Chapter 4516 — The Vortex Channels

"No, why do you ask?" The ghostly thing was baffled by the question.

"Oh, then I'm relieved." Wei Zhao drew a deep breath, then in one sudden burst of resolve, lowered his head and plunged straight into the raging vortex.

To any ordinary person this looked like nothing short of throwing his life away, and Wei Zhao thought so too—because even the flesh of a Gold Core expert like himself could not withstand the tearing, grinding might of the vortex. But he had no other choice now; he poured true qi into shielding his whole body, buying himself a little more time in the surging whirl however he could.

Sure enough, the instant Wei Zhao entered the vortex, a terrifying shredding force closed in from all sides, bent on tearing him limb from limb. Thankfully he had true qi guarding his body, and at the same time gathered his power and struck out a Frenzied Fire Eight-Trigram Palm to fight it off, and only thus did he scrape through.

He had expected that shredding force to come in an endless torrent, yet once Wei Zhao weathered the first wave, he found the pressure on him suddenly ease all at once, as though he had entered the eye of the whirl, where he could not feel that grinding force in the slightest. Instead he seemed to have entered a fast lane, swept swiftly off into the distance by a tremendous current.

"He'd plunge into a vortex just to save his skin—this thing is insane!" By now the Xishan Old Sect had caught up, and knowing full well that Wei Zhao was inside the vortex, he nonetheless dared not enter. Even though he was a devil-cultivator titan comparable to the Mountain-Opening stage, he was still flesh and blood after all; killing a few sea beasts was easy as turning his hand, but pitting himself against heaven and earth was another matter entirely.

Do not be fooled by the modest look of the vortex before him—its display of force was not even a match for Wei Zhao's earlier top-grade bombs. Yet the Xishan Old Sect knew the two were fundamentally different: Wei Zhao's top-grade bombs were, in the end, the work of human hands, blazing bright for a moment before swiftly scattering to nothing. This vortex, however, was the power of heaven and earth.

It might not seem so fearsome now, but once provoked by certain fluxes of qi, the force within would amplify without limit—and at that point even he, the Xishan Old Sect, would have nothing left but death and the annihilation of his dao.

The higher one's cultivation and realm, the more one cherishes one's life, and the less one dares to take risks—this is a common failing of the vast majority, and the devil-cultivator titan Xishan Old Sect was no exception. Yet to just let Wei Zhao go like this was absolutely impossible: after all, Wei Zhao had killed two of his disciples, and was moreover a rare prize material for a top-grade puppet. How could he simply let him slip away?

To go in was impossible, to retreat was equally so—for a time the Xishan Old Sect found himself caught between a rock and a hard place, and could not help but bitterly regret it. Had he known, he should not have busied himself gulping down that blood water; had he taken Wei Zhao down first, none of this trouble would have arisen...

Carried along helplessly within the vortex, how long he drifted thus he did not know. Already growing used to the darkness and murk, Wei Zhao suddenly felt the way ahead open up, and the whole of him was flung straight out of the surging whirl.

He was still in the water, but this water was clearly far clearer and more limpid than the seawater before, no longer chilling to the bone, and calm and unrippled, giving one the feeling of having stumbled all at once into a hidden paradise.

Yet Wei Zhao felt none of the relief of a survivor just now, for he did not know where this was, nor whether he had shaken off the Xishan Old Sect.

"What are you standing there dazed for? Get up there, quick!" the ghostly thing urged in Wei Zhao's mind.

"Up there?" Wei Zhao was slightly taken aback, but he did not hesitate much, doing just as the ghostly thing instructed. Yet when he finally swam up to the surface and took in the scene around him, he was instantly stunned.

All about was dense, verdant primeval forest. Wei Zhao's position was no longer the vast open sea but a great lake—no wonder the water was so utterly different from before. So it really was a world apart!

"Senior, what place is this?" Riding a surging vortex and being swept clean from the ocean into a forest lake—even Wei Zhao could not help finding it incredible. And all of this had clearly been within the ghostly thing's expectations; otherwise he would never have had Wei Zhao leap into the sea earlier, much less had him charge headlong into the vortex as though courting death.

"South Island," the ghostly thing said, its tone somewhat complicated, and explained for Wei Zhao's benefit: "The waters of the South Continent sea region and the South Island mainland are interconnected. Many parts of the sea have vortex channels that link specifically to the inland lakes of South Island. So long as one can enter a vortex channel, one can reach it swiftly."

"So marvelous? That's convenient enough, but how come I've never heard anyone speak of such a shortcut?" Wei Zhao said in some surprise.

He had not spent long in the South Continent sea region—though by the same token, not so short a time either—and had even made a circuit of the Lu Feng Forest earlier, yet never once had he heard of any vortex channels. He knew only that South Island was not so easily entered.

The miasma that hung everywhere had all but completely cut South Island off from the surrounding sea. Only at certain specific times, and only through special teleportation arrays, could one get in; apart from that, he had never heard of any convenient shortcut like a vortex channel. Otherwise, so many people would have had no need to queue up and hand their spirit jade over to the teleportation arrays—after all, the price of a single teleport was no small sum.

"These vortex channels are a highly guarded secret of our spirit beast clan. Only a few top elders and a small handful of spirit beasts know of them; the vast majority of spirit beasts are wholly unaware, to say nothing of those human cultivators. And even if someone did learn of them, they would have to be silenced—after all, this concerns the safety of the entire spirit beast clan of the South Continent. If just anyone could casually intrude into the South Continent interior, that would be unthinkable!" the ghostly thing said dismissively.

The vortex channels had been discovered only under extremely chance circumstances, and not every vortex concealed a channel. If one picked a vortex at random in the South Continent sea and dove in, nine times out of ten the end would be being ground to death alive. Who in their right mind would dare charge blindly into one without knowing precisely how the vortex channels were distributed?

What was more, many vortex channels were one-way passages. Even if one made it into South Island smoothly, how would one get out again? Quite possibly there would be no return at all, and no human cultivator, however bold, would dare take such a risk.

At the words "silenced," Wei Zhao could not help giving a start, and said with a bitter smile, "Senior, I'm a human cultivator too, you know. You're not going to silence me as well, are you? This is condemning me without even a trial..."

"Heh heh, scared now, boy?" The ghostly thing gave a queer cackle, then said, "Rest easy—you're one of us. Besides, do I look like such an unreasonable sort?"

"Of course not," Wei Zhao answered glibly, then added in the depths of his heart: because you're not even a person at all.

"Condemning a man without a trial—such an unreasonable business is the very last thing I would ever do. My way has always been to teach first, then condemn," the ghostly thing said with perfect solemnity.