Your Lord Has A Screw Loose?-Chapter 371 - 373: Is There a Problem with Your Judgment of Strongman Style?
Chapter 371: Chapter 373: Is There a Problem with Your Judgment of Strongman Style?
Three days had flown by, and for Qin Muye, who was just scraping by at the bottom, life was calm, but not so for the upper echelons of Qingwu City.
Someone had challenged the Pan Turtle Martial Arts Hall, and the old master was severely injured, barely clinging to life.
This turned the once peaceful Qingwu City into a place where dark currents surged; even if the old master recovered, he would never return to his prime.
Now that such a force was no longer present to preside, the major powers saw it as a piece of fat meat.
The Governor wanted to eliminate it quickly to gain political capital, the Chief Patrol sought the martial hall’s resources to strengthen himself, and the financial tycoons desired the heritage of the Pan Turtle Martial Arts as their foundation.
But everyone was civilized, not so uncouth as to be obvious about their intentions—at least they would wipe their mouths clean of blood to hide their sharp teeth.
They probably could hold out for another ten days or so. After all, they had to wait for the old master to die and for his seventh-day memorial to pass before making a harsh move.
Qin Muye scratched his head, surprised by the sudden turn of events. He hadn’t managed to get his hands on everything from the Pan Turtle Martial Arts Hall before it collapsed.
“Hiss—wait, according to the normal process, ‘I’ should go and learn from a master, and then ‘I’ would turn the tide, right?”
“No, that doesn’t match the timing; even if I learned quickly, it’s not possible to complete it in one day and then fight someone of the 4th rank.”
“Or is it because I lack the Main Character Aura, so they came early?”
“Now that you mention it, it is indeed a possibility.”
Qin Muye thought, like he had planned before to infiltrate the Pan Turtle Martial Arts Hall. If he had really done so, the man in the trench coat might not have challenged the master but would have challenged him instead.
Because he possessed the Strongman Style.
Just then, the towering man in the trench coat visited his small store again.
“Boss, you must know the loneliness of being unbeatable,” the man said as he handed over a coin worth 10 cents, clearly wanting a bottle of soda.
Qin Muye efficiently opened a soda and provided a straw before replying, “I wouldn’t know about that, how would I know anything like that?”
Unbeatable? He had never been unbeatable, neither on the Magic Continent Server nor on the Warlock Dynasty Server, where various formidable enemies existed, though he had solved all those challenges, but that did not mean he was unbeatable.
The man gulped down the soda in one go, then bowed with the empty bottle and introduced himself: “Northern Secret Martial, true disciple of Wild Lion Sect, Li Xiang. Please enlighten me.”
“…” Qin Muye internally exclaimed in shock, realizing that his temporary skill, Strongman Style, had taken effect.
But for a martial artist to seek guidance from a small shop owner felt absurdly incongruent.
“What are you talking about? I don’t understand a thing,” Qin Muye said with a puzzled expression.
“Boss, stop pretending. With your distinct and outstanding demeanor, the unyielding look in your eyes, I knew from our first meeting that the strongest in Qingwu City isn’t those good-for-nothings but you, the owner hidden in this small shop,” Li Xiang said emphatically.
“Ah, this… you might be mistaken about something. I’m just an ordinary person with no strength at all, not a strongman. If you’re looking to fight, you might as well go to the Pan Turtle Martial Arts Hall,” Qin Muye feigned helplessness.
Li Xiang was suspicious but then firmly believed that Qin Muye was unwilling to make a move and boldly did so, stopping just at Qin Muye’s nose.
‘No reaction? Did I guess wrong?’ Li Xiang quickly withdrew his hand, his move having seemed like an afterimage.
His punch was both an attack and a probe. Upon realizing that Qin Muye had no inherent martial arts instincts, he did not land the blow; otherwise, Qin Muye would definitely have countered. For a martial artist, what he did was not just a provocation, but an insult.
“What did you just do? Why did everything go dark before my eyes?” Qin Muye suppressed all his instincts; had he not controlled them, this person would have become a mess of flesh, completely beyond recovery.
“Cough, maybe it was a fly. I was talking nonsense because I drank too much. Do you have anything here to cure hangovers?” Li Xiang asked awkwardly.
