Chapter 4550 — Why Didn't You Say So Sooner

"Helped you halfway? What's that supposed to mean?" Wei Zhao was taken aback.

"Nothing much. I kept pestering him, and the old codger got so fed up with my nagging that he agreed to a duel—if I won, he'd help; if I lost, we'd drop the whole matter and I was never to bother him again," Ghost Thing explained.

"And then? How did it turn out?" Wei Zhao pressed, impatient. He genuinely wanted to know which of those two top-tier beings, Ghost Thing and Zhang Lifeng, was truly the stronger.

"We fought for three days and three nights straight—from the sky to the ground to the sea, and along the way we flattened five small islands. In the end neither of us won; it was a draw..." Ghost Thing's tone actually grew rather spirited as he recounted it. A mutual admiration binds masters of the craft—after all, an opponent as formidable and near-unanswerable as Zhang Lifeng was something rare in this world even for him.

"Uh, that must have been fierce indeed." Wei Zhao could not help clicking his tongue. In his understanding, the stronger the master, the more they prized a single decisive strike—especially at the level of Ghost Thing and Zhang Lifeng, where ordinarily a single exchange should determine victory. Yet the two had fought three days and three nights without a victor, proof that their strength truly was evenly matched, each a match for the other.

"Fierce it certainly was. Apart from Zhang Lifeng, I've never met such an opponent. Even Vermilion Bird, my old rival, was never this troublesome—dealing with him was easy and pleasant. I have to admit, the old fellow is quite a figure." Ghost Thing nodded and sighed. As the former Azure Dragon he had always been proud and lofty, rarely esteeming anyone besides the King of Spirit Beasts, and Zhang Lifeng was a rare exception.

"So what happened after that?" Wei Zhao asked on.

"After? Neither of us lost, neither won. The original wager couldn't be settled, and with a draw it naturally could only be half a favor. The old fellow didn't open the formation passage for me, but he did lend me the Five-Element Divine Stone for a spell, so I was able to get to the mortal realm—at the price of being mangled by that vast, crushing pressure into this sorry state I'm in now. Heh heh, reduced to neither man nor ghost..." Ghost Thing mocked himself.

"I see." Wei Zhao nodded. He already knew the rest, so there was no need to ask further. But after a moment's thought he suddenly asked again, "Wait, that's not right. If Zhang Lifeng refused to open the formation passage for fear of injuring his seven wives, then why did he later make a trip to the mortal realm himself?"

He asked because it had suddenly occurred to him that the Divine Farmer's Cauldron in the ancient tomb had vanished for no apparent reason—if his guess was right, that was Zhang Lifeng's own doing, which meant he had been to the mortal realm at least once.

Could it be that afterward he ran into some urgent matter, so pressing that he could not even spare his seven wives from being injured and falling unconscious? Given the protective, possessive nature Ghost Thing had just described, that hardly seemed likely, did it?

"He did tell me as much. Since it was a draw, he said he could open the formation passage for me after a while, but only on the condition that he wait until his wives had all raised their cultivation to the same realm, and only then open the passage with them. At most they would expend some physical strength and true qi, not fall unconscious together from injury; afterward a few years' rest and they would all recover fully, with no unexpected risks to bear," Ghost Thing said.

"So then, his wives must all meet the condition now, which is why he can travel freely between the mortal realm and Cloud-Tier Island." Wei Zhao nodded, then said, "Isn't that a fine proposal? Just wait a few years and no one need take any risk at all. Senior, could you truly not wait even those few years?"

For high-level cultivators—especially a top-tier spirit beast like Ghost Thing—lifespan, though not endless, was exceedingly long and drawn out. A few years were but a flick of the fingers, gone in the course of a casual seclusion; why risk so much just to fight for those few years, and mangle himself into his present state? By any measure, it hardly seemed worth it.

"Of course I couldn't wait!" Ghost Thing's voice burned with urgency, then he smiled bitterly. "If the spirit beast clan's situation hadn't been so desperate that it singed my very brows, would a man of my temperament ever have swallowed my pride and begged help from a human? Even when I faced the King of Spirit Beasts, I never stooped so low. If I had waited those few years as the old fellow said, I myself would have been fine—but the spirit beast clan would long since have fallen apart. You've seen Vermilion Bird's ambitious posturing for yourself. How could I have waited?"

"That's true enough, but haste makes waste. The way I see it, if you hadn't been so impulsive back then, Senior, and had heeded Zhang Lifeng's counsel to be patient and wait a few more years, things would never have deteriorated to this irredeemable pass. At the very least, with you holding the fort among the spirit beasts, even if Vermilion Bird had installed a puppet as the new King of Spirit Beasts, it could never have covered the sky with one hand and done as it pleased the way it does now," Wei Zhao analyzed.

Before a situation is clear, stillness beats action—that was the lesson of his years of experience. But temperaments differ, and so naturally do styles of handling matters. Had Ghost Thing done as he suggested, he would not have been Ghost Thing at all.

"You're right there. A pity I never met a lad like you back then, or I'd never have sunk to this state. Honestly, your strength may be lacking, boy, but there's really quite a lot about you worth learning," Ghost Thing said with a rueful sigh.

This was no mere courtesy—it was the plain truth. That Wei Zhao could grow at such astonishing speed to his present level in just a few short years was due not only to his talent and fortune, but more crucially to his manner of advancing and retreating with measure. Had anyone else possessed the same talent and fortune, they would likely have been strangled in the cradle long ago.

"Senior, don't mock me. The esteemed former Azure Dragon saying he wants to learn from a mere Golden Core nobody like me—if word got out, I'd be laughed to death." Wei Zhao waved his hand with a smile. After a pause he suddenly said, "By the way, ever since I first set foot on Cloud-Tier Island I've been asking everyone about Zhang Lifeng. Senior, why didn't you say so sooner? You kept silent all that time, and I naturally assumed you'd never met him..." (To be continued..) R527