The entire audience was dumbfounded.
Even though, at that time, a few people had still been able to keep up with some of Lan Ling and Yu Zhiwen's rhythm and judgment.
But when the words "I am Xu Xiaoshou" truly leaped from Saint Slave's second-in-command's mouth in a tone absurd to the extreme.
No one dared believe it anymore.
It was both laughable and tearful! This was simply an utterly ridiculous deduction, so absurd it made one want to cry and laugh at once! Saint Slave's second-in-command!
The one standing before them was Saint Slave's second-in-command, Wuxiu! An unparalleled being who had escaped from the Moonless Sword Immortal more than ten years ago and, even over a decade later, dared to challenge Gou Wuyue alone once more.
And Xu Xiaoshou...
Everyone knew him—a "pre-Heavenly-stage expert."
No matter how many powerful means of self-preservation he possessed, such as a master-level physique, master-level sword will, master-level spirit arrays, explosive-furnace alchemy...
At the end of the day, he was merely pre-Heavenly.
No matter how well he could put on an act.
His aura, experience, courage, grasp of the bigger picture, and so on, and so forth...
Could he achieve those?
Could he fake them?
Yu Zhiwen's ability to calmly reason and methodically state her opinions amid a battle between Thrones and Cutting Path experts had already left all the Red Robes in awe.
But that was the insight possessed only by a favored daughter of heaven cultivated through an incomparably powerful background and abundant resources—as Dao Xuanji's direct disciple from the Holy Spirit Hall, second on the Dao Department's Heavenly Rankings.
Those were enough to allow her to retain a thread of composure in such a situation.
Enough for her to step forward without her feet going weak or her legs trembling and