Chapter 4583 — Just His Bad Luck

"To be honest with you, this place really does have a third entrance. Only, I've never been there myself. My master, the Five-Venom Flood Dragon, mentioned it once while he was alive, but I don't think he ever took it either, and there's no reliable information about it anywhere. So I've no idea what lies beyond it or how dangerous it might be—I can't even guess. Unless you're absolutely forced to, I wouldn't advise taking that risk," the Dragon of Five Baleful Spirits said, shaking its head.

"I see... then it's a complete gamble, and far too risky..." Wei Zhao mused for a moment, then nodded.

After all, this place lay beneath South Island, so by any reasonable inference, this third entrance was most likely on South Island like the other two—perhaps even in another part of South Island's interior. If Wei Zhao went blundering out, he'd be walking straight into their net, and the danger involved was anything but small.

"That's why I never told you before—didn't want you going off to die. See? I've been looking out for you. Roar, roar!" the Dragon of Five Baleful Spirits said with a laugh.

"You certainly have! Then I'll go take a look at that Five-Venom Swamp first. If someone's still guarding it, then I'll have no choice but to risk it and try." With that, Wei Zhao leaped onto the spiritual bird's back, and man and bird shot into the sky, arriving at the surface of the Five-Venom Swamp almost in the blink of an eye.

Sweeping the area with the ghost thing's spiritual sense, Wei Zhao's heart sank. Damn it—the old Western Mountain Sect still hadn't withdrawn its watchers. This went far beyond mere persistence; they were plainly out of their minds!

Wei Zhao was about to go crazy, his head full of curses. But in fact, this time he had wronged the old Western Mountain Sect. Just as he had guessed earlier, however cautious and suspicious the sect was, after so long they had long since concluded he was certainly dead. The reason they hadn't pulled the watchers was simple: he had been forgotten.

Ling Yi was dead. That was the old Western Mountain Sect's current belief. As a giant among demonic cultivators, it naturally wouldn't keep a dead man in its thoughts, so Wei Zhao had been cleanly dropped from its mind—and along with him, the watchers it had ordered Long Kuiba to plant in the Five-Venom Swamp had been forgotten just as thoroughly. For the lofty old Western Mountain Sect to keep such trifles—not even low-ranking lackeys—in mind, the sun would have to rise in the west.

Since the old Western Mountain Sect gave no orders, Long Kuiba naturally dared not withdraw the men on his own. To him it was no more than two fewer escorts—a matter of no consequence whatsoever. There was no chance he'd trouble the old Western Mountain Sect over something so trivial!

These days, as long as no one was pressing him to find some Nascent Soul stage female cultivator, Long Kuiba counted himself blessed. What did sending out a few escorts matter?

So it was these escorts under his command who wound up cursed with bad luck. Even knowing full well it was pointless, they had no choice but to show up on time and keep watch, not daring to slack off in the slightest.

These lackeys were merely unlucky—but Wei Zhao, the man at the center of it all, was by now so frustrated he was nearly spitting blood. From the complaints of the two men above, he had already pieced together the whole story, and he nearly coughed up a mouthful of old blood on the spot. The man had simply been careless, and through a bizarre chain of accidents, Wei Zhao was left unable to move. Where in the world was the justice in that?

Wei Zhao restrained himself for a long while before he barely managed to suppress the urge to strike down those two watchers. For all their perfunctory attitude, the moment they sensed danger they would undoubtedly crush their sensing jade tokens at once—and then, even if the old Western Mountain Sect had forgotten him, the shattered tokens would instantly bring the whole matter back to mind.

With Wei Zhao's current strength at the peak of the early Nascent Soul stage, he had little confidence of withdrawing unscathed from a confrontation with the old Western Mountain Sect. Even if he fled back into the Five-Venom Swamp and left them helpless, doing so would expose the crucial secret that he could survive in the swamp. By then the sect, once it understood, would certainly pursue him to the death, and escaping this place would become even more impossible.

That was a risk Wei Zhao could not afford. So after weighing his options, he could only ride the spiritual bird back down to the space below in dejection.

"Looks like there's no way out through here. So—want to try the third passage?" Catching sight of Wei Zhao's black mood from afar, the Dragon of Five Baleful Spirits didn't need to ask to know the outcome.

"Of course. Otherwise I'll be trapped here until I die. And I really have to hand it to that old monster—even a single careless slip on his part leaves me pinned down with nowhere to go..." Wei Zhao said with a bitter smile.

If the old Western Mountain Sect hadn't forgotten about him by now, then after a while longer they might still have withdrawn the watchers. But since they had forgotten, they would never think of it on their own, and people like Long Kuiba dared not bother them over such a trifling matter. It was quite possible that ten or twenty years from now, things would still be exactly the same—not a shred of hope.

The Dragon of Five Baleful Spirits was stunned for a moment; after hearing Wei Zhao's explanation, it doubled over laughing, pounding the ground madly with its claws until the very earth shook and the mountains swayed.

"Could you at least show a little restraint? You don't have to revel in my misfortune quite so thoroughly, do you? You're practically causing an earthquake!" Wei Zhao said, eyeing it sidelong, speechless. If a Earth-Splitting stage existence really cut loose and went on a rampage, this entire space would likely collapse. Just from the dragon's laughing alone, cracks had already appeared—it truly couldn't withstand much of this.

"Roar, roar, roar, roar! This is the funniest joke I've heard in two years! You really are just plain unlucky—it's hilarious!" The Dragon of Five Baleful Spirits kept laughing without the slightest restraint. It was plainly a dinosaur, yet Wei Zhao watched it laugh until tears came to its eyes.

You've only ever seen one human in two years—you can't even run into a single ghost otherwise. If you actually heard a joke, that would be the real miracle! Wei Zhao grumbled inwardly in silence, and only once the Dragon of Five Baleful Spirits had laughed its fill did he urge it to lead the way to the third entrance.

Vast and boundless as this space was, before the Dragon of Five Baleful Spirits' speed, even the farthest places were reached in an instant. The spiritual bird was nowhere near as terrifyingly fast, but the speed of a Nascent Soul stage spiritual bird, once brought to the outside world, was still enough to make one's hair stand on end.

They flew on, one ahead and one behind, for a time, until the Dragon of Five Baleful Spirits ahead suddenly descended. Wei Zhao thought they had arrived and hurriedly brought the spiritual bird down to land as well—only to find everything around them no different from what they had seen along the way. It looked nothing like the site of an entrance.

But the moment he landed, Wei Zhao felt an incomparably powerful aura surge over him—one that far surpassed even the Dragon of Five Baleful Spirits, a Earth-Splitting stage existence. It was truly awe-inspiring. (To be continued) R655