Chapter 4389 — Most Peculiar

Ever since those mundane goods from the mortal world had begun appearing one after another, Wei Zhao had suspected that the Zhongshu Merchants' Guild was bound to the mortal realm by a thousand invisible threads. He had not expected his suspicion to prove so accurate—and now, all at once, here was this talk of human experimentation. The evidence was mounting: the Zhongshu Merchants' Guild had almost certainly risen out of the mortal world.

Still, when the top powers of the mortal realm had gathered together, mustering all that manpower and effort merely to barely activate a teleportation array and send his group to Cloud Terrace Island—whose power, then, stood behind this Zhongshu Merchants' Guild?

Not only had they succeeded in extending their tentacles to Cloud Terrace Island, but they had swept across all Five Cloud Terrace Islands with effortless ease. Their momentum was ferocious, their advance an unstoppable, frenzied tide—and the crux of it was that they even had Xuan Ascension experts holding the fort, and from the look of things, not merely one or two of them!

A power of this order—even Wei Zhao dared not ponder it too deeply. It was simply too appalling to contemplate.

"That's right, human experimentation. Anyway, not one of those people taken out has ever come back. Whether they're dead or what, who knows—but I figure it can't be anything good. And with my mid-Nascent Soul strength, there's not a soul in here stronger than me, so every time they call for people, I let the others take the fall. I don't go!" Sun Hengbiao said, a touch smugly.

He might lack any real discernment, but a man who could make himself pirate chief in the Demon Cold Sea could hardly be a fool. Even if the words "human experimentation" meant nothing to him, he could still roughly tell good from bad.

To foreknow fortune and disaster—that sounded mystical enough. Many experts who had reached a certain level of strength in fact possessed this ability; only the accuracy varied from one to another.

"Let the others go? You're the one who calls the shots in this dungeon—so the guards outside, those Xuan Ascension experts, they take orders from you too?" Wei Zhao sneered. "Before a Xuan Ascension expert, you're nothing but a fart."

The others, hearing this, chimed in with mockery and cold laughter. Sun Hengbiao's old face flushed crimson on the spot—it was his habitual swagger. Whether there was cause or not, he always wanted to gild his own face, and even though it had cost him plenty, he could never cure himself of the habit.

With his mid-Nascent Soul strength, Sun Hengbiao could throw his weight around before the rabble in this dungeon, but to the Xuan Ascension experts outside he was nothing but an ant to be crushed underfoot with a single step. If they truly meant to haul people out for human experimentation, would they even bother to consult Sun Hengbiao?

If Sun Hengbiao really commanded such respect, would he be locked up in this sunless dungeon? What nonsense.

"Well, that..." Sun Hengbiao glared at the crowd, yet before Wei Zhao he dared not show the slightest temper. He scratched his head awkwardly and said sheepishly, "At first they really couldn't be bothered with me. But after a while I noticed they don't seem interested in Nascent Soul experts at all. They led the others away one by one, but me they left alone, never a word. Look—there's another Nascent Soul in here, and he's been here quite a while too, and they haven't taken him either."

Following the direction of Sun Hengbiao's finger, Wei Zhao saw, in the corner of the dungeon wall, a most ordinary-looking man in blue robes sitting in meditation, wholly detached from the goings-on around him.

"That's right, it's just as he says." The blue-robed man, seeing Wei Zhao's gaze sweep toward him, nodded hastily.

Because of his relative strength, Sun Hengbiao had always made a point of not provoking him, and naturally he never went out of his way to provoke Sun Hengbiao either. But this newcomer was a vicious fiend who had beaten Sun Hengbiao into such a sorry state in a single exchange—clearly all the more unapproachable. Faced with Wei Zhao's question, he dared not be the least bit negligent.

"Oh? Then that is rather strange..." Wei Zhao could not help frowning.

He had heard a little about human experimentation. It was much like conducting scientific experiments: whatever the purpose, in order to find the most effective method, one generally selected a great many human samples, and those samples had to cover every conceivable stratum. There was no reason Nascent Soul experts alone should be excluded.

Unless the scope of the Zhongshu Merchants' Guild's human experimentation did not include Nascent Soul experts at all, but was aimed specifically at Golden Core experts!

Hearing Sun Hengbiao's words, the rest of the dungeon's occupants were thrown into panic. Apart from the blue-robed Nascent Soul man, every one of them was a Golden Core expert—did that not mean that sooner or later they too would be dragged out for this so-called human experimentation?

Everyone knew it could not possibly be anything good; otherwise the Zhongshu Merchants' Guild would never have seized them and locked them up here. Perhaps once the so-called human experimentation was done, they would not even leave a whole corpse behind. Every last soul present was nothing but a pig fattened for the slaughter.

"I've been muddling along here a long time, never causing them any trouble, and on top of that I've got everyone in this dungeon well in hand. So they just turn a blind eye to me..." Sun Hengbiao said, rather pleased with himself.

Trapped in this sunless dungeon as he was, he could hardly compare with the free and merry life outside—but to find a sense of superiority among these people was, after all, a rare sort of psychological comfort.

Wei Zhao did not find his words surprising. To manage a prison full of cultivators, one needed not only strict surveillance but also a compliant prison boss to help keep the inmates in check. An existence like Sun Hengbiao was no bad thing for the guards outside—on the contrary, they were glad to see it.

"So that means the other Golden Core experts were all taken away?" Wei Zhao asked thoughtfully.

"Yes. Everyone who came before me has been taken, and plenty who came after me too." Sun Hengbiao nodded, swept his gaze over the rest of the dungeon's occupants, and threatened with ill intent, "As for these people—it's only a matter of time for them too. Heh heh..."

The crowd could not help shrinking back their necks in fear. Even Lu Bianren, usually so composed, was visibly flustered. However strong an expert might be, they could never change their—

Yet Wei Zhao, himself a Golden Core expert, felt little worry at this moment. For one thing, he knew what human experimentation actually entailed; for another, compared with everyone else present, his strength was greater, and so his confidence ran deeper. He was sure he could handle whatever threats came his way.

"Apart from all that, what else do you know?" Wei Zhao pressed on. Since this Sun Hengbiao had been here longer than anyone, he must surely know the most.