Chapter 4090 — Fleeing and Returning

"What do you mean by that? Thinking of surrendering now? Let me tell you, it's too late!" The middle-aged man was briefly taken aback. When he grasped what had happened, a smug, savage sneer twisted his face—but the very next moment his expression stiffened, and a flush of embarrassment and fury at having been played for a fool rose visibly to his cheeks.

[Wei Zhao] had never intended to hand those three Myriad Crossing Golden Core Fruits to him at all. He flung them straight into the depths of the dense forest, wearing the look of a man who has decided that if he cannot have them, then neither will anyone else.

Oh, the agony! Watching the fruits of his dreams disappear into the woods, the middle-aged man was so enraged that his face began to twitch. He would have liked nothing better than to hack [Wei Zhao] to pieces on the spot.

Yet he no longer dared to keep hounding [Wei Zhao]. Though he was two hundred percent certain he could kill the boy, the pressing matter at hand was to hurry and retrieve the Myriad Crossing Golden Core Fruits. Even knowing full well that [Wei Zhao] meant to use the distraction to escape, he had no choice but to walk tamely into the trap.

After all, countless powerful spirit beasts still lurked within the forest. If he simply left the fruits lying there and came back after finishing off [Wei Zhao], those three Myriad Crossing Golden Core Fruits would likely have been eaten by some passing beast long before.

The reason those five high-grade spirit beasts had not devoured the fruits earlier was that the fruits were not yet fully ripe, and the beasts could afford to wait a while longer. But now that they had been plucked, they would wither quickly if not eaten. The beasts were no fools—if they found the fruits, they would swallow them without hesitation.

If it came to that, killing [Wei Zhao] to vent his spleen would change nothing. The middle-aged man would be left with nothing to show for all his efforts.

"Hmph. I'll let you live a little longer, then. Once I've recovered the Myriad Crossing Golden Core Fruits, you die today all the same!" The middle-aged man spat the words through his teeth, then turned and rushed off toward the fruits without a moment's delay. Those fruits, he was determined, would be his.

Plunging headlong into the dense forest, he raised his domineering aura to its absolute peak, driving every spirit beast within miles into panicked flight. Doing such a thing in a place like this was practically asking for trouble, but to ensure the fruits were not eaten by beasts, he had no choice but to resort to this crude measure.

"Damn him to hell! Where did the brat throw those fruits?" Watching [Wei Zhao] slip away in the confusion behind him, the middle-aged man ground his teeth in fury—yet there was nothing he could do but swallow his rage and recover the fruits first.

The Myriad Crossing Golden Core Fruits were nothing if not eye-catching, but dropped here in the dense forest, even an immortal would be hard-pressed to find them quickly. After all, unlike humans or spirit beasts, the fruits gave off no discernible fluctuation of aura.

The middle-aged man's only option was to do as any ordinary person would: part the undergrowth again and again, searching inch by inch with his own two eyes.

So it went for the better part of half an incense stick's worth of time before he finally caught sight of the fruits. They had been shot into the trunk of a giant tree—yet they were entirely undamaged, a sign that [Wei Zhao] had used a clever touch and deliberately shielded them with true qi.

Overjoyed at the sight, the middle-aged man hurried forward and reached out to take them—only for a vague sense of alarm to rise inexplicably in his heart.

"Has some powerful spirit beast been drawn here?" He had barely furrowed his brow, before he could even make sense of what was happening, when a figure above him plunged from the sky without the slightest warning—none other than [Wei Zhao], who had just fled.

Never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined that [Wei Zhao], who had fled right before his eyes, would dare turn back with such reckless abandon—and, crucially, at the very moment he was wholly absorbed in searching for the fruits. Of [Wei Zhao]'s sudden appearance he was almost entirely unaware, with not a shred of mental preparation.

When masters cross hands, a single instant of distraction is often a flaw fatal enough to decide everything. Seeing the middle-aged man's reaction, [Wei Zhao] was elated—that strange, wide looping circuit he had just run on Butterfly Microstep had not been in vain after all.

If he could but catch his foe off guard, he could overturn the passive plight of being beaten down and seize the initiative for a surprise strike!

"Hmph! You dare come back to ambush me? With your piddling strength, what does it matter if I grant you a free move? Truly, you know nothing of the heights of heaven and the depths of earth!" Even caught off guard and thrown onto the back foot, the middle-aged man's arrogance remained utterly unshaken.

Their earlier exchange had already laid [Wei Zhao]'s strength bare to him: at best, the boy's power rivaled that of the early Golden Core stage. To think of using it against a genuine mid-stage Golden Core expert like himself—he was still far, far from enough!

And yet, when [Wei Zhao] came hurtling down from the sky, his two hands merging a true qi bomb and a core-fire bomb into one, and bore down upon his face with the force of heaven collapsing and earth annihilating, the middle-aged man's expression finally changed drastically, turning ashen in an instant.

What manner of monster was this brat? This strike was far beyond the early Golden Core stage—even a mid-stage Golden Core expert would be hard-pressed to match it!

Boom! The vast Hucai Tianwu Mountain shuddered violently, countless spirit beasts scattering in panic, and even the boundless seas to either side suddenly heaved up monstrous waves, as though a tsunami had descended, and for a long while would not subside.

"Hm? He isn't dead even after that?" Fighting back the searing pain that surged ceaselessly through his body, [Wei Zhao] stared at the enormous crater before him, yet could not find a trace of the middle-aged man anywhere. His heart sank.

He had already played his strongest trump card, his ultimate killing move. If even that could not finish the man off, then [Wei Zhao] truly had no recourse left. A mid-stage Golden Core expert indeed—to clash head-on with an enemy of such caliber was, for him, still far too much to ask.

Fortunately, judging by the glaring pool of blood on the ground, the middle-aged man had taken that earth-shaking, top-tier killing blow, and even if he was not dead, he had at least lost half his life. Gravely wounded and no longer daring to fight, he must have fled—otherwise he would have struck back to kill [Wei Zhao] by now, instead of vanishing without a trace.

Under such circumstances, [Wei Zhao] did not dare linger either. Snatching up the Myriad Crossing Golden Core Fruits, he immediately picked a direction and fled. Should the middle-aged man come back around, in his present condition [Wei Zhao] would surely die.

Already gravely wounded before, and now having forced out his top-tier killing move at the risk of mutual destruction, [Wei Zhao] felt wave after wave of dizziness battering at his nerves. Even without suffering another attack, the very next moment he might lose consciousness and collapse on the spot.

Clinging desperately to the last shred of his sanity, [Wei Zhao] ran on, gravely wounded, for who knew how long. When he saw that he had finally left the bounds of Hucai Tianwu Mountain, and a paved road came into view ahead, his spirit at last relaxed—and he collapsed unconscious to the ground.