"So it's him! Heh heh, the heavens have opened their eyes!" The moment Brother Qiang and his gang caught sight of Fang Yuan, their eyes lit up with excitement.
"I can't wait to see his arm get snapped."
"The young miss of the Zhang family is merciful. He offended the Zhang family, yet she didn't have him executed. Turns out she wanted to put him up here."
Fang Yuan strode forward at an easy pace, walked to the stone table, and sat down without hesitation.
The Monkey King fixed its gaze on him and extended its arm.
Their hands clasped together, and under the watchful eyes of countless onlookers, the contest began.
The Monkey King exerted its strength, but Fang Yuan's arm was like steel cast in iron — not a muscle twitched.
The Monkey King's pupils contracted ever so slightly, revealing a flicker of shock. This was the strongest human it had ever encountered!
Fang Yuan chuckled inwardly. Even with just Twin Boar Strength, he could beat this Monkey King. On top of that, he now had Half-Crocodile Strength to draw upon, and the Monkey King had already gone through numerous rounds of bouts — its strength was running low. Without question, this was a situation where Fang Yuan was guaranteed to win.
"Come to think of it, the Monkey King's strength isn't all that tremendous. Those Gu Masters before — some had Bear Strength, some had Horse Strength — and yet they still lost. It wasn't really that their strength was inferior to the Monkey King's. The thing is, arm wrestling can't fully unleash all of a person's power."
In truth, Bear Strength, Horse Strength, Rabbit Strength, Fish Strength, Tortoise Strength, Crocodile Strength — each was different.
The difference lay not merely in raw magnitude, but in the domains where each type of strength excelled.
Bear Strength was suited for smashing. Horse Strength was for charging. Rabbit Strength excelled at leaping. Tortoise Strength was best for bearing heavy loads. Crocodile Strength was for crushing bites. Each type of strength had its own domain of mastery.
In other words, within a particular domain, a specific type of strength could be brought to bear at its maximum potential.
Arm wrestling, on the other hand, primarily tested strength in the arms and wrists.
This was precisely what the Bandit Monkeys excelled at. It was evident from their physique — their upper limbs were often more than twice as thick as their lower ones. From the moment they were born, they began arm wrestling, accumulating an enormous foundation of training.
If the contest had taken a different form, many of the Gu Masters who lost might well have defeated the Bandit Monkey King.
Extending from this principle, each type of strength had its own unique merits. One couldn't judge their superiority or inferiority based solely on raw power.
"Take humans as an example. The force of a punch is necessarily less than that of a kick. Under normal circumstances, a person cannot unleash all their strength in a single burst. I have Twin Boar Strength, Half-Crocodile Strength, and my own innate strength, but the force I can apply in arm wrestling can never equal the sum of them all. Of course, concentrating all of one's power into a single action isn't impossible. It just requires the aid of that legendary Gu Insect..."
Arm wrestling could not fully display Fang Yuan's true strength. But his foundation was deep enough that victory was never in doubt.
Still, he couldn't make it look too obvious.
So Fang Yuan deliberately put on a strained expression, his arm trembling as he locked in a stalemate with the Monkey King.
Then, slowly, bit by bit, he began to overpower the Monkey King.
When the result came, nearly everyone was stunned.
"He actually won!"
"This man is blessed with divine strength!"
A murmur rippled through the crowd, exclamation after exclamation passing between them.
"Find out who this man is! If possible, recruit him immediately!" The heads of many families felt their hearts stir with desire.
Compared to those Gu Masters who required enormous capital investment to cultivate, Fang Yuan's cost-performance ratio was off the charts.
He required zero investment and could be put to work right away, generating profits for the caravan.
"The Zhang family got lucky — they picked up a treasure." In an instant, the gazes of many Gu Masters turned toward the Zhang family with a new measure of envy.
"No wonder we couldn't beat him!" Seeing this scene, Brother Qiang and the others could only click their tongues in disbelief.
"He's a monster."
"Now that I think about it, I really was lucky he didn't kill me."
Reflecting on it now, they were struck by a fresh wave of fear.
They had originally been looking for an opportunity to get back at Fang Yuan, but after seeing this, every last shred of desire for revenge had evaporated. If anything, they were worried that Fang Yuan might come looking for trouble with them in the future.
The Chen family's old steward wore a dark expression on his face.
"I never expected this fool to possess such brute strength. This is bad... I just hope the vice commander won't blame me." He stole a cautious glance toward the Chen family's vice commander.
The vice commander's brows knitted tightly together. He was thinking far more deeply than that.
He had begun to suspect the Zhang family's true intentions. Was their earlier demand for these people perhaps a trap?
The Zhang family had seen this servant's value, so they deliberately imprisoned him, then came to ask for his return?
The more he thought about it, the more sense it made. He let out a cold snort. Anyone who realized they'd been played and deceived would not be in a good mood.
But the mistake was already made, and he had no choice but to swallow his bitter loss.
"Am I seeing this right?" The maidservant Xiao Die clapped a hand over her mouth, so shocked by the result that she was rendered speechless.
The worry faded from Shang Cinci's face, and a smile curved the corner of her lips.
"Let's go." Zhang Zhu waved his hand, signaling the procession to move forward, his eyes shimmering with a complex light.