all, a hundred blades unleashed together was already extraordinary; even among the Thousand Blades Sect's finest, only Nascent Soul monsters could hope to manage it. Splitting the mind a hundred ways was not something one could master merely by wishing to; without sufficient natural endowment, thousands of years of practice would come to nothing. As for a thousand blades in flight, that required splitting the mind a thousand ways — a difficulty not a thousand or ten thousand times greater than a hundred, but beyond all reckoning. It was simply not a feat that humans could accomplish!

Yet the facts lay before their eyes: Ling Tianyou, at nothing more than the peak of the late Foundation Establishment stage, had managed to achieve the legendary Thousand Blades in Flight. Was this fellow even human?

"No wonder the whole Thousand Blades Sect stands behind him as sect master — so this is the kind of world-shaking genius they've produced. No wonder!" Only now did Xin Yi'an finally understand.

As for Ling Tianyou's ascent to the sect master's seat, the entire Taigu Alliance had long been divided in its speculation — and so it was among the upper echelons of every Taigu sect and clan. However great a genius he might be, to make a Ling Tianyou, still only at the peak of late Foundation Establishment, the master of a whole sect seemed far too frivolous a thing.

But now, having witnessed Thousand Blades in Flight with his own eyes, Xin Yi'an finally understood. The Thousand Blades Sect had not lost its collective mind — it had latched onto a colossal thigh. Once this Ling Tianyou came into his own, there would likely be no one in the entire Taigu Alliance to match him. By then the Thousand Blades Sect would surely shake off its long decline, and its future would be boundless indeed!

And not Xin Yi'an alone — even Bing Wushuang at his side was moved. A Ling Tianyou who could command a thousand blades in flight was not to be measured by common standards. Even now, at only the peak of late Foundation Establishment, he was already fit to stand on equal footing with Golden Core experts like themselves; give him a little more time, and perhaps even they would be looking up at him.

As for Xue Jianming, a raging storm churned in his heart at that moment, and he could not help but flush hot and red! (To be continued~^~)