"Pah! Zhou Skinflint, you damned old hag, get the hell away from me! As far away as you can!"
Lü Kong's drunken eyes were bloodshot, his face flushed with alcohol. Cloudy liquor dribbled from the corner of his mouth as he spoke. He looked every inch a drunken street thug, without a trace of the dignity expected of a Heavenly Prodigy.
Had he been sober, he would not have dared defy Zhou Duoduo so brazenly even with ten times the courage. His cultivation might have been slightly higher, but in family standing and backing, the gulf between him and the deeply rooted Zhou Family was as vast as that between clouds and mud.
Such was life in the cultivation world. Cultivation gave one confidence, but powerful backing was the foundation of survival. He understood those stakes better than anyone.
But now, strong liquor burned through his brain. The humiliation of his disastrous gambling loss and the fury of losing his Furnace Cauldron had swept away all reason, leaving only the reckless arrogance of someone smashing an already broken pot:
"Stop putting on airs! Do you really think you're the greatest under heaven?
"I only called you senior sister out of courtesy. Did you really think I was afraid of you?
"With your pitiful cultivation, you think you deserve to fight me? You don't know your own limits!"
"Oh? Lü Kong, I was wondering who had swallowed a bear's heart and a leopard's gall. So it was you."
Rather than growing angry, Zhou Duoduo's eyes flashed with sly amusement, and an eager smile curled her lips. As she continued mocking him, she briskly hitched up her skirt and rolled back her sleeves, exposing slender but powerful wrists, ready to launch into a fight at any moment.
"Every other time you