Chapter 4519 — A Narrow Escape

Though he could not lock on with his spiritual sense, the keen instinct honed over many years told him that a trace of human breath still lingered in this place—and that human was, beyond any doubt, Wei Zhao.

"Courting death!" The ghost-thing's voice abruptly turned savage, and the spiritual sense it had fixed upon the Xishan Old Sect hardened into a sharp arrow, piercing straight through the spiritual sense the other had sent forth.

Pfft! The Xishan Old Sect spat out a mouthful of blood. The injury to his spiritual sense had bred internal damage—the second time now—and his face drained of color as he fled in panic, not daring to linger in this place a moment longer.

"Waaaah! Mark my words, Wei Zhao, you little wretch—this sect won't waste time tangling with you now. May you soon fall into the jaws of a spirit beast! And even if no beast devours you, this sect will surely kill you one day!" After flinging down that fierce threat, the Xishan Old Sect hurried off into the distance. It was not that he wished to spare Wei Zhao; the problem was that he feared death.

Meanwhile, behind a giant tree less than fifty zhang from that spot, Wei Zhao, drenched in a cold sweat of sheer fright, leaned limp and spent against the trunk, his heart still pounding as he gasped, "That old monster is a real nightmare to shake..."

Had the jade pendant not warned him, had Wei Zhao not surpassed himself in that instant and unleashed the Super Butterfly Microstep beyond its utmost limit as never before, he would by now be a corpse in the Xishan Old Sect's hands.

"Hmph, if I weren't in this wretched state, I'd slaughter every last one of these crooked-path cultivators who dared show their faces!" The ghost-thing, too, could not help feeling a lingering chill. A top elder of the spirit beast clan, reduced to bluffing his way through to scare off a single heretic cultivator—and in the Southern Continent no less—was a humiliation that left him utterly without face.

"Senior, what do we do now?" Wei Zhao, tactful enough not to take up that thread, turned instead to the most crucial question.

"Nothing to be done. I never intended to come back. But since I've been forced back here by accident, I may as well take a look around. I want to see just what that Vermilion Bird has turned the spirit beast clan into—and just who this new Spirit Beast King really is!" The ghost-thing's tone was unfathomable.

"Fine by me." Wei Zhao felt not the slightest bit daunted. The Southern Continent was a dragon's den and a tiger's lair for human cultivators, but if he could snatch his life back from the Xishan Old Sect's clutches, then a stroll through spirit beast territory hardly seemed so terrible—after all, he still had the ghost-thing as his guide.

………………

Moleng Wharf. A massive ship flying the banner of the Qingtian Escort Agency finally slipped slowly from the harbor under the gaze of the crowd—and by now, a full month had passed since the Southern Continent Escort Assembly came to its close.

Qi Mingyuan, Qi Wenmo, and Chai Laoshi, who was traveling with them back to Weihu City, stood side by side on the deck of the great ship, every face grave beyond measure.

In order to investigate news of Wei Zhao, the whole group had lingered in Moleng City for a full month, exhausting every means both open and covert. The result was still utter silence—not a single scrap of news, not even whether Wei Zhao was alive or dead, nor in what direction he might have fled. It was as though he had evaporated from the face of the world.

What gave them a measure of comfort was that, to this point, the Xishan Old Sect had not reappeared either. True, given Wei Zhao's strength as a mere Golden Core expert, the odds of escaping the Xishan Old Sect's clutches were vanishingly small—yet the group could not help clinging to that last shred of hope.

As long as they had not seen Wei Zhao's corpse, they believed he must still be alive. Others might not be capable of such a thing, but in the case of Wei Zhao, who had always been a maker of miracles, it was not necessarily impossible.

"Alas, the Qingtian Escort Agency has become the new overlord of the escort trade—wherever it is, that is the center of the Southern Continent's seas. From now on, our Moleng waters will rarely see such bustle again." Watching the Qingtian banner, someone in the crowd at the wharf sighed.

"I wouldn't be so sure. Qingtian may be first, but didn't you all hear what happened on the day of the Southern Continent Escort Alliance Assembly? The Longzhou Escort Agency had a Mountain-Opening giant himself backing it. What does Qingtian have to compare? What a joke!" someone said dismissively.

"Hah, you know only one side of it. The Xishan Old Sect was indeed Longzhou's patron, but he vanished on the spot while hunting down Qingtian's Wei Zhao. So apart from having its status as second escort agency restored, Longzhou gained nothing else at all," someone retorted at once.

"Quite right. I have a friend who was a guild representative—word is that after that day's incident, though Longzhou was reinstated as second, no guild has approached it with a single order. Everyone is still watching and waiting, so it has nothing but the empty name of second agency," someone with inside knowledge divulged.

"Oh? The rules of the five great escort agencies have changed now, haven't they? I hear it's become six great agencies—and that it was proposed by Chief Escort Hai of our very own Moleng City's Sihai Escort Agency?" someone asked.

"Six great agencies, my foot! That was nothing but Hai Wuliang's shameless proposal to curry favor with the Xishan Old Sect at the start. And the moment the Xishan Old Sect was gone, the new escort overlord Qi Mingyuan shot it down with a single sentence. Care to guess what he said?" The man beside him kept them in suspense.

"What did he say?" Everyone around pricked up their ears.

"Since the founding of the Southern Continent Escort Alliance, there have always been only five great escort agencies—never has anyone heard of six. The rules must not be lightly discarded. Since the Sihai Escort Agency is the sixth great agency, then its seat on the alliance committee can only be revoked." The man mimicked Qi Mingyuan's tone.

"Ah? So that means the Sihai Escort Agency has been shut out? Tsk tsk, to fall from escort overlord straight into the dust—Hai Wuliang must be crying himself to death!" someone exclaimed with a sigh.

"Damn right. Who told him to run his mouth and fawn over the Xishan Old Sect? That shameless face he put on back then really made you want to vomit. And now look—he lifted Longzhou up and squeezed his own Sihai right out! I reckon Hai Wuliang's guts are green with regret. He'd have been better off being even more shameless and just revoking Longzhou's status again—after all, he was the one who revoked it in the first place." Someone nearby sneered.

"Heh heh, he wouldn't dare do such a thing if you lent him a hundred gallbladders. If the Xishan Old Sect ever came back, Hai Wuliang wouldn't have lives enough to die..." The crowd burst into laughter.

"No matter how you look at it, the Sihai Escort Agency is bound to be finished after this—not only has it tumbled out of the five great agencies in one stroke, I hear it couldn't even grab many orders. From here on it's just another face in the crowd." Many shook their heads. (To be continued...)