Chapter 58 : Chapter 58
Chapter 58: A Lot of People Don’t Understand Details Like That
Li Mu did not waste any time.
With his right hand, he spun the cudgel in a flourish, then lightly pointed at Lu Chenfeng’s shoulder with his left.
“Left shoulder.”
Then he drew the Thornflower Cudgel back.
Gripping the end of the cudgel with one hand, he casually swung it down toward Lu Chenfeng’s left shoulder.
All the students watching were stunned.
Was this a joke!?
There was not the slightest fluctuation of True Qi coming from Li Mu!
That meant Li Mu was not using any True Qi at all, and this strike carried no imposing force whatsoever.
He had not even exerted himself.
It felt like mere horseplay, as though he were lightly tapping the other person with his weapon.
To put it a bit dramatically, even a teacher smacking a sleeping student with a book in class would have used more force than this.
Even Lu Chenfeng frowned deeply, about to curse Li Mu for not taking it seriously.
But the instant the Thornflower Cudgel struck his shoulder, he felt as though a small mountain had crashed into him.
His body sank violently!
With a sharp crack, the blue bricks beneath his feet all shattered.
The scene instantly fell silent.
Even Zhang Zhiwei’s eyes lit up sharply.
As for Lu Chenfeng, he was trembling with excitement!
“You brat, you’re looking down on me a little too much! You’re not even using True Qi!”
“Again! Show me something real!”
Lu Chenfeng pointed at Li Mu as the green light around his body suddenly blazed brighter.
The aura around him swelled greatly, and even his clothes began to stir without wind.
“Fine!”
Li Mu was interested now as well.
He had only been testing him just now. He had not used any True Qi, but with the strength of eight tigers from Mountain-Bearing Art combined with a weapon weighing 1,155 jin, an ordinary Martial Artist would never have been able to withstand it.
Since he had never fought Lu Chenfeng before, he had wanted to probe his limits first.
He had not expected Lu Chenfeng to be completely unharmed.
Li Mu rolled his neck.
Drawing back the Thornflower Cudgel once more, he suddenly unleashed his aura in full.
Again, he pulled the cudgel behind him, one hand gripping the tail end while the other end rested on the ground behind him.
Then Li Mu swung it in a full arc and smashed it down at Lu Chenfeng.
Boom!
The Thornflower Cudgel slammed into Lu Chenfeng’s shoulder.
Energy exploded outward in all directions, and the clothes of the spectators nearby billowed violently.
As for the blue bricks beneath Lu Chenfeng’s feet, they had not merely cracked this time.
Lu Chenfeng had stamped a footprint straight into them.
White powder sprayed up through the gaps.
The bricks beneath his feet had been ground entirely to dust!
“Li Mu! Get serious!!”
Lu Chenfeng laughed wildly, yanking his feet out of the bricks.
After adjusting his stance, he let out a furious roar.
Rip!
His clothes burst apart!
His body swelled by a whole circle, shooting up to a terrifying height of over two meters.
The green light covering him now glimmered with gold, and the energy erupting from him was overwhelming!
This time, even Li Mu looked at him in a new light. That previous strike would have smashed the head of a Third Grade monster to pieces in a single blow!
“Good!”
Li Mu shouted in praise.
He drew the Thornflower Cudgel back, his body stretched taut like a drawn bow.
Then he swung the cudgel over his head and brought it crashing down toward Lu Chenfeng with a terrifying howl of wind.
As the cudgel swept through the air, a massive phantom image of the Thornflower Cudgel followed tightly behind it!
The phantom was nearly two meters long and as thick as an arm!
Zhang Zhiwei’s eyes lit up.
The weapon phantom around Li Mu’s strike resembled the weapon phantoms produced by his Golden Spears and Iron Steeds.
Aside from not being golden, its might also seemed tangible.
And it was tangible.
This was the manifestation of Flowing Cloud Triple Shock under Li Mu’s hundred years of insight, granted by the Inferior Heavenly Immortal Art.
Under Li Mu’s century of understanding, Flowing Cloud Triple Shock had already transformed completely into another technique.
It no longer needed to be stacked in sequence.
Instead, it could directly convert the crushing might of up to three tremors into a single phantom strike!
It looked like only one cudgel strike had been thrown.
But in truth, the force of that phantom was the fully stacked power of Flowing Cloud Triple Shock.
Although its power was still slightly inferior to Iron-Cleaving Form, it consumed far less True Qi than Iron-Cleaving Form had before!
It was almost the same as an ordinary attack.
So Li Mu had renamed Flowing Cloud Triple Shock for himself.
He called it Flowing Cloud Fleeting Shadow.
The name was a little embarrassingly dramatic, but it was fitting.
Of course, the Inferior Heavenly Immortal Art had also produced a qualitative change in Iron-Cleaving Form.
Now, once Li Mu infused the cudgel with True Qi, it could generate terrifying vibrations!
The vibrations were so violent that Li Mu truly felt he could split iron with the cudgel.
He genuinely did not dare use it on Lu Chenfeng.
He was absolutely certain Lu Chenfeng would never be able to withstand it!
Sure enough.
The moment Lu Chenfeng sensed the terrifying might of Flowing Cloud Fleeting Shadow, he threw up both arms to block Li Mu’s Thornflower Cudgel.
At the same time, Li Mu activated Fiery Eyes and Golden Gaze to observe the flow of Lu Chenfeng’s True Qi.
