Chapter 3918 — Shangguan Lan'er in Peril

"That's right—everything you see beneath your feet is its true body!" The Ghost Thing said with a sigh. "In terms of innate talent alone, this thing can be called uniquely blessed, a freak of nature. Even across the entire spirit beast world, those that can stand above it are few and far between. But its true body, while it guarantees its strength, also limits its movement. Otherwise, with this thing's power, it would be more than capable of claiming a place in the core of the back mountain."

According to the Ghost Thing's assessment, the few powerful spirit beasts in the core of the back mountain were beings that could kill him with a single glance. The very thought that he had indirectly crossed hands with such an existence sent an involuntary chill crawling over Wei Zhao's skin.

The mirror puppet at the start was one thing, but the faceless puppet that appeared afterward was something that carried a fragment of the other's primordial spirit—it would not be wrong to call it half an avatar. If the Ghost Thing had not acted in time, Wei Zhao would by now be a corpse.

"Then... how does this thing compare to you, Senior?" Wei Zhao could not help asking out of curiosity.

"Compare it to me? It is still far from my equal. But at its level, my pressure alone can no longer completely subdue it. And right now I am, after all, only a primordial spirit—if it truly came to a fight, I might not be able to protect you, boy. If it catches on to that, things will go badly. So this place is no place to linger; best we leave at once," the Ghost Thing said gravely.

"Understood." Wei Zhao wasted no more words and steadied himself to leave.

Just as the Ghost Thing had said, though he now seemed to have escaped to safety, the reality was that he was still standing on the other's true body. If the other side reacted, it could kill him at any moment.

Fortunately, the Ghost Thing had just shattered the faceless puppet into powder with its divine consciousness. That move was enough to overawe the enemy for a time, and it would not dare act rashly for a short while—but how long that while would last was uncertain.

Wei Zhao carefully observed the enormous dark shadow in Half-Moon Lake. Though he now roughly understood that the blood-red tentacle that had attacked him earlier must have been a vine of the Half-Moon Lake monster beneath his feet, he still could not ignore the existence of that vast dark shadow.

The Half-Moon Lake monster underfoot was terrifying enough, and that nameless giant shadow—if it was not part of the Half-Moon Lake monster's body but an independent spirit beast in its own right—then to coexist side by side with the Half-Moon Lake spirit beast, its strength could not possibly be weak.

If the two attacked at once, then even with the Ghost Thing protecting him, Wei Zhao's chances of escaping unscathed would be negligible. So he had to plan before acting.

Yet even as Wei Zhao watched, a dark figure suddenly appeared on the far side of Half-Moon Lake. It seemed unable to hold back any longer, and seizing the moment when the giant shadow at the lake bottom had moved away to the opposite end, it swiftly darted toward the giant cedar where Wei Zhao stood.

Shangguan Lan'er? Wei Zhao was startled and instinctively assumed it was her. After all, he had been inside the tree hollow for no short time—by his reckoning, a full hour and a half. It was not impossible that Shangguan Lan'er had assumed something had gone wrong and acted rashly.

Still, though the giant shadow at the lake bottom had now swum to the farthest end, to think this was the perfect chance to cross the lake was simply to court death.

From Wei Zhao's earlier observations, the giant shadow's pattern of movement was this: after swimming to the farthest end of Half-Moon Lake, six times out of ten it would swiftly turn back—and its swimming speed was terrifyingly fast!

At such a moment, what looked like an opportunity was in fact a deadly trap. If one truly acted rashly and fell into it, what would follow was simply unthinkable.

Sure enough, the figure had barely crossed halfway when the giant shadow at the lake bottom had already turned back and surged upward!

"Look out!" A girl's voice rang out from the shore of Half-Moon Lake—it was Shangguan Lan'er's voice.

This person was not Shangguan Lan'er? Wei Zhao was taken aback, and then noticed that the figure in the air looked somewhat familiar. Moreover, it was a woman.

At the same moment Shangguan Lan'er called out her warning, the woman finally sensed the danger below—and Wei Zhao, for the first time, finally laid eyes on the true face of this spirit beast at the bottom of the lake.

A giant octopus covered in thorny fangs—ugly was hardly the word; it was ugly to the point of horror. This was the first time Wei Zhao had encountered an existence whose mere appearance could make even a cultivator like him tremble with fright.

"A monstrously ugly octopus? This thing has kept itself a fine watchdog!" the Ghost Thing clicked its tongue in admiration within Wei Zhao's mind.

Even as it marveled, the familiar-looking woman who had acted so rashly before Wei Zhao had already fallen into a vast and deadly trap. The monstrous octopus that lunged out across the air—leaving aside its utterly enormous bulk, its speed alone was at least ten times hers; the two could not even be mentioned in the same breath.

Yet because of Shangguan Lan'er's warning in advance, the figure had been prepared beforehand. That sliver of time was infinitesimal, but it was enough to become the last straw of salvation.

Midair, the figure's form flickered sharply, then split into several afterimages and veered straight toward Shangguan Lan'er on the shore of Half-Moon Lake!

"Phantom Finger? That damned woman!" Only now did Wei Zhao finally confirm the woman's identity—it was none other than Murong Zhen, who had been inseparable from Meng Jueming these past days.

Phantom Finger was not merely a martial art for attack and killing; it was also a disguised movement technique. Its afterimage properties could deceive an enemy's divine consciousness while at the same time ensuring that one appeared beside the target in an instant. Though its effective range was very short, the speed of that instant was without equal.

And it was precisely by exploiting this that Murong Zhen, at the very last moment before falling into the monstrous octopus's gaping maw, succeeded in escaping death by a hair's breadth.

Without Shangguan Lan'er's warning, without instantly locking onto Shangguan Lan'er as her target, Murong Zhen would have had no chance of survival at all.

But now, not only had she successfully snatched back her little life, she had also successfully dragged the other into danger—and this, once she recognized Shangguan Lan'er's face, filled her with delight beyond all expectation.

From a highly regarded second-generation cultivator of the Soaring Heavens Pavilion to a hopeless newcomer of the Azure Cloud Pavilion, Shangguan Lan'er was not the chief culprit who had cast Murong Zhen down into the dust, but of one thing there was no doubt: it had all begun with her.

Both were women, and apart from family background, in figure, in looks, in aptitude—by every measure Murong Zhen considered herself far above Shangguan Lan'er. Yet simply because of a single remark she had made to the other, she had fallen to this wretched state today. If there was anyone Murong Zhen resented most deeply, it could only be Shangguan Lan'er! R1152