Zhou Cheng focused utterly, pushing his Grandmaster cultivation to its limits, yet he remained at a disadvantage.
Wu Zhu was a highly intelligent robot from the previous era. He possessed neither true qi nor a domain, only absolute speed and strength, and a body made of high-strength materials far beyond the current age.
Perhaps because Fan Xian was no longer nearby, Wu Zhu fought without restraint, his speed climbing higher and higher, his blows growing heavier.
At first, Zhou Cheng was only slightly outmatched. Gradually, however, he could barely hold his own. Any opening brought a lightning-fast barrage of strikes.
By the end, he was responding almost entirely on a martial artist's instincts.
If not for the resilient true qi shielding his Grandmaster body, he would already have been gravely injured.
"The gap is just too wide!"
As the "weakest Grandmaster," Zhou Cheng had always understood his limitations. He had deliberately taken this fight both to feel the gap between himself and the greatest fighters of this age, and to use Wu Zhu to hone his true qi and sharpen his reactions.
He simply had not expected the difference to be so stark.
Right now, he felt like a man made of rubber trading blows with a man made of iron.
He could do nothing to the iron man, while the iron man could not beat him to death anytime soon.
Though he was mostly taking a beating, each head-on clash and dodge pulled his nerves taut, drove his mind to its utmost, and sharpened his bodily instincts. That feeling of growing stronger at breakneck speed was nothing like his restrained sparring sessions with Chen Quan and his brother.
A quarter of an hour later, Zhou Cheng braced his hands on his knees and panted. Every inch of him hurt, his stealth outfit was in tatters, and even the demon mask on his face was covered in cracks.
Wu Zhu stood a short distance away. His clothes were even more ragged, yet his body bore no injuries, and even his breathing rhythm had not changed.
The hundred-meter radius at the center of the bamboo grove was a wreck. Even the ground looked as though a deep-tillage plow had torn through it.
"Is he even human?"
Fan Xian, who had already reached the edge of the battlefield, felt his teeth ache. He had witnessed almost the entire clash, one that exceeded anything he had imagined possible.
He had never known that martial arts could wield such terrifying power.
Of course, he did not understand that the scene before him was already the result of Zhou Cheng doing his utmost to condense his true qi.
Had two ordinary Grandmasters fought, their true qi erupting without restraint, everything within a kilometer might have been razed to the ground.
Fan Xian hurried to Wu Zhu's side, unable to hide his excitement.
"Uncle, that was amazing!"
He gave him a thumbs-up, then shouted toward Zhou Cheng nearby.
"You're no match for my uncle now. Why not surrender? As long as you answer my questions honestly and swear never to oppose me again, I'll let you go afterward!"
"Let me go?"
Zhou Cheng raised a hand to brush the nearly shattered mask on his face, then suddenly chuckled.
"If I want to leave, he can't stop me."
The moment he finished speaking, he turned his head away.
When he turned back, the mask on his face was astonishingly as good as new.
Fan Xian froze, blinked, then raised a hand and rubbed his eyes hard.
He could not help blurting out:
"Holy shit... how did you do that? A magic trick?"
Zhou Cheng merely chuckled without answering.
Before transmigrating, he had received a beginner's gift pack from the system-the right to choose one item to bring into the film-and-TV world.
After his memories awakened, he discovered that the gift pack was still available.
So he selected the unfinished apartment he had just acquired in the real world.
Through the system's adaptive conversion, that apartment became something like a "storage space," allowing him to store and retrieve its contents at any time.
Both the iron rod he had used in the fight and the mask he wore now had come from there.
The reason he had dared to fight Wu Zhu without holding back was precisely that he had already stocked the space with various supplies, enough to ensure his escape.
With Fan Xian present, however, those backup plans would not be needed.
Seeing him remain silent, Fan Xian frowned.
"Even if you won't talk now, I'll find out soon enough. Your breathing is already ragged. Unless another expert as strong as you comes to help, there's no way you can escape my uncle."
Zhou Cheng straightened, exhaled deeply, steadied his breathing, and lightly brushed the dust from his clothes before speaking unhurriedly.
"I have no help, nor do I need to run. I know that shortly, you'll give me the Overlord True Energy manual and see me off."
Fan Xian raised an eyebrow. "What's that supposed to mean? Do you think I'm an idiot?"
Zhou Cheng chuckled.
