Chapter 3677 — Xiao Qiao Attacked; Wei Zhao Takes Out the Map, Decides to Make an Exception and Travel Through the Night, Determined to Reach the Only Road Back to the Rear Mountain Hall Before Meng Zhou and His Crew

There were only two possibilities for Xiao Che and Qiao Hongcai's present circumstances: either all their herbs had been seized, or the herbs were still in their hands and they were still running.

Either way, before noon tomorrow, the two of them and Meng Zhou's lot would all have to be back at the Rear Mountain Hall—otherwise, as that bald elder of the Rear Mountain Hall had said, whoever failed to make it would meet an exceedingly ugly death!

That made things simple. Wei Zhao need only hold the only road ahead of everyone else. Whether he ran into Xiao Che and Qiao Hongcai first or Meng Zhou's crew first, the problem would be solved either way.

With enough strength at one's command, even the knottiest problem could be cut clean through.

No sooner thought than done. Seeing the sky darken further by the moment, Wei Zhao stowed the Heavenly Thunder Pig into his jade pendant's space and set off at once.

As has been said before, here in the rear mountain—even in this outermost region, the least dangerous of all, and even for a capable hand like Wei Zhao at the early Foundation Establishment stage—moving about at night was perilous in the extreme.

For not only was one's perception dulled and one apt to lose one's way, but one was also liable to blunder into powerful spirit beasts never seen by day. It was in their nature, after all: many spirit beasts emerged only at night to hunt and forage.

To put it simply: against the same early-Foundation-Establishment spirit beast, if Wei Zhao stood a fifty-fifty chance by daylight, then by night he might not even have three chances in ten.

However mighty a cultivator grew, one thing could never be changed from first to last: humans are not nocturnal creatures. Night has always stood on the side against humanity.

Fortunately, the moonlight tonight was passably bright, so Wei Zhao was at least not in danger of losing his way midway.

He raced on without pause, brushing past several powerful spirit beasts along the way—among them even a dangerous creature to rival the Nine-Tailed Cloud-Piercing Leopard—but in the end he slipped past them all, each narrow escape ending in safety.

Of course, it would have been no great matter even had he failed to avoid them. After all, the great spirit-beast deity Ghost Thing still kept watch within the jade pendant's space—scaring off a few early-Foundation-Establishment beasts would have been the work of a moment.

A full night of hard running, and at last, as the sky began to brighten, Wei Zhao reached his destination.

He now stood less than twenty li from the Rear Mountain Hall, in a rare stretch of open ground on the outer fringe of the rear mountain. The reason was simple: an ancient tree some thirty zhang tall grew here.

Amid the dense forest all around, where the tallest trees reached barely ten zhang, this ancient giant stood out like a crane among chickens. Its vast canopy blocked out great swaths of sunlight, and naturally nothing could grow beneath it, which left the ground about it rather open.

Standing atop the canopy, the superb vantage meant he could monitor everything around him perfectly—and this spot happened to lie on one of the only roads back to the Rear Mountain Hall. What the other new disciples of the Skyward Pavilion and the Mystic Mechanism Pavilion were up to, Wei Zhao had no way to know, but at least the Qingyun Pavilion newcomers sent out in this direction would not be slipping past under his nose.

From the height where Wei Zhao stood, scanning downward, one or two people moving stealthily might still possibly slip by unnoticed—but if Meng Zhou's lot came as a group, there was no chance of that whatsoever.

After keeping watch for a little under half an hour, sure enough, just as Wei Zhao had expected, a dense stir of rustling arose not far below, startling whole flocks of small birds into the air.

Someone was approaching fast—and not a few of them!

Wei Zhao peered intently for a while, and then a knowing, amused curve lifted the corner of his mouth. Judging by the commotion, those people seemed to be heading straight for him!

"Brother Xiao, you go on ahead—I'll hold them off behind you! My herbs have already been taken anyway, so there's nothing they can do to me!" Qiao Hongcai, darting through the forest close behind Xiao Che, made the suggestion with anxiety written on his face.

Unlike Wei Zhao, who had been dropped straight into the most dangerous region on the outer fringe of the rear mountain, Xiao Che and Qiao Hongcai had received no special treatment at their starting drop point. Things had gone fairly smoothly for them at first, and they had gathered a good many herbs—but that was precisely where the trouble began.

Their drop point had not been far from the other newcomers, and after barely a day the two of them had naturally run into the others—and just as naturally been marked by Meng Zhou's crew.

While the two were each making their way toward Three Creeks Junction to rendezvous with Wei Zhao, Qiao Hongcai was the first to be ambushed. Against Meng Zhou's gang, who had numbers on their side, his strength was nowhere near enough. Not only were all the herbs he had labored to gather snatched away, but he himself was badly wounded.

Had the bald elder not repeatedly warned them that no lives were to be taken, he would in all likelihood have become the first newcomer of the trial to die a violent death.

After their ambush succeeded and they had thoroughly mocked and humiliated Qiao Hongcai, Meng Zhou's crew turned to deal with Xiao Che—only to have Qiao Hongcai, tailing them all the while, find Xiao Che first, which ruined their ambush and let the two of them break free.

Just as Wei Zhao had surmised earlier, the two of them, unwilling to drag him into it, had decided to give up on Three Creeks Junction and flee with all their might toward the Rear Mountain Hall. So long as they could reach the Rear Mountain Hall before Meng Zhou's crew caught up, the trial would be over and Meng Zhou's crew would have no way to seize Xiao Che's herbs.

And so came the scene now before us: the two of them sprinting ahead, with Meng Zhou's crew in pursuit some dozen or more zhang behind.

Qiao Hongcai had been wounded to begin with, and Xiao Che had already spent a great deal of true qi breaking them out earlier. After this long stretch of all-out sprinting, his true qi was on the verge of running dry. At this rate, they would likely collapse before they ever reached the Rear Mountain Hall.

At such a moment, Qiao Hongcai's proposal clearly came from the logic of the barefoot man who fears no shoe. He had no herbs left anyway, and Meng Zhou's crew dared not beat him to death outright, so stalling them a while longer was worth something—better than the two of them collapsing together.

To his surprise, Xiao Che, panting hard, refused. "No! They may not dare kill you outright, but with you fouling their plans like this, in their fury they might well cripple you and destroy your cultivation. I won't let you take that risk!"

At these words Qiao Hongcai was startled, and a chill of lingering fear ran through him.

True enough—the trial forbade killing, but nothing in the rules forbade crippling a man. If his cultivation really were destroyed and he were left a ruined man from then on, that would be a fate worse than death!

"Then what do we do? If we keep running like this, they won't even need to lift a finger—we'll exhaust ourselves to death!" Qiao Hongcai said anxiously.