Chapter 3665 — The Thunder Pig Awakens!

Just then, a muffled peal of thunder rolled across the sky; the clouds darkened, the wind rose in a frenzy, and in the blink of an eye countless columns of rain came lashing down, each one as thick as a thumb, stinging sharply where they struck his face. The downpour had come out of nowhere!

He had barely any familiarity with the surrounding terrain to begin with, and the storm crushed visibility and spiritual perception to the barest minimum. To keep moving outside at a time like this would be little short of courting death.

Even at the early Foundation Establishment cultivation that Wei Zhao possessed, he had no choice but to find shelter from the rain. This was a thundershower, after all—quick to come, quick to go—so it should not cost him too much time.

Slipping swiftly down from the treetop, Wei Zhao had meant only to find a dense canopy to shelter beneath, but a glance caught in passing revealed something unexpected on a broad trunk: a hollow.

After a brief inspection to confirm that no powerful spirit beast's aura lingered within, Wei Zhao ducked straight inside. Compared with the howling wind and driving rain outside, a dry, comfortable tree hollow was an irresistible lure just then—no exception for Wei Zhao.

To his surprise, the hollow was quite spacious—empty and open, roughly twenty square meters to the eye, with no obvious marks of chiseling. It looked like a naturally formed cavity.

He swept his gaze around the place. When his eyes fell upon a pile of something in one corner, his expression abruptly sharpened and his heart clenched.

The pile was a heap of bones! Four or five skeletons in all, by the look of them—and these were no wild beast's remains, but the bones of real human beings!

A chill of horror seized him in that instant.

Human traces in a tree hollow were hardly strange. This was the outer reaches of the back mountain, where cultivators came and went every year. But human bones—four or five skeletons heaped together—that was enough to shake anyone!

Could cultivators have slaughtered one another and then piled the corpses here? Wei Zhao could not help but wonder.

Doubling his vigilance toward everything outside, Wei Zhao examined the skeletons closely and found that every single bone bore deep, jagged tooth marks. The answer all but leaped out at him then: these people had not died at human hands—they had become the rations of some powerful spirit beast!

That conclusion instantly broke him out in a cold sweat.

These people had most likely come here for the same reason he had—to shelter from the rain, or simply to find a place to rest and recover. And in the end, every one of them had become the rations of some powerful spirit beast. What did that mean?

It meant that Wei Zhao had now trodden in their footsteps, and had very likely already been marked by that powerful spirit beast lurking out of sight!

From first to last, this tree hollow had never been a safe harbor. It was a living, breathing trap—one that had left many a cultivator dead with no place even to be buried!

The strong prey on the weak! Those four words flashed through Wei Zhao's mind. In the world beyond the back mountain, all manner of rules held sway; man and man, even man and spirit beast, could dwell in peace. But here, none of those rules applied at all.

Here there were only two identities: you were either the predator or the prey.

He still had no idea what that spirit beast looked like, but Wei Zhao knew that he had already become its prey—prey that had blundered into its trap.

With no idea at all of the enemy's true nature, staying here any longer would most likely mean sitting and waiting for death. So Wei Zhao made his choice at once: of all the thirty-six stratagems, flight was the best. Even if he really had been marked and could not withdraw unscathed, at least he could choose another battleground—there was no need to fight on the enemy's home ground!

Yet just as he made to leave the hollow, a long-unheard voice suddenly rang out in his mind: "Ji ji! Ji ji!"

The Thunder Pig had actually awakened at this very moment! Wei Zhao's steps halted, and the sound filled him with delight—with this, the search for the Devouring-Heart Exquisite Grass would be far more dependable!

But the situation was grim, and this was no time to let the Thunder Pig out. Better to wait until he had shaken off the danger.

Yet before Wei Zhao could leave the hollow, the Thunder Pig's cries in his mind grew more urgent still, as though something pressing were at hand!

Wei Zhao's heart stirred. If it could make the Thunder Pig so frantic, could some treasure be hidden in this hollow?

After a moment's hesitation, Wei Zhao decided to let the Thunder Pig out first and see just what prize could be found here. After all, anything capable of rousing the Thunder Pig from its stupor was hardly likely to be common fare.

And if he left now, even if he later meant to come back and search, he might never find this hollow again. To let a treasure within arm's reach slip through his fingers over that would be a lasting regret.

"Ji ji! Ji ji!" Once out of the jade pendant's space, the Thunder Pig glanced at Wei Zhao twice, then bounded straight over to the pile of bones.

"You mean there's a treasure in there?" Wei Zhao blinked.

By instinctive revulsion, no normal person would want a second look at a heap of bones like that—not even a skilled early Foundation Establishment cultivator like him. He would never dream of rummaging through such a pile, much less imagine anything beneath it.

"Ji ji!" The Thunder Pig nodded vigorously.

Seeing this, Wei Zhao wasted no time and stepped forward to examine the pile closely. Sure enough, hidden beneath the covering of bones was a black pouch—small, about the size of a shoebox.

He opened the mouth of the pouch and looked inside: a bag of blood-red, gravel-like substance, faintly giving off an indescribable, eerie aura. Wei Zhao had never seen its like, and he turned at once to ask the Thunder Pig, "What is this stuff?"

The Thunder Pig shook its head, dabbed a hoof in some dark wood dust in the corner, and wrote on the ground: "I don't know what it is, but I was startled awake by the aura of this bag, so it must be some very rare treasure."

"Oh? So there's something to this after all..." With danger pressing close, Wei Zhao simply stopped second-guessing and stowed the bag into the jade pendant's space.

If his guess was right, this bag was the spoil of the corpses on the ground—perhaps a priceless treasure won through untold hardship and effort, only for its owners to perish in this hollow trap on the way back.

At that thought, a warning pricked at Wei Zhao's mind: dawdle here any longer, and he might well follow in these people's footsteps.

But just as he prepared to leave, the jade pendant suddenly began sounding alarm after alarm. The Thunder Pig, panic-stricken, squealed "ji ji" and darted behind him. Wei Zhao turned to look—and at the mouth of the hollow he saw a figure that stopped the breath in his chest.

(.)