Chapter 2849 — Trapped Again

"It's nothing. If it hadn't thrown me down, I'd have jumped down to find you myself," Wei Zhao said. "We came here as a team. I couldn't very well leave you here all alone, could I?"

"Right—what happened to Zhang Naipao?" Yang Qiqi asked.

"I avenged you." Wei Zhao did not go into detail, but those five short words, he trusted, would be enough for Yang Qiqi to understand.

Sure enough, Yang Qiqi opened her mouth in astonishment. Wei Zhao's prowess had caught her somewhat off guard, though on reflection it was only to be expected—when had Wei Zhao ever not trampled his opponents underfoot?

"Mm..." Yang Qiqi nodded, but the thought of having failed to obtain a scale from the Five Fiends Dragon left her feeling rather disheartened, and her spirits sank.

Xiao Jiu's condition was growing worse by the day. It had not been so severe before, but over the past year it had deteriorated steadily, and Yang Qiqi had spent nearly all her time rushing about in search of medicinal ingredients and cures for Xiao Jiu.

Yang Qiqi's family was a large assassin organization, true, but only one of the foremost such organizations in the secular world. Had it not been for Xiao Jiu's illness, they would likely never have had any dealings with the world of cultivation. Yet now, to cure Xiao Jiu, Yang Qiqi had no choice but to step into an unknown realm.

"What's wrong?" Wei Zhao asked, seeing Yang Qiqi's expression suddenly turn grave.

"Nothing... It's just that in this trial, I didn't get what I came for..." Yang Qiqi said with a sigh.

"You wanted to get a scale from the Five Fiends Dragon?" Wei Zhao asked, a faint stir in his heart.

"Yes. I'd meant to have a proper talk with it, but it ignored me. I thought it was asleep, so I crept over to pluck off a scale—but it had only been feigning sleep to trick me. It seized me in one claw and flung me off the cliff..." Yang Qiqi said, somewhat dejected.

"Uh..." Wei Zhao thought Yang Qiqi's approach rather reckless, but if he had not crossed blows with the Five Fiends Dragon himself, who would ever have guessed how formidable it was? And Yang Qiqi had had no way of knowing the creature's true strength.

"Never mind. I'll think of another way." Yang Qiqi sat on the ground hugging her knees. She said so, but anyone could see the helplessness in her eyes.

"Does it have to be a scale from the Five Fiends Dragon?" Wei Zhao asked, his heart softening.

"Anything from its claws would do—it doesn't have to be a scale. But if I cut off a chunk of its flesh, wouldn't it fly into an even greater rage?" Yang Qiqi said.

"If it's something else from its claws, then how about this—will it do?" Wei Zhao drew from his robes the Five Fiends Dragon's claw he had collected earlier and held it out before Yang Qiqi.

"This is..." Yang Qiqi was slightly taken aback.

"It's a claw from the Five Fiends Dragon. I crossed blows with it earlier, and it wounded one of my friends with its claw—the claw snapped off in the process, so I kept it," Wei Zhao said.

"Ah?" Yang Qiqi was both startled and overjoyed. She had never imagined that a claw of the Five Fiends Dragon would be in Wei Zhao's possession. If so, then her trip for this trial had not been in vain after all? She reached out to take the claw from Wei Zhao, but then it struck her how precious the thing was, and that she could hardly take it for nothing. She hesitated: "I... I have nothing to trade you for it..."

"Then trade yourself," Wei Zhao said, straight-faced, suppressing a smile.

"Ah!" Yang Qiqi was stunned. She had not expected Wei Zhao to set such a condition, and did not know what to do: "C-could we change the terms? I could buy it on credit..."

"If you ran off, where would I find you?" Wei Zhao said.

"That..." Yang Qiqi fell silent. Indeed—if she ran off, where would Wei Zhao find her? The crux was that she truly wanted the Five Fiends Dragon's claw in Wei Zhao's hand. With it, there was hope for Xiao Jiu's illness.

"Ha, I'm just teasing you." Wei Zhao placed the Five Fiends Dragon's claw in Yang Qiqi's hand and said with a smile, "Take it, it's yours. In future, don't always assume the worst of people!"

Yang Qiqi took the Five Fiends Dragon's claw Wei Zhao held out, and before she could stop herself, tears began to patter down.

"Why are you crying again? Didn't I say I was joking with you..." Wei Zhao looked at Yang Qiqi, her face streaked with tears like a pear blossom in the rain, and did not know what to say.

"It's not that..." Yang Qiqi shook her head and said, "Wei Zhao, you're a good man... I... I won't kill you anymore... But my heart already belongs to someone else. I'll repay you in some other way."

"Is this what they call a 'nice guy card'?" Wei Zhao laughed, unconcerned. "Well, a nice guy card it is, then."

"Thank you!" Yang Qiqi's tears gave way to a smile.

"How is this thing used?" Wei Zhao truly could not imagine how a Five Fiends Dragon's claw could cure an illness. "Do you just eat it as it is?"

"I don't know either. It took me a long time to find out, poring over a great many ancient texts, that the claw of the Five Fiends Dragon has its uses," Yang Qiqi said. "How to use it... I suppose you eat it?"

"All right, forget I asked," Wei Zhao said. "Let's get ready and head back to the safe zone. Zhao Qilei and the others are probably getting anxious waiting."

"Right... But how do we get back up?" Yang Qiqi looked up and saw how high the cliff face was; the height startled her—there was simply no way to jump up there.

"I came down here once before with someone else. We left marks on the cliff face over there where we climbed down. We just have to follow the marks and leap up," Wei Zhao said, pointing to a spot not far off.

"That's good." Yang Qiqi breathed a sigh of relief. Otherwise, she truly would not have known how to get up. Her qinggong was good, but no matter how good, she could not leap that high!

Wei Zhao led Yang Qiqi to the place where he and Tian Chan had earlier leapt and climbed. Wei Zhao meant to try it first, so he sprang upward, leaping toward the first foothold Tian Chan had struck out.

"Hah!" Wei Zhao leapt up full of confidence—only to discover the problem the moment he was airborne: his jump did not reach as high as Tian Chan's! He did not even reach half of Tian Chan's height. It seemed this was the gap between an expert of the late Earth Rank and one at the peak of the late Heaven Rank!