Chapter 4524 — Retreat Is the Best Policy

"Something is off, truly. It looks as though some great matter has come to pass. We had best go and take a look." Ghost Thing hesitated a moment before speaking.

"Very well!" Wei Zhao did not object. Reason told him that to press on this way courted danger, but since Ghost Thing insisted on going to see, he would of course keep him company to the end—they were, after all, one and the same, bound to each other.

Besides, Wei Zhao could see that even in his present state, hard put to safeguard himself, Ghost Thing still cared deeply about the affairs of the spirit-beast clan. He said aloud that he did not wish to return to the clan, yet at the least stir of wind or grass he would catch himself fretting over it, consciously or not. In a sense, this elder of the spirit beasts was in truth a touch tsundere.

Wei Zhao at once pressed on toward the core heartland, though every step he took was far more wary and careful than before. This ought to have been a place where mighty spirit beasts gathered in throngs, yet now it had grown so strange and uncanny—any fool could tell there was some trick afoot, and one careless step might well mean utter ruin.

Cautious the whole way, another full day thus passed. The wonder in Wei Zhao's heart only deepened: could some great calamity truly have befallen the spirit-beast clan?

Just as Wei Zhao could scarcely contain his curiosity any longer, Ghost Thing's voice suddenly rang out in his mind: "Hold. Go no further."

Wei Zhao hastily checked his steps and slipped into a hidden corner to conceal himself. He scanned the surroundings and found nothing especially out of the ordinary, and could not help asking in surprise, "Senior, what have you found?"

"A great many spirit beasts are gathered ahead, and their auras are by no means weak. If you go on, you will surely be discovered." Ghost Thing spoke in a low voice.

"A great many spirit beasts gathered?" Wei Zhao was startled on the spot—he had sensed not the slightest thing, which showed that the gathering place must still lie some considerable distance off. And for these spirit beasts to earn a verdict of "not weak" from Ghost Thing, they must all be formidable beings indeed.

"The innate auras of many spirit beasts are very distinctive. Even if they consciously conceal them, they cannot be wholly masked. You human cultivators cannot sense it, but it cannot escape my perception." Ghost Thing offered a word of explanation.

"Then... what do we do now?" Wei Zhao asked. Since what lay ahead were all spirit beasts of surpassing power, for a human cultivator to blunder in would plainly be to seek death; yet to beat a retreat at this moment would go against their original purpose—after all, they knew only that many spirit beasts had gathered, not what had happened.

"Mm. To be safe, we can go no further." Ghost Thing pondered a moment, then spoke. He did wish to know what mischance had befallen the spirit-beast clan, but only on the premise of ensuring Wei Zhao's safety; he could not let Wei Zhao take too great a risk.

In such circumstances, then, Ghost Thing would rather choose to withdraw. In any case, if something truly had happened to the spirit-beast clan, in his present state he could do nothing about it, and could only stand by as a cold-eyed onlooker.

"Very well." Since Ghost Thing had said so, Wei Zhao naturally would not force the matter. Even had he the heart to help, he must first have the strength to do so—at least with his present cultivation, peak of the mid Golden Core stage, he was still far from the level needed to meddle in the affairs of the spirit-beast clan.

Drawing a deep breath, Wei Zhao at once carefully reined in his aura and made ready to slip away. But at that very moment, Ghost Thing suddenly gave a low cry: "Don't move!"

At the same instant, a mighty divine sense like a heaven-spanning blazing wave swept abruptly over Wei Zhao's head. Wei Zhao reckoned his own strength was no longer to be counted weak, yet beside the master of this divine sense he was at most a single grain of sand, while the other was at the very least a vast and boundless sea of dunes—there was no comparison between them at all.

In that instant the shock that rose in Wei Zhao's heart was even more stunning and terrifying than when he had faced the Xishan Old Sect, that devil-cultivator titan of the Mountain-Opening stage. That feeling of every hair on his body standing on end in an instant once again made Wei Zhao taste deeply what it meant to be utterly beyond reach, to look up and be awed.

"This is..." Wei Zhao could not help drawing a sharp breath, and cautiously communed with Ghost Thing in his mind through divine sense.

Ghost Thing was silent for a moment, then slowly uttered two words in a tone of the utmost complexity: "Vermilion Bird."

Wei Zhao fell silent at once. No wonder it was so terrifying and dreadful; no wonder a single casual wisp of divine sense was far more shocking than the Xishan Old Sect's—so it was a top-ranked elder of the spirit-beast clan!

No wonder a single divine sense alone was so scorching and fearsome that even Wei Zhao, long accustomed to wielding wild fire, could scarcely withstand it—so it was Vermilion Bird, that very ancestor of all fire-players.

Apart from the former king of the spirit beasts, top-ranked elders like Vermilion Bird were the peak existences of the spirit-beast clan. And the clan had always strictly upheld the natural law of the strong devouring the weak; that a top-ranked elder could overawe so many mighty spirit beasts spoke volumes of how fearsome his strength must be.

Yet Wei Zhao then reflected: Ghost Thing, now cooped up within the jade pendant's space, had once been an existence of the same rank as Vermilion Bird, and their strength must naturally have been much the same.

Though he had long known that Ghost Thing was a top-ranked elder of the spirit-beast clan, Wei Zhao had in truth never had any clear measure of just how strong Ghost Thing had been in his prime, and had privately made all sorts of guesses by the tiers of human cultivators—Nascent Soul stage, Mystic Ascension stage, Mountain-Opening stage, all had been conjectured; back in the mundane world he had once absurdly taken him for a Heaven-rank grand perfection... and now at last he had some sense of it.

At the same time, Wei Zhao broke out in a cold sweat without meaning to. Thank heavens that when he first met Ghost Thing in the mundane world, the thing was already a battered, broken primordial spirit—otherwise, had it retained even a ten-thousandth of its strength, he would not have known how he died...

Silent for a long while, his heart still quailing, Wei Zhao at last managed to collect himself and asked, "Senior, are we still leaving or not?"

Both being top-ranked elders of the spirit-beast clan, Ghost Thing and this Vermilion Bird were plainly acquainted—only whether that acquaintance was good or ill, friend or foe, Ghost Thing alone could know.

"Leaving or not?" Ghost Thing gave a laugh half self-mocking, half explanatory: "Let me put it to you this way—had this been back in my heyday, Vermilion Bird would have had to call me elder brother. But if he were to discover me in my present state, he would stop at nothing to scatter my soul and snuff out my spirit—and you, lad, would be burned to ashes along with me."

"Uh... then we had best make haste and retreat—retreat is the best policy..." Wei Zhao shrank his neck and at once made to back away. Against the Xishan Old Sect's pursuit he had at least been able to bluff and bluster with Ghost Thing's aid and frighten him off, but once it came to Vermilion Bird, there could be no shred of luck. R1152