"Before coming here, I investigated you thoroughly. In the end, I reached one conclusion-Fan Xian, you're a good man."
Fan Xian looked puzzled. "...And?"
Zhou Cheng shook his head and sighed. "And so, when I entered the Fan Residence to find you, I took the liberty of inviting one of your maids away."
Fan Xian's expression changed abruptly.
"You fucking-"
[Negative emotions from Fan Xian +999!]
Chapter 6: Overlord True Energy
Fan Xian swallowed the rest of his curse halfway through.
He did his best to keep his expression calm, but the slight twitching of his facial muscles betrayed his feelings.
After a long while, Fan Xian tugged at the corners of his mouth, exhaled, and forced out a mocking, icy smile.
"You truly don't care about preserving even a shred of dignity as a powerful fighter. Not only did you come here to rob me outright, you even resorted to such despicable methods.
"But you think one maid's life is enough to trade for my Overlord True Energy manual? Aren't you being a little too naive?"
Zhou Cheng spoke in a hoarse voice, wearing the hint of a smile.
"A maid's life is indeed worth little. In anyone else's hands, never mind one-even the lives of ten or a hundred maids wouldn't buy half a page of the Overlord True Energy manual. But you're different, Fan Xian."
He paused, a trace of amusement and wonder seeping into his tone.
"You're a good man!"
Labeled a "good man" once again, Fan Xian completely lost his composure.
He almost leaped into the air, pointing at Zhou Cheng as he cursed.
"A good man? So good men deserve to be threatened? What kind of bullshit logic is that? In that case, to hell with being a good man! Uncle Wu Zhu, capture him first, then we'll rescue her!"
Without a word, Wu Zhu took a step forward.
"Wait!"
Zhou Cheng remained unhurried. He raised a hand in a light pressing gesture and faced Fan Xian.
"Your uncle is indeed stronger than I am. But taking me down won't be so easy."
His gaze swept over the bamboo grove, now reduced to a wasteland, and he said leisurely:
"Take a guess. If I moved the battlefield to the Fan Residence... how many people would die?"
Fan Xian felt as though a bucket of icy water had suddenly been poured over his head. Most of his blazing fury went out in an instant.
He stared at the devastation before him, unable to imagine what it would look like if all this happened at the Fan Residence.
Wu Zhu seemed to sense his wavering as well and stopped moving.
Fan Xian clenched his fists, his nails nearly digging into his flesh.
He dared not gamble.
He wanted to ask Wu Zhu whether he could win quickly, but he had witnessed that heart-stopping battle in its entirety.
Wu Zhu could win, but not quickly.
"You never had a choice."
Zhou Cheng's voice rang out again.
Fan Xian admitted that the man was right, but he could not accept it. As he wrestled bitterly with himself, his eyes suddenly shifted, and an idea came to him.
He sighed, his voice full of helplessness.
"Fine, I really don't have a choice. That's what I get for being a good man!"
He stressed the words "good man."
"I can write out the Overlord True Energy manual from memory, but you have to release her first and answer a few questions."
Zhou Cheng shook his head, his tone leaving no room for negotiation.
"You're not in a position to bargain with me. Besides, I only want the original manual. No need to trouble yourself writing it out. Once I have the manual, I'll naturally release her. As for anything else... forget it."
"Only the original?"
Fan Xian froze for a moment and could not help cursing inwardly.
Damn it! He's actually this cautious!
His sudden inspiration had been to alter a few crucial passages while writing the manual from memory and play a dirty trick on the man. He had not expected him to be so guarded.
He wanted to claim that the original manual had long since been destroyed, but feared the man would not believe him and that further complications would arise.
In the end, he could not disregard everyone in the Fan Residence. Fan Xian could only swallow his broken teeth along with his anger.
"...Fine, I can give you the manual. But how can you guarantee you won't go back on your word once you have it?"
As though he had heard something amusing, Zhou Cheng let out a low, hoarse laugh like a crow in the night.
"In all of Danzhou, only Overlord True Energy catches my eye. Aside from that, what do you think is worth scheming for?"
For a moment, Fan Xian had no answer.
He reflected self-mockingly that, aside from this cultivation art, he really possessed nothing that could tempt someone of this caliber.
At that moment, he felt the strange truth of the saying: "An ordinary man is innocent; possessing a jade makes him guilty."
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