Chapter 3576 — I Must Raise My Strength Quickly!

"I know a thing or two. I didn't know any of this before, but the Welcome Pavilion gives us targeted training before we become reception envoys, so I picked up a bit," Senior Brother Suffering nodded and said. "Why do you ask, Junior Brother Lin?"

"It's like this—do you know what happens to the Inheritors when Cloud Terrace Island is opened?" Wei Zhao asked.

"Inheritors? Aren't they just tools for opening Cloud Terrace Island?" Senior Brother Suffering blinked, then said, "Don't you use the Inheritors to get onto the island? Generally speaking, once the Inheritors have opened Cloud Terrace Island, they're finished."

"Finished? What does that mean?" Wei Zhao's heart lurched, and he asked hastily.

"Cloud Terrace Island—to protect the interests of the local disciples on the island, they can't let too many cultivators from the secular world come up, so they set up an obstacle: the Heaven's Gate of Cloud Terrace Island," Senior Brother Suffering explained. "Only the top experts of the secular world can get onto the island. And the seven Inheritors, though they too are top experts, are generally used up along with the inheritance medium—the opener—to keep too many people from getting on. When they endure the Heaven's Gate of Cloud Terrace Island releasing the pressure of all the elemental powers, their spiritual sense and mental power are already drained dry. After Cloud Terrace Island opens, they fall into an unconscious state. Generally speaking, they're nothing but tools of sacrifice for these top experts to get onto the island. But that doesn't mean all the Inheritors and the medium fall unconscious—last time a few Inheritors still came up... Of course, all this is just hearsay. For specifics, you'd have to ask someone at the elder level to get a definite answer!"

"What!" Wei Zhao had never imagined the truth of the matter would be like this. Though he had guessed some of it before, hearing it from Senior Brother Suffering's own mouth still left him uneasy.

Yaoyao, Xiaoshu, Tang Zhi, Xiaoxiao, Xiao Jiu, Guan Xin, Bing Tang—they had all collapsed. Perhaps they too had fallen unconscious only so as not to be hurt. They must have feared for their own safety and held nothing back, and so they had all passed out, just like Yu Xiaoke before.

Yet this also set Wei Zhao's mind at ease. If it was merely the depletion of spiritual sense and mental power under the pressure, then it was much like Yu Xiaoke's case, and Zhang Lifeng should be able to save them.

At this thought, Wei Zhao nodded and said, "Thank you, Senior Brother Ku. I understand now."

"Mm, Junior Brother Lin, cultivate well. After the matter of the spirit jades, Meng Jueming won't have any other ways to target you for the time being. Work hard on your own. In the contest a month from now, get a good result and take these people down a peg!" Senior Brother Suffering encouraged.

"Don't worry, I'll do my best." If only for Yu Xiaoke and Gu Mengyao and the others, Wei Zhao had to strive hard! To go to the central island of Cloud Terrace Island and find Zhang Lifeng, he first had to secure a foothold on the north island.

Without a certain status and voice, he probably wouldn't even know how to get to the central island.

"Then I'll be off. If anything comes up, come find me!" Senior Brother Suffering said, pointing to a mountain opposite Wei Zhao's cultivation cave dwelling. "I'm on that mountain over there, cave dwelling number nine..."

"All right..." Wei Zhao could not help but feel a little helpless upon hearing this. The Welcome Pavilion had three pavilion masters and six steward senior brothers, and Ku was in cave dwelling number nine—wasn't that exactly ninth place? So it seemed his was the very last cave dwelling!

Still, he supposed that even the last cave dwelling over there had to be better than the best one here. But there was nothing to be done—even if Ku was the weakest, he still bore the title of steward senior brother, and Meng Jueming could not restrict him in this regard either; that would be an open defiance of the Welcome Pavilion's rules.

After seeing Senior Brother Suffering off, Wei Zhao began to study the spirit jade.

The spirit jade was crystalline and translucent, warm and smooth to the touch. Never mind the vast heaven-and-earth spiritual energy stored within it—just the quality of the jade itself, taken to the secular world, would have been enough to drive the world's wealthy and powerful mad.

Without thousands upon thousands of years of natural tempering by heaven-and-earth spiritual energy, it would have been absolutely impossible for a jade of such supreme quality to form—and in the spiritual-energy-thin secular world, such a thing was simply out of the question.

Even ordinary energy stones—that is, spirit stones—were already a rare existence in the secular world.

Of course, to a cultivator like Wei Zhao, appearance and quality were merely external; what mattered most was the concentration of spiritual energy. After carefully sensing and comparing, Wei Zhao found that although the spirit jade was exactly the same as the energy stones of the secular world, at equal volume the spiritual energy it contained could reach a hundred times as much or more. In other words, one spirit jade here was worth a hundred energy stones of the same volume.

No wonder so many people coveted the spirit jades—when some of the newcomers had seen them laid out earlier, they had even gulped despite themselves, mouths watering. With the aid of spirit jades, one's cultivation speed would increase a hundredfold or a thousandfold, yet for Wei Zhao there was no such effect. He had only tried it briefly and already knew that the spirit jade's effect ultimately could not compare to his own jade pendant space.

Tossing the spirit jade casually aside, Wei Zhao thought to himself that the spirit jades he obtained from now on could all be saved up. Though he had no use for them, to the other cultivators on the island they were precious things, the more the better—and when the time came, he could use spirit jades to trade for things he needed.

Two days passed in a flash. Just as Senior Brother Suffering had guessed, Meng Jueming did not come looking for trouble during these two days. Wei Zhao was content to enjoy the peace, consolidating his cultivation realm and preparing to begin his assault on the peak of the early Foundation Establishment stage.

Yet even with a cultivation divine artifact like the jade pendant space to assist him, breaking through to the peak of early Foundation Establishment was not so easy. No matter how hard Wei Zhao tried, the true qi within his body always grew extremely slowly—not that it did not grow at all, but the margin was negligible.

At this rate, if Wei Zhao wanted to break through to the peak of early Foundation Establishment, he would need at least another year or half a year of hard work before there was any hope. Though this speed was already quite good by others' standards, Wei Zhao was not satisfied.

Strength was the foundation of one's existence. On his very first day on Cloud Terrace Island, Wei Zhao had made enemies on all sides. Leaving aside Kang Jingming and his like, there were already no few foes at the Foundation Establishment realm—near at hand, Meng Jueming watched him like a tiger; far away, Xu Lingchong stirred restlessly.

Though Wei Zhao now had the strength of the early Foundation Establishment stage and was not truly afraid of these people, if he went a long time without a breakthrough, trouble would sooner or later arise.