The Elixir is for You, The Poison is for Me

Lu Jing found himself still holding Xia Huai, maintaining the posture he had taken to directly receive Jie Liancheng's palm strike.

However, Jie Liancheng was already lying prone at his feet.

In fact, not only Jie Liancheng, but all the heroes in the hall were also sprawled on the ground, just as that person had said before.

After the magic disappeared, they no longer obsessed over the Wordless Heavenly Book in their hands, but instead fell back into a dream.

Only Xia Huai in his arms was less affected because she hadn't opened the manual earlier, and was now in a half-dreaming, half-awake state, muttering to herself, "My... my divine skill?"

Lu Jing scanned the surroundings, and after hesitating for a moment, he understood that he couldn't leave the tavern yet.

Don't think that everyone in the tavern except him had lost their minds, because outside the tavern there were still many Jianghu people hoping to find a loophole and still dreaming about that manual.

If he walked out in front of everyone, and those people discovered the situation inside, they would definitely think that he had taken the manual, and there was no way to explain it.

So the best way right now was to keep pace with everyone else.

Lu Jing gently patted Xia Huai's back while slightly shaking his arm, lulling the girl to sleep. He found a place relatively far away from Jie Liancheng and laid her and Wei Zixian down there, then Lu Jing also lay down beside them.

However, he didn't close his eyes immediately, because there was still an important matter to attend to today.

Lu Jing gritted his teeth and mobilized the remaining internal force in his dantian to continue impacting the Governor Vessel.

Of the twenty-eight acupoints on the Governor Vessel, he had already opened two, and tonight he had opened another one and a half.

With twenty-four and a half acupoints remaining, the time left for him was running out.

Fortunately, after consulting a top expert in the illusion just now, Lu Jing had found the direction for his future progress, and he wasn't as flustered as before.

After opening the acupoint, Lu Jing also pretended to fall asleep.

Whether it was because Jie Liancheng had given instructions beforehand, or for some other reason, those small leaders hadn't come to investigate the situation.

And fearing the experts in the tavern, those weaker martial artists outside could only surround it from a distance, not daring to act rashly.

As a result, it dragged on until dawn. The heroes in the hall woke up one after another with a dazed look, obviously forgetting what had happened before.

At this time, Xia Huai also got up from the ground. Then, she first woke up Wei Zixian, and then reached out and pushed Lu Jing's shoulder.

Lu Jing pretended to wake up from a dream, rubbing his eyes and said, "What happened? Huh, why am I sleeping here?"

Wei Zixian said with a cold face, "We fell for the Green Bamboo Gang's trick. They used some means to poison us, but... why didn't they take the opportunity to attack us after we were all knocked out?"

As soon as he finished speaking, he heard a martial artist not far away exclaim, "This... isn't this Jie Liancheng! Why is he sleeping here too?"

Everyone was stunned when they heard this, but they quickly thought of something. The martial artist who first discovered Jie Liancheng quickly reached into Jie Liancheng's clothes.

At the same time, others also reacted one after another, drawing their sabers and swords, staring intently at the person who was touching Jie Liancheng.

The man groped Jie Liancheng for a while, a look of joy blooming in his eyes. He quickly pulled his hand out of Jie Liancheng's clothes and grabbed a manual with bloodstains on its cover.

He couldn't wait to open a page, but the next moment his face suddenly changed drastically, because the paper under the cover had all been burned to black, and the black ash was blown into the air as he turned the page, obviously impossible to restore.

The expressions of the heroes also sank, but soon their attention focused on Jie Liancheng again.

Since the manual had been destroyed, Jie Liancheng was the only one left who knew that divine skill.

But for some reason, everyone was awake now, except for Jie Liancheng. So everyone surrounded Jie Liancheng.

Seeing that a great battle was about to break out.

But the next moment, a figure grabbed Jie Liancheng before everyone else.

Wei Zixian reached out and pressed his hand on Jie Liancheng's back. After a moment, his face became wonderful, "Third-rate realm?"

"What?!"

The heroes were in an uproar. Although everyone felt that the eldest disciple of Washing Sword Pavilion shouldn't lie, they couldn't help but reach out to check for themselves. As a result, everyone was stunned.

Jie Liancheng's cultivation realm was indeed still stuck in the third-rate, and there were no internal injuries on his body.

In other words, this was his true level.

Many people couldn't accept this result. Some people reached out to touch Jie Liancheng's face, wanting to see if he was wearing a human skin mask or something. Others went to explore his acupoints and meridians, seemingly not believing that he really only had this little internal force.

But Wei Zixian had already let go and returned to Lu Jing and Xia Huai's side, shaking his head and said, "It's just a farce. I came here specially for nothing. As expected, Jianghu rumors are mostly unbelievable."

Xia Huai blinked her eyes, but didn't know what she was thinking.

"Let's go," Wei Zixian said, "Let's get the manual for Young Hero Lu, and then come back to the sect with me. Uncle-Master Xiao is probably already worried about you."

......

At a martial arts gathering, no one expected the finale to end in such a dramatic way.

In the end, not only did none of the heroes who attended the banquet obtain the divine skill manual, but even whether the divine skill existed became a mystery.

Even two days later, when Jie Liancheng woke up, he couldn't remember anything that happened after obtaining the manual, which completely extinguished the hopes of those who still had expectations for that manual. Of course, these were all later stories.

But after he finished speaking, he found that Lu Jing was unmoved.