Chapter 4710 — The Mountain of Heaven's Way

Just like the puppet vine: grown elsewhere it might be an ordinary creeper, but grown here it became a vicious, horrifying monster!

Every step in this place had to be taken with care. Drifting off into distraction as often as Huo Yudie did was dangerous in the extreme.

Still, it was a mercy that Wei Zhao was watching her back; any stir in the undergrowth, however slight, he caught with perfect clarity, and several times along the way he had steered them clear of threats hidden far too deep for the eye to find.

Otherwise, in the dazed state Huo Yudie was in now, even if she escaped with her life she would have wasted a mountain of time for nothing. That was not to say the detour might not yield something—but at the very least, the Thunder Mystery Vine could be forgotten.

Walking behind Huo Yudie, faced with a creature whose figure was enough to make a man's nose bleed, any man would have stolen a glance or two; Wei Zhao was no exception.

He had assumed that once Huo Yudie changed into that explosive denim sportswear, she would draw some unnecessary trouble—after all, lechers of Kang Jingming's stamp were beyond counting.

Yet to his surprise, perhaps because their route was so out of the way, they met hardly anyone at all along the road. The rare one or two they did pass took one look at this fiend of a man and wisely kept their distance—who would dare risk their neck coming up to make trouble?

They walked on for roughly two hours, and then, off to their right front, a towering mountain suddenly rose into view. Wei Zhao was astonished; he had thought the whole of the Ten-Thousand-Year Canyon was flat, open ground—who would have dreamed there was a peak inside the canyon itself?!

It could not compare with the mountains flanking the canyon, but the sheer pressure this one exuded was no small thing. It occupied the greater part of the Ten-Thousand-Year Canyon, leaving only a narrow passage on the left.

Huo Yudie pulled out the map and checked it once, then without a word set off toward that narrow passage on the left. It looked as though she meant to go around the mountain ahead.

But Wei Zhao did not move. He halted, as if struck by a sudden thought, and asked, "What is that?"

"Huh?" Huo Yudie blinked. She turned and saw Wei Zhao staring, somewhat fixedly, at the great mountain off to the right front, and her expression tightened. "That is the Mountain of Heaven's Way."

"The Mountain of Heaven's Way?" Wei Zhao gazed at it from afar. For some reason an inexplicable compulsion kept welling up in his mind, urging him instinctively to draw closer, as though something were calling to him. He said at once, "Let's go take a look."

"No! Don't go!" Huo Yudie cried out in alarm, hurrying to stop him.

"What is it?" Wei Zhao looked at her, baffled by the reaction. This girl had been silent the whole way for some reason—why was she so agitated the moment the Mountain of Heaven's Way came up?

"We can't! Absolutely not!" Huo Yudie shook her head again and again, her face full of dread. There was something pleading in her eyes as she looked at Wei Zhao. "Listen to me—let's just take the little path on the left and go around, all right? It's dangerous that way too, we're sure to run head-on into some terrible things along the road, but compared with the Mountain of Heaven's Way, it's far safer!"

"Why?" Wei Zhao frowned slightly. That compulsion in the depths of his being was growing stronger by the moment. His willpower was enough to hold it in check, but anyone else might well have found themselves walking over there without knowing it.

"The Mountain of Heaven's Way is the one place my master warned me never to go near." Huo Yudie gazed at the distant mountain, her expression grave, and went on slowly, "You know this is the ruin of an ancient battlefield. But do you know where the heart of the whole trial ground lies?"

"Oh? Could it be the Mountain of Heaven's Way?" Wei Zhao's eyelid twitched.

"Exactly. The Mountain of Heaven's Way is the core of the entire ancient battlefield. Legend has it that the mightiest beings of antiquity arranged their duels here; as for the rest of the place, it was at most the spectators' stands of that ancient battlefield." Awe she could not hide showed on Huo Yudie's face. She paused, then said, "Do you know how the Ten-Thousand-Year Canyon came to be?"

"How did it?" Wei Zhao asked.

"This place was originally level with the outside—there was no canyon at all. But after one earth-shaking battle of the peaks, the entire foundation below was blasted apart and caved in, and so the Ten-Thousand-Year Canyon came into being. Only the Mountain of Heaven's Way, beneath the feet of those top-tier beings, was spared from being shattered outright, sheltered by the aura of their presence; instead it sank along with everything else and became what it is today. Of course, that is only a legend—whether it is true cannot be verified." Huo Yudie spoke.

"If it's true, then the ones who fought here were truly beings who could reach the heavens." Wei Zhao glanced around the Ten-Thousand-Year Canyon and sighed in wonder.

Feeling it carefully, he could sense the lingering aura of formations everywhere in this place—an aura so ancient it had fused with the surrounding heaven and earth. Ordinary people would never detect it at all, which made it highly likely to be a legacy handed down from antiquity. That a mere trace of residual aura could survive all this time showed plainly how powerful the formations had been.

And yet, for all the protection of such mighty formations, this place had still been blasted into the Ten-Thousand-Year Canyon—which showed plainly enough the strength of those who had done it!

But after hearing all that from Huo Yudie, Wei Zhao felt not the slightest urge to shrink back in fear. On the contrary, he wanted all the more to go and see the Mountain of Heaven's Way for himself. This was the primal heart of the trial, the place where it all began—to simply go around it would be too great a pity.

Seeing the eager, itching look on Wei Zhao's face, Huo Yudie's eyes grew all the more worried. Suddenly she asked, "Is it that something deep inside you desperately wants to go and look? As if something were drawing you?"

"How do you know that?" Wei Zhao started in surprise.

"You're not the only one. According to intelligence my master obtained from the higher-ups on West Island, in fact many people are like this when they reach this place—they find themselves drifting toward the Mountain of Heaven's Way without meaning to! Every time the trial opens, many go there. Only, after that, the vast majority never come back." Huo Yudie looked at the distant mountain; there was fear between her brows, and yet, faint and hidden, a certain yearning too.

Had her master not warned her again and again, telling her never, ever to go near the Mountain of Heaven's Way, she might well have joined the others and drifted over long ago.

"If I'm not mistaken, the Mountain of Heaven's Way is probably that legendary place where one can obtain an ancient inheritance?" Wei Zhao said, frowning slightly.

What the West Island trial was most famous for was not rare treasures, but ancient inheritances. Though it was impossible to know for certain how many people had actually obtained one, such things could not be pure baseless rumor. Looking over the whole of the trial ground, the one place most likely to hold an ancient inheritance was none other than the Mountain of Heaven's Way. (To be continued...)