Chapter 4536 — At Last, the Teleportation Array

After crossing two whole regions, no matter how careful Wei Zhao was, he still encountered no small number of powerful spirit beasts along the way; fortunately, the vast majority of them showed no interest in him whatsoever.

For one thing, Wei Zhao carried the aura of a spirit beast, a disguise woven by that ghostly thing of his. To those powerful spirit beasts, a human expert at the Golden Core stage was a fine delicacy, but a Golden Core spirit beast was barely enough to fill the gaps between their teeth. For another, the speed Wei Zhao displayed was truly extraordinary; even when those powerful spirit beasts spotted him, they could not be bothered to give chase.

A "spirit beast" like Wei Zhao was absolutely the most unwelcome prey. A piddling Golden Core nobody did not even count as an appetizer in the eyes of those powerful beasts, and yet he ran infernally fast. Never mind whether they could catch him; even if they could run him down in the end, it would waste a vast amount of effort.

The energy expended in the chase alone could not be replenished by eating ten Wei Zhaos; it was a sheer loss with no gain. So although the aura on Wei Zhao was feeble, along the whole route there really were only a handful of spirit beasts that actually made a move on him. Even on the occasional unlucky day, his pursuer would usually give it a brief try and then simply let it go the moment it saw he could not easily be caught.

Still, walk the night road often enough and you will meet a ghost sooner or later. Over this month, most of the time things went fairly smoothly, but there were a few occasions that were truly hair-raising, perilous to a degree that, if not quite equal to the pursuit by the old sect of the Western Hills, was certainly not far off.

Each time, Wei Zhao had to play every card in his hand, fighting for his very life, before barely scraping through. Coming away merely wounded was the least of it. To reach the exit teleportation array in one piece, limbs still intact—that alone meant the smoke of good fortune was rising from his ancestral graves.

The month past held hardships and setbacks beyond telling. Wei Zhao had grown visibly thinner all over. Looking back at the road he had blazed through, it was nothing but a river of bitter tears. Back in the day, Tang Seng and his disciples on their pilgrimage to the Western Paradise had probably fared no better than this.

In theory, a cultivator at the Golden Core level already possessed a physique of monstrous endurance, but even that could not withstand a whole month of desperate flight for dear life. It was not only a tremendous trial of stamina; one also had to keep one's nerves strung taut at every moment against a spirit beast's ambush. An ordinary person would long since have been driven mad, and even cultivators of higher rank could not have borne it.

And yet Wei Zhao not only held on, he treated the whole ordeal as a rare opportunity for cultivation. Pressure was motivation, and one could not find so many powerful spirit beasts anywhere one pleased, all urging one on in one's training.

Of course, breaking through on the spot was still unrealistic, but once body and will alike had been pushed to their limits, both could become purer and stronger—of that there was no doubt.

At the same time, this month of grueling tempering had allowed Wei Zhao to master the ultra-limit Butterfly Microstep completely. The corresponding top-tier body arts and ultra-limit body arts had likewise grown ever more effortless. This alone was worth more than half a year of ordinary painstaking cultivation.

Nor was that all. Even Wei Zhao's bearing had changed subtly compared with a month ago. He was still as steady and restrained as ever, but at his core he now seemed more resilient and unyielding, like a green pine rooted deep in bedrock. On the surface there was no difference to be seen, yet its roots had already spread from ten zhang to twenty, or perhaps even more.

The deeper the roots, the more solid the foundation; the more solid the foundation, the richer the reserves. Great accumulation, then measured release—the harvest of this one month was far more precious than any overt breakthrough. Though it had been forced upon him by flight for his life, in a sense Wei Zhao had come away this time with a bountiful crop.

Ahead lay an open expanse, with no spirit beast on guard, and not far in front stood a teleportation array, much like the one he had seen in the Rufeng Forest. The sight made Wei Zhao breathe a quiet sigh of relief. If this teleportation array had been heavily garrisoned by the spirit beast clan, that would truly have been a mess; thankfully, the situation was far better than expected.

Seeing no one about, Wei Zhao hurried onto the array. Unlike the one in the Rufeng Forest, which could be activated simply by holding a token, this one plainly had no token to speak of; it required spirit jade ready at hand.

In principle, every activation of a teleportation required the consumption of a vast amount of heaven-and-earth spiritual energy. True, each teleportation array was designed from the outset with a complementary formation that gathered the surrounding spiritual energy, enough to keep the array operating normally—but that was only enough to keep it from breaking down. To rely on that for frequent back-and-forth teleportation was clearly unrealistic.

Therefore, before each use of a teleportation array, one had to add superior spirit jade to the array's core to provide power—a few hundred pieces at the least, or as many as several thousand, even tens of thousands, depending on the array's refinement and the distance of the teleport.

The array before him required a full three thousand six hundred pieces of spirit jade for each activation. Wei Zhao silently congratulated himself on having the jade pendant's space. Anyone else seeing such a demand would surely have been dumbstruck.

It was not that one could not produce that much spirit jade; the point was, who in their right mind would lug so much raw spirit jade around with them? Even if one had set out carrying it, one would surely have thrown it away during the flight to keep up maximum speed. At a moment like this, one could only stare helplessly—that was what it truly meant to weep without tears.

The array's core already held spirit jade, but it had long since lost its spiritual energy, plainly already spent. With a thought, Wei Zhao gathered this spent jade into the pendant's space and replaced it with three thousand six hundred pieces of superior spirit jade. Then he swiftly took his place on the teleportation spot, and the teleport began.

Wei Zhao had experienced the teleportation process more than once or twice, yet each time it always stirred in him an indefinable feeling—like a gifted schoolboy facing abstruse, difficult problems of advanced mathematics. He could not grasp it all at once, but after seeing it over and over, he would unconsciously come to understand it in his own way.

Each time he made a little progress, and perhaps one day, all of it might suddenly become clear.

The whole teleportation was extremely brief. In the blink of an eye, Wei Zhao had appeared in an entirely new place. Beneath his feet, naturally, was the teleportation array; ahead of him was still the dense forest that was the hallmark of the Southern Isle; but the scene behind him was truly somewhat horrifying—an immense swamp.

In a primeval place like the Southern Isle, swamps were hardly strange. During the month of flight, Wei Zhao had seen no few of them, and even earlier he had relied on swamp muck to shake off the pursuit of the old sect of the Western Hills. But a swamp as ghastly and dreadful as the one behind him—this was the first time Wei Zhao had ever laid eyes on such a thing. (To be continued..)