Chapter 3668 — Reaching the Canyon

Fortunately, savage as this giant mountain leopard was, it ultimately could not withstand the twenty-one stances of the Blazing Fire Eight Trigrams Palm, and Wei Zhao had, by the narrowest of margins, laughed last.

Outside, the rain was still coming down in torrents, and there was no leaving for the time being. Wei Zhao took shelter in the tree hollow and entered the jade pendant's space to restore his true qi and tend his wounds along the way. Before going in, however, he glanced at the mountain leopard's carcass on the ground; a thought stirred in his mind, and he drew it in with him.

Once inside the space, the voice of the Ghost Thing rang out beside him, tinged with surprise: "A Nine-Tailed Cloud-Piercing Leopard? You can even kill one of these? Not bad at all, kid!"

"Senior Ghost, this thing is called a Nine-Tailed Cloud-Piercing Leopard?" Wei Zhao blinked in mild surprise, though recalling that whip-tail killing move from moments ago, the name did fit rather well.

"Indeed. Judging by its size, it was already full-grown, with strength at least at the early Foundation Establishment stage. That's a famously notorious killer of the jungle, and even across the entire spirit beast world, it ranks among the most insidious and cunning of creatures. With your meager strength, to turn the tables and kill it in its own jungle—that's a rare sight indeed." A trace of appreciation, rare for him, colored the Ghost Thing's tone.

"Heh, Senior Ghost flatters me. Just good luck." Wei Zhao shook his head with a bitter smile.

This time, though raw strength had ultimately carried the day in slaying the Nine-Tailed Cloud-Piercing Leopard, the luck of that final instant had been every bit as crucial. Had the leopard not hesitated for that one fleeting moment on instinct, who would have lived and who would have died was still very much in question.

Of course, that sliver of luck had been wrested into being by wit. Had Wei Zhao not spotted that flaw which could scarcely even be called a flaw, he would never have had the chance to gamble on that luck at all.

"No need for modesty. Luck is part of strength too," the Ghost Thing remarked blandly, with a hint of feeling.

Wei Zhao glanced at him with some surprise; the tone suggested there was a story behind those words. Honestly, the Ghost Thing had dwelled in the jade pendant's space for so long, and to this day Wei Zhao still had no idea what this creature truly was—he only had a vague private suspicion that it must have something to do with Cloud-Tier Island.

Yet though this doubt had long sat in his heart, the Ghost Thing never volunteered anything himself, and Wei Zhao was too polite to ask. He could only keep bottling it up.

Glancing at the sack of blood-red gravel he had just brought in, Wei Zhao asked the Ghost Thing as he healed and restored his true qi: "Senior Ghost, do you know what these things are?"

The Ghost Thing studied them for a good while before saying, "Never seen them. They look like some kind of material, but what use they have specifically, I couldn't say."

Even the Ghost Thing did not recognize them? Wei Zhao could not help but start. Given how well-traveled and knowledgeable the Ghost Thing had shown himself to be, there ought to be nothing he did not know—yet this pile of blood-red gravel left even him unable to make sense of it. Could it be some exceedingly rare material?

For now, this question would have to stay lodged in his belly; perhaps some future opportunity would let him learn its proper name and purpose.

A short while later, Wei Zhao finished his recuperation and emerged from the jade pendant's space with the Thunder Pig—finding the Heart-Devouring Linglong Grass was his pressing priority, after all, and he had no time to waste.

Coming out of the space, he found the rain had passed and the sky cleared—perfect conditions for moving. Wei Zhao promptly led the Thunder Pig down to the ground, and the next order of business naturally fell to the Thunder Pig.

Having never seen the Heart-Devouring Linglong Grass, even a born treasure-hunter like the Thunder Pig could not search for it directly; it could only follow Wei Zhao's instructions and look for places suited to its growth.

Two conditions: ample light, and dryness. Very simple conditions—but in this stretch of back-mountain outskirts that resembled a tropical rainforest, finding such a patch of ground was no easy matter.

For the Thunder Pig, however, this was a piece of cake.

Its gift was less treasure-hunting than a complete perception of its surroundings; its nose was far more precise than the most delicate detection instruments of the mortal world. If it so wished, it could grasp every subtle shift in the environment around it without missing a jot—and that range could extend for miles in every direction.

Equipped thus, the Thunder Pig naturally had no trouble finding a place that met Wei Zhao's requirements.

"Squeak squeak!" The Thunder Pig, seeing the light of day again, cried out twice in delight!

"By the way, Senior Ghost, back in the mortal world I heard that once spirit beasts reach the Heaven Tier, they can speak human language. But this Thunder Pig of mine still seems to squeak?" With the danger gone, Wei Zhao asked with some curiosity.

"Some spirit beasts are like that, but some are not! Don't take the ignorant spirit-beast lore of your mortal world as gospel," the Ghost Thing said flatly. "In the mortal world, all you ever see are low-tier spirit beasts. They've been through a long evolutionary process, so by the time they reach the Heaven Tier, practically all of them can speak! But this little thing of yours had its strength forced up by you—it hasn't yet reached the point where it can speak, so naturally it can't open its mouth! It's like a child learning to talk: there's a gradual process, and simply raising its strength isn't enough. Besides, on this Cloud-Tier Island, some spirit beasts are born at the Heaven Tier—how would they talk?"

"So that's how it is!" Wei Zhao said, taking the lesson to heart. The Ghost Thing was surely an authority on such matters, so Wei Zhao believed him utterly.

As it led Wei Zhao from one potential destination to the next, the Thunder Pig did not forget its old trade; man and pig stripped clean every spirit herb they came across along the way. The result was that the points displayed on Wei Zhao's back-basket shot straight up to seven hundred and thirty-eight.

By the usual logic of trials, the final scores of past rookie trials of this kind generally hovered around five hundred. Yet less than a day had passed, and Wei Zhao had already overfulfilled the task.

Led by the Thunder Pig, Wei Zhao trekked through the dense forest for a full day, until the sun was about to set in the west, before he finally reached a destination that met his conditions: a great canyon.

The canyon was a good ten-some zhang wide and was marked on the map provided by the back-mountain hall. Normally a place like a canyon is hard to associate with words like "sunlight" and "dry," but here on the back-mountain outskirts, this was already a rare spot that could satisfy both conditions.

The canyon plunged several dozen zhang deep, with a rushing river at the bottom. Because of the recent rainfall, the current was especially turbulent now; judging by the look of it, one misstep and a fall—even for a skilled hand like Wei Zhao—would mean at best losing several layers of skin, if not his life outright. RS