Chapter 54: Hero Qiao, Are You Ready?

Half a month later.

"It turns out to be completely ineffective on me. What a terrible design flaw."

Zhang Chengyi looked at his palm with a hint of speechlessness.

Ever since Su Xinghe discovered that Ding Chunqiu’s mixed poison could amplify the body-tempering technique, they had been transmitting cultivation and providing martial arts enlightenment to all the poisoned victims while gradually dissolving their internal qi and planting the mixed poison within their bodies.

After everyone else had been poisoned and recovered their cultivation, he—the final safety measure—was poisoned last, and that was where the comical part came in.

Unless he lowered his constitution, the mixed poison would be directly killed the moment it entered his body. Because his constitution had been maxed out through enhancement, his body temperature was far higher than that of a normal person, making it impossible for the mixed poison to survive.

Was this the legendary boiling blood and qi?

It was hard to say whether ghosts and spirits could get close to him, but it was certainly effective at killing poisons.

Zhang Chengyi had no choice but to lower his constitution and plant the poison again, only to find that as soon as his constitution stats were raised back up, the poison would be killed off all the same.

He had suddenly hit a dead end. Planting the poison was meant to temper the body and enhance constitution, but maxing out his constitution would kill the mixed poison.

This meant one thing: the limit of how much the mixed poison could accelerate body-tempering was about the same as his own maxed-out constitution. In that case, there was no point in playing with poison at all.

"As expected, I shouldn't have held such high expectations. I might as well continue practicing my external martial arts."

Zhang Chengyi shook his head. For now, the true limit of martial arts in the Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils world was him. Even if the body-tempering technique could save the poisoned victims, it could not break through the upper limit; it merely raised the lower limit.

In fact, for a normal person, reaching his limit was an utterly impossible feat. The theoretical limits of the physical body and internal qi would forever remain purely theoretical.

The martial arts of this world still had a very, very long way to go. At the very least, others would first need to catch up to his exhaust fumes.

However, he had no interest in lingering here to wait slowly. Having simply provided a beginning, he would leave the rest to the people of this world.

[Anyway, things are pretty much settled here. Other than transmitting cultivation, there is nothing that requires me anymore. It's time to leave.]

Zhang Chengyi put the small porcelain bottle containing the mixed poison back onto the tray and picked up the external martial arts manual once again.

It was time to leave.

He had never looked forward to leaving a place as much as he did now. Being looked up to as a supreme "lord" was far less interesting than he had imagined.

[I hope the next world will be an interesting one.]

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That night, a crescent moon hung in the sky. Inside the study.

"Knock, knock, knock."

"Come in."

Zhang Chengyi closed the unread external martial arts manual in his hands and looked up toward the door.

Qiao Feng pushed the door open. Step by step, as he walked forward, the shadows on his face gradually faded under the illumination of the oil lamp.

"Brother Zhang." Standing not far away with a heavy look on his face, he asked, "Since you mentioned that you will be leaving Suzhou to return in a few days, how do you plan to deal with those people in the city who have practiced the body-tempering technique?"

He spoke very directly. Having spent this long together, how could he not know the other man's personality? It was better to state whatever was on one's mind directly, as beating around the bush did not appeal to him.

"Huh?"

Zhang Chengyi let out a slightly puzzled sound, then said, "They have hands and feet. Do you expect me to provide them with food and lodging?"

He even chuckled and made a joke: "With their martial arts, once they graduate from the Beggar Sect and the Murong clan, every single one of them is prime material to become an emperor."

Qiao Feng was startled. Deep down, he indeed possessed a bit of that pride and chivalry typical of legendary heroes—arrogant toward the high and mighty yet tender toward the lowly, defying the strong while refusing to bully the weak—but after all, he was a man of ancient times with an instinctive awe of imperial power.

Even with his martial prowess, if he were to charge into the imperial palace, twist off the emperor's head, and declare that the throne belonged to whoever was next, no one would dare to utter a word of dissent.

Yet such a thought had never crossed his mind, let alone using the emperor as the punchline of a joke.

"Look, this is why I want to leave." Zhang Chengyi saw Qiao Feng's serious expression, spread his hands, shook his head, and said, "You people are far too boring."

Yes, boring.

Unable to catch a joke, perpetually constrained, and bound by too many shackles—once the grand and dashing hero stripped away the veneer of chivalry, the real person underneath proved far too uninteresting to a "player."

Before Zhang Chengyi demonstrated his ability to turn tens of thousands of people into peerless martial artists, other people's gazes were merely filled with awe; now, they were practically treating him like a deity and worshiping him.

Qiao Feng fell silent and asked, "Are you just going to leave them all here?"

He didn't need to think twice to know what the world would look like once the leash was let go and tens of thousands of peerless masters swarmed out of Suzhou City.

Anyone could imagine that among those artificially created peerless experts, many were already preparing to exact revenge, act like overlords, and do whatever they pleased.

Even many of the Beggar Sect disciples under his own command had developed improper thoughts due to their suddenly surged power.

"Or should I just kill them all?" Zhang Chengyi suddenly asked.

Qiao Feng subconsciously assumed the other was joking, but once it registered, he immediately said, "Brother Zhang!" He was somewhat worried that this might not be a joke.

Among the tens of thousands of poisoned victims, even if there were lurking villains, their number was not that large. Furthermore, having thoughts in one's heart was different from actually committing evil; executing them directly would be far too extreme.

"I'm joking." Zhang Chengyi stood up with a smile, looking the martial arts hero straight in the eye. "Look, you don't want me to let them go, and you don't want me to kill them either. So, what is it that you want?"

His tone was not harsh, remaining as gentle as ever, yet it felt like a needle piercing straight into Qiao Feng's heart and lungs.

"I..."

Qiao Feng froze. He let out a self-deprecating laugh and said, "I don't know."

He didn't know. He didn't even know what he would do in the future, let alone how to arrange the futures of others.

His confusion regarding the future drove him to instinctively seek help from the "deity" he could trust.

"Then go and find out."

Zhang Chengyi smiled. That ordinary hunter's face, though not particularly handsome, was filled with a reassuring expression at this moment. "If you can't let them go, lead them yourself."

"If you don't know what you want, slowly go and search for it."

"But I am a Khitan." Qiao Feng grew even more hesitant.

"Haha." Zhang Chengyi laughed more heartily. "What does that matter? A Khitan's bloodline is completely irrelevant. At the very least, we are both human, right?"

"Besides, we are both of Asian descent. Trace it back a few thousand or ten thousand years, and perhaps we all shared the same ancestor."

"If you think this is a problem, if this world rejects a Khitan from leading Han people, then go and change it."

"What are you afraid of?"

Indeed, what was there for him to fear?

Qiao Feng asked himself inwardly: given his current strength, looking across the entire world, aside from the "deity" before his eyes, who else could withstand three or four of his punches?

Internal qi did not equal real combat power; profound internal qi was merely a standard. Even someone whose internal qi far surpassed his could still be beaten by him.

"Brother Zhang, you really are..." He quickly caught on. Wasn't this instigating him to use martial power to solve problems?

He had always detested using martial power to resolve issues.

Zhang Chengyi laughed heartily and said, "Go back to sleep. Since you asked me how they should be handled, well, I'll leave them to you to manage."

"Qiao Feng, Hero Qiao, have you prepared yourself?"