Chapter 4743 — Escaping the Trap

An hour later, Wei Zhao and Huo Yudie were back at the teleportation array's exit. Huo Yudie still hadn't stopped laughing—she'd been laughing the whole way back, and every time she recalled the look on Scarface's face at the end, joy welled up in her again.

"All right, all right, will you ever be done? The man suffered a blow of that magnitude—have a little compassion, won't you, for a girl?" Wei Zhao said, at a loss for words.

"You're one to talk! It was all your doing in the first place. I'd say Scarface is so despondent he's about ready to kill himself. Poor thing, hee hee!" Huo Yudie laughed as she spoke. She truly hadn't expected Wei Zhao to be so devious—pressing the conversation along until he'd cleaned the man out of every last savings he had. Anyone in that position would be ready to jump off a building.

"I call it paying a little wealth to avert disaster. I'd say he got off cheap—or did you think I'd let him go that easily?" Wei Zhao smiled indifferently.

Scarface hadn't yet had the chance to attack him or Huo Yudie, so no real harm had been done, but Wei Zhao had sensed everything the man had done before this clearly enough. It was only because he was in a good mood just now that the fellow had kept his miserable little life; on any ordinary day, Wei Zhao might well have simply killed him on the spot.

"The way he looked, his heart's deader than a corpse's—he'd probably be better off dead!" Huo Yudie covered her mouth and giggled. As she spoke, the two of them reached the teleportation array's exit, and her fine mood instantly clouded over again. She turned to Wei Zhao with a helpless frown. "What do we do now? There's no way out of here, that's for certain—looks like we'll have to wait for the next trial to open."

"Is the teleportation array really that strictly limited?" Wei Zhao frowned as well. If not for the matter with Ning Xuefei, being trapped here wouldn't have been much of a problem—at worst, he could treat it as a session of secluded cultivation. But now that Ning Xuefei's lifelong happiness was at stake, he had to find a way out, and quickly.

"It should be. While you were unconscious, I asked those two West Island guards about it, and they told me plainly: even the strongest strike of a cultivator at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage could only just barely force the teleportation to open at the one-month mark, and only by exhausting every last trick they had. But it's already been a month and a half..." Huo Yudie sighed.

If not for the delay having stretched so long, she would have believed that with Wei Zhao's strength—far surpassing the peak of the Nascent Soