Chapter 3927 — Li Zhengming's Spirit Beast

Li Zhengming glanced at him with a blank expression, ignored him entirely, and turned to walk away.

But Meng Zhou had no intention of letting him off so easily. He pursued him relentlessly, sidling up close and seizing the chance to mock him with all his might: "No need to hurry off! It really is embarrassing not to have a spirit pet, but you ought to face reality, don't you think? Running away like this—doesn't that make you a gutless coward? Am I right or am I right?"

"Exactly!" the other newcomers chimed in one after another—a classic case of gloating over another's misfortune. None of them could hope for a Blackback Staff Ape like Meng Zhou's, so the only way to restore their sense of balance was to take it out on Li Zhengming, who was even worse off than they were.

After all, Li Zhengming had once ranked among the top five—a figure of prominence who had stood above them all. Seeing this man take a fall gave them no small secret satisfaction.

Faced with the crowd's sneers and jeers, Li Zhengming still paid them no heed, walking off to one side on his own. Meng Zhou, however, still had no intention of letting him go.

A rare opportunity had finally presented itself, and this time he was determined to grind Li Zhengming into the dust, to make him the laughingstock of all who saw him in the Newcomer Pavilion from then on.

Yet before he could draw any closer, a bone-chilling cold suddenly radiated from his side. Meng Zhou was startled and hastily leaped aside.

"Flying into a rage and wanting to fight, is that it? You want to play dirty with this lord, do you? Do you even know how the word 'death' is written?" Certain he had caught Li Zhengming red-handed, Meng Zhou immediately turned hostile in public. He knew Li Zhengming was an expert in the Heaven Frost Fist, and this icy aura was the omen of a strike.

But Li Zhengming merely gave him a faint glance and said unhurriedly, "Don't misunderstand. I have no interest in fighting you. It's just that you're so thoroughly detestable that you've offended my spirit pet."

"Spirit pet? Where would you get a spirit pet?" Meng Zhou's expression changed. He looked around, yet could find no trace of any spirit pet. Then he caught on: "Heh heh, so no spirit pet is no spirit pet, is that it? It's just a little embarrassment—was there any need for such bluster? Everyone here is a sensible person. Is there any point in slapping your own face to look fat?"

The rest of the crowd was equally baffled, all looking at Li Zhengming as though he were an idiot.

Li Zhengming shook his head and muttered with no small sarcasm, "Seems there really are quite a few ignorant fools who've never seen the world. No help for it—show yourself and open their eyes, Ghost Tiger."

As the words fell, a fierce tiger covered in eerie markings suddenly materialized beside Li Zhengming.

Though it was not especially large, nor especially imposing, the sudden sight of this king of beasts—in the eyes of ordinary folk—appearing beneath their very noses without the slightest warning gave Meng Zhou and the others a thorough fright.

"This is a Ghost Tiger? The legendary Ghost Tiger born with the gift of invisibility?" Among the newcomers there were, after all, still some who knew their business, and one of them laid the secret bare in a single sentence.

The Ghost Tiger is an exceedingly rare ice-attribute spirit beast. Legend has it that its racial gift is invisibility. Apart from the very few martial techniques possessing the property of true sight that can pierce the veil, hardly anyone can detect a Ghost Tiger in its invisible state. Unless it launches an attack, you might not notice the slightest oddity even if it walked right beside you.

Still, there are exceptions to everything. An ice-attribute cultivator with keen powers of observation, sharing the same elemental nature, still stands a certain chance of detecting the Ghost Tiger's traces—and Li Zhengming happened to be an expert of precisely that kind.

In an instant, the way everyone looked at Li Zhengming changed. The mockery and jeers turned to envy and awe.

A rare spirit beast like the Ghost Tiger truly deserves the saying "encountered by chance, never sought by design." Anyone else present, even if they ran into one, would not even notice it, let alone subdue it.

"How is that possible? Where did you get a spirit-pet talisman?" Meng Zhou's face was full of disbelief, and for a moment he stared at the Ghost Tiger, murmuring in a daze.

"Sorry, that's classified," Li Zhengming said with a curl of his lip and a smile. He snapped his fingers, and the Ghost Tiger vanished into thin air once more before everyone's eyes.

It must have been a spirit-pet talisman snatched from these useless wretches!

Meng Zhou glared viciously at the four newcomers beside him. All four had failed to subdue a spirit pet; if Li Zhengming had managed to luck into subduing a Ghost Tiger, the spirit-pet talisman must have come from the hands of these four idiots. A pack of trash!

Little did he know, Li Zhengming's spirit-pet talisman had not been taken from any of these people at all—it had come from Wei Zhao.

During the month-long expedition to the outer reaches of the back mountain, Wei Zhao had not run into Xiao Che and Qiao Hongcai, the two who had been so eager to find him. Instead, he had encountered Li Zhengming. Upon learning of Li Zhengming's plight, Wei Zhao had produced his own spirit-pet talisman without a second thought, which moved Li Zhengming deeply.

More than that, even Li Zhengming's success in subduing the Ghost Tiger had been thanks to Wei Zhao's help. Otherwise, relying on himself alone, even if he could detect the Ghost Tiger's presence, he would have had no ability to capture and subdue it. Not that there was absolutely no chance, but at the very least it would have been exceedingly difficult.

In all this, Wei Zhao and Shangguan Lan'er had contributed no small effort.

"Hmph, what's there to be so proud of? So it can turn invisible—so what? It's only at the early Heaven Rank, nowhere near a match for my Blackback Staff Ape!" Meng Zhou scoffed, craning his neck.

Rare as the Ghost Tiger's racial gift may be, its own strength is generally not very high. The one Li Zhengming had subdued, for instance, was currently only at the early Heaven Rank—a spirit beast that might be described as sufficient for self-preservation but wanting in offense.

"Doesn't matter. If it can't win, it can't win. I didn't subdue it to play with a staff," Li Zhengming said, his words barbed.

A spirit beast like the Ghost Tiger is the quintessential example of a gift that outstrips its strength. Even if its power is not formidable, its invisibility gift alone makes its utility utterly extraordinary. It is no exaggeration to say that this is a strategic spirit pet of the rarest kind.

So even if it was no match for the Blackback Staff Ape at present, its value far exceeded that of a mere monkey that could do nothing but twirl a staff.

Meng Zhou knew this perfectly well himself—which was exactly why he was so frantic to save face. But Li Zhengming's retort left him choked, unable to utter a word for a long while.

Just then, several figures came walking slowly from the distance, instantly drawing the newcomers' attention. They were none other than Wei Zhao and his companions.

At the sight of the spirit pets trailing behind the three of them, the whole crowd erupted in an uproar. The newcomers whispered among themselves, buzzing with discussion.

Above the three of them, neither too high nor too low, flew a bird-type spirit beast. Anyone with a keen eye could easily recognize it: this was a Ghost-Eye Golden Eagle chick! R1152