“No, this is just a small shop. We don’t have anything like that…” Qin Muye spread his hands and replied.
Read latest chapters at freёweɓnovel.com Only.
“Okay, then I’ll be on my way. Please keep what just happened a secret… it would be problematic to speak of such things.”
“I understand, it’s too embarrassing to say, isn’t it? Being such an adult and still making such childish mistakes,” Qin Muye said, finishing the other person’s sentence.
“Yeah, exactly, exactly. Boss, give me two more bags of the day before yesterday’s bread; I’ll take them to eat,” Li Xiang said, also sighing in relief that the other person had actually helped him smooth things over. What a good person!
After paying, he took the bread and hurriedly left, which also struck him as odd since he had apparently misjudged the situation.
As a martial artist, one would definitely want to challenge the strong to enhance one’s skill, not use one’s power to bully ordinary people. If that were the case, he probably wouldn’t get far in martial arts.
Temperament is what drives martial artists forward. If all one does is bully the weak, one’s journey is probably at its end.
“Phew~ I bluffed him away, so how… did my Strongman Style upgrade???”
Suddenly, Qin Muye noticed a +1 sign appear behind his Strongman Style, indicating that he had won a battle and received an upgrade.
“What kind of ridiculous Strongman Style is this? The other guy was bluffed away by me, which should mean I lost, I chickened out, so how can this count as my win?”
Then he carefully examined this temporary skill and discovered an issue: the definition of victory here wasn’t limited to combat success, meaning Qin Muye could win not only by bluffing but also by cheating, gambling, or even verbal evasion.
Thus, after bluffing Li Xiang, it naturally counted as his win.
“What a dumb skill, if all the strong were like this, it’d be a disaster…” Qin Muye remarked.
“If this keeps upgrading, won’t that be trouble?”
He shuddered at the thought. It was only a +1 now, but the impact of the Strongman Style was definitely bigger. What if it went up to +999? He’d literally become a walking Taunting Aura.
Initially, the Taunting Aura was meant only for plot-relevant characters, but this Strongman Style targeted Transcendents indiscriminately and was the kind that could grow.
“Damn~ I absolutely can’t let this annoying temporary skill grow!”
This temporary skill had hidden benefits that Qin Muye hadn’t yet discovered. As the skill grew, these benefits would surely increase, but that didn’t mean Qin Muye liked complications.
Fortunately, this skill was only directed at Transcendents. Although there were many Transcendents, not many would have interactions with him.
After all, it was only because Li Xiang came to inquire that he encountered it; other martial artists generally wouldn’t pass by his small place.
“However, Transcendents are not the same as martial artists, which means there definitely are others from different systems. Otherwise, the temporary skill would have directly used ‘martial artist’ instead of ‘Transcendent’.”
Qin Muye also gathered some intelligence from this, as for where the other Transcendents were, the Spirit Monsters had already started investigating; however, most of those discovered so far were martial artists.
Since martial arts schools openly recruited apprentices, there were various clues, making them easier to investigate.
The reason for opening martial arts schools was simple: they needed money.
Take Qingwu City, for example: the gangs were not only connected with the governor but also with the Pan Turtle Martial Arts School. Moreover, the school was involved in various industries like transport and iron-salt trade, and even collaborated with financial tycoons for money laundering and other dealings.
The Pan Turtle Martial Arts School itself represented a huge network of interests.
The school had established mutually beneficial relationships with both the local government and financial tycoons, allowing them to rise above others.
However, all this was under the premise of having a fourth-rank school head. Now without a school head, why would the government and tycoons share their lucrative gains with the school?
“Never mind that for now; I’ll first delve into the research at hand,” he said. He had numerous experiments to conduct. Among other things, he hadn’t even finished with the Divine Artifact Equipment.
Not to mention handling the genetic repository of the Insect Race. Who knows when he would finish with all this work.
As for the Secret Martial World’s Extraordinary System, there was no need for Qin Muye to worry; the Spirit Monsters would handle everything for him.
They would even capture various samples for him; he just needed to find some time to study and research them, so there was no need for him to monitor every little detail.
Now, his Endless Abyss was a major force, not a minor one.
