Chapter 4558 — Preparing the Spirit-Infant Gathering Pill

Wei Zhao pondered for a moment. Given the situation before him, he had two choices. One was to charge out recklessly—after all, those two Dragon Boat Escort Agency guards were nothing before his strength. He could kill them in a single exchange, leaving them no chance to flee.

Of course, there was another option: abandon his original plan and return to the underground space to continue his secluded cultivation. Thanks to the Five-Venom Marsh's ability to block divine consciousness, those two Dragon Boat guards above remained completely unaware of Wei Zhao. If he simply cultivated down there a while longer, even the Western Mountain Old Sect, paranoid as they were, would eventually give up. By then he could emerge without anyone ever knowing.

The latter was clearly the safer of the two, but it would mean abandoning his original plan—and with only two months left before the mission deadline, staying would inevitably mean missing it. The former choice, though aggressive, carried little real risk. With Wei Zhao's current strength at the great perfection of the Golden Core stage, if he could not even instantly kill two nobodies, that would truly be a joke.

"Forget it. To avoid startling the snake in the grass, I'll return to the underground space and keep cultivating. I had originally planned to start preparing for the condensation of my Nascent Soul after returning to the Northern Island, but now it seems I can only attempt a breakthrough here." Wei Zhao rubbed his head and then instructed the spirit bird to return to the underground space.

"Heh heh, I was going to give you a reminder, but it seems I underestimated you, kid," Ghost Thing said with a knowing smile.

He had assumed Wei Zhao would strike without a second thought. After all, with his strength surging recently, any normal person would be bursting with confidence and would unhesitatingly cut down those two nobodies. But if he had done so, Wei Zhao would have landed himself in real trouble.

There was something on those two nobodies that could not be ignored—something most people would hardly notice, but which could not escape Ghost Thing's divine sense. It was the tiny jade token on the bald man's wrist. The token itself had no power, but once attacked, it would shatter—and a corresponding token sensing it would shatter at the same moment.

Needless to say, that paired token was certainly at the Dragon Boat Escort Agency headquarters. If Wei Zhao struck them down here, the Western Mountain Old Sect would know immediately. Once they came for him, even with his recent surge in strength, his fate would be no better than before.

"I'm not stupid." Wei Zhao smiled faintly. With his powers of observation, even on his first connection to Ghost Thing's divine sense, he would never overlook a single detail—much less be so overconfident as to strike without observing clearly. Small fry were indeed nothing worth worrying about, easily crushed underfoot, but it was often on such small fry that great endeavors foundered.

Though he was now at the great perfection of the Golden Core stage and far more confident than before, even so he had not the slightest assurance of facing the Western Mountain Old Sect. A true man knows when to bend and when to stretch. When endurance was called for, endure.

Returning to the underground space, Wei Zhao did not rush to resume his secluded cultivation. He now stood at the threshold of the great perfection of the Golden Core stage, separated from the Nascent Soul by only the thinnest pane of paper—seemingly ready to break at a touch. Of course, that was mere appearance. If condensing a Nascent Soul were truly so easy, masters of the Nascent Soul stage would long since be everywhere, worth less than dogs.

At his current realm, continued secluded cultivation had little effect. Even tempering himself further with the Five Elements killing qi was useless, for it was like a bottle already filled to the brim—no matter how much water one poured in, it was futile. There was only one way to advance: to switch to a larger bottle.

From the Golden Core stage to the Nascent Soul stage, the so-called condensation of a Nascent Soul was, plainly put, the exchange of one bottle for a larger, sturdier one. If the Golden Core was a pond, the Nascent Soul was a vast lake—the two could not be mentioned in the same breath. The process was a classic case of building anew after destruction; one had to be resolved to survive only by first placing oneself in a deathly predicament, and at the same time supplement it with every possible preparation. It was by no means something mere bitter cultivation could achieve.

Wei Zhao had no choice now but to change his original plan. Returning to the Northern Island to begin condensing his Nascent Soul was clearly out of the question. To avoid wasting time, the condensation would have to begin now—and the first step was to refine the Spirit-Infant Gathering Pill!

Thanks to Chu Bubai, Wei Zhao now had an entire stalk of infant ginseng in hand. If it were put up for auction on the market, the whole of the Five Great Cloud-Tier Islands would be thrown into an uproar, and Wei Zhao's name would become known to all—including those top-tier beings who never showed themselves. Of course, that was only talk. Even if Wei Zhao's brain were broken, he could not possibly let the infant ginseng out. Never mind selling it—he could not breathe a single word of it, or it would be a death sentence.

The moment he took out the infant ginseng, the surrounding space was filled with fragrance. The scent nearly made Wei Zhao think he had returned to the Lu Feng Forest. The spirit bird playing nearby immediately came over, its eyes burning as it stared at the infant ginseng. Though it had never seen such a rare treasure, spirit beasts possessed an innate intuition for heaven-and-earth treasures; there was no chance it would fail to recognize one.

"You want to eat this?" Wei Zhao laughed at the spirit bird's fixed, unblinking stare. From their very first meeting, this creature had always been a carefree, happy-go-lucky sort—it was rare indeed to see such an "expression" on it.

"Chirp chirp!" The spirit bird nodded repeatedly with almost human understanding, its eyes still fixed unblinkingly on the infant ginseng as it gulped down its drool.

"Heh, you certainly know a good thing when you see it!" Wei Zhao scolded with a laugh, then shook his head. "But this is not for you to eat. Never mind a whole stalk—even a tiny slice would be more than your little frame could bear. It would do you no good at all; you would only suffer internal injuries, and then I would have no way to explain it to Xiaotao."

"Chirp chirp chirp chirp..." The spirit bird looked pitifully at Wei Zhao, then at the infant ginseng, and finally could only pull its head back, utterly crestfallen.

Wei Zhao could not help but laugh at the sight. What he had said was the truth. The infant ginseng was indeed a treasure rarely seen in this world. Even a tiny scrap scraped from it would be a great tonic for a cultivator of his level, worth years of bitter cultivation. But precisely for that reason, it could not be eaten carelessly. A tonic taken beyond measure became a deadly poison—that was a truth known to all.

In the past three months, the spirit bird had been hopping about this underground space, and for some reason its strength had surged along with it, rising from the great perfection of the Foundation Establishment stage to the late Golden Core stage—an improvement even greater than Wei Zhao's own, leaving even a freak like him sighing in admiration. (To be continued—please search Piaotian Literature for faster, better updates!)

...R640