A blindingly bright surge of True Qi rose from beneath Lu Chenfeng’s feet and shot upward.
In almost an instant, it coursed through his entire body.
Not only did it gather dazzlingly at the point of impact, it also covered his entire body without a single blind spot.
Bang!!
Amid that explosive crash, Lu Chenfeng’s huge body, more than two meters tall, looked as though it had been struck head-on by a truck!
Grinding broken bricks beneath him, he slid backward through the arena.
Then, with a heavy thud, his back slammed into a training dummy!
The dummy did not even have time to display a number.
It was deformed on the spot and scraped far backward.
All the students were dumbstruck!
The long furrow of shattered brick across the ground and the dust filling the room proved that what had just happened was no illusion.
“Brother Feng!!”
The girl in the long green dress cried out in alarm and was the first to rush over.
The other girls, along with some eager students, all hurried up to help as well.
But from within the dust came Lu Chenfeng’s laughter.
“Hahahaha! Hahahahahaha...”
He shoved aside the people around him and stood up.
His arms hung at his sides, and it was obvious that the bone in his right forearm had been injured.
His whole body trembled as he staggered several steps forward, unsteady on his feet.
Yet his face was full of exhilaration.
He slowly walked up to Li Mu and raised his uninjured hand.
Then he gave Li Mu a thumbs-up.
“Incredi...”
Before he could finish the word, his eyes rolled back and his mountain-like body suddenly pitched forward.
Li Mu reacted quickly and caught him on his shoulder.
At that moment, he was very glad he had not used Iron-Cleaving Form.
If he had stacked Iron-Cleaving Form on top of Flowing Cloud Fleeting Shadow, something serious might have happened today.
Lu Chenfeng had completely blacked out.
“Help me carry him to the infirmary! He’s fine. He won’t die!”
Li Mu called to the students around him.
Several boys immediately came over to help.
The students watching were all speechless.
He was fine?
His forearm was injured, and the man had passed out! If this had been a real battlefield, he would already have been at the mercy of others.
Zhang Zhiwei came over to help as well and said calmly, “I already told him...”
Li Mu gave him a helpless look.
Together, they carried Lu Chenfeng toward the infirmary.
The girl in the long green dress was left behind.
Her face was anxious, but she seemed to care too much about her elevated status to squeeze together with the other students.
So she planned to wait until they had gone out before leaving.
But just then, the same students who had heard her talking earlier passed by from the side.
They deliberately spoke in loud voices.
“My, my. Good thing Lu Chenfeng was overestimating Li Mu and used his strongest defensive stance.”
“If he had underestimated Li Mu instead, that hit probably would’ve crippled him on the spot.”
“Oh? Then you just don’t understand!”
“You saw Zhang Zhiwei standing nearby, right?”
“The only reason Lu Chenfeng couldn’t take it was because Zhang Zhiwei had already stabbed through him first!”
“He disrupted Lu Chenfeng’s qi, so naturally Lu Chenfeng’s defense dropped sharply.”
“A lot of people, hahahaha... a lot of people just don’t understand details like that, hahahaha...”
The two of them played off each other, and when they said those last lines, they deliberately mimicked the tone the girl in the long dress had used earlier.
They could not even hold back their laughter and ended up laughing as they spoke.
The girl in the long dress turned livid!
Never in her life had her face burned like this.
It was not that these students disrespected Lu Chenfeng.
They were targeting her.
A person like her had followed Lu Chenfeng in transferring schools, but deep down she still looked down on Blackwater High School, and even looked down on Li Mu.
In her eyes, it was as though only Lu Chenfeng was invincible.
For someone like that, a little ridicule was already being lenient.
What she really needed was to have that pretty fantasy shattered completely, so she could learn to respect other people.
If there were ever a chance for her to take one strike from Li Mu’s cudgel too, she would probably behave herself after that.
Lu Chenfeng was not seriously hurt.
His left arm was fractured.
To him, that was nothing. Once medicine was applied, he would recover fully overnight.
As for why he had passed out, the diagnosis was that he had released too much True Qi in an instant and injured his Meridians.
He woke up again very quickly.
When Lu Chenfeng opened his eyes, only Li Mu and Zhang Zhiwei were in the infirmary.
“You were the one who proposed the spar. You can pay for the blue bricks in the Training Arena.”
The moment he saw him awake, Li Mu joked.
Lu Chenfeng sat up. Seeing that his arm had already been bandaged, he said nothing about it.
Instead, he jerked his chin toward Zhang Zhiwei.
“No need. The Training Arena is getting renovated soon anyway!”
“His family’s paying for it!”
Li Mu immediately turned to Zhang Zhiwei in surprise.
Zhang Zhiwei transferring to Blackwater High School already counted as coming to support it.
And now he was even going to fund the renovation of the Training Arena?
As expected of a wealthy consortium.
Zhang Zhiwei answered lightly, “A-Grade.”
“Do your parents have any plans to take in an adopted son?”
Li Mu asked with complete seriousness.
“No.” Zhang Zhiwei shook his head with equal seriousness.
“All right, enough of that from you two.”
Lu Chenfeng swung himself down from the bed, and the hospital bed creaked under his weight.
Pointing at Li Mu, he said, “That beating was satisfying!”
“It’ll be noon soon. I’m treating the two of you to a meal. How about we have a drink together?”
Li Mu secretly laughed.
If that was how things were going to be, then he might save quite a bit on meal expenses in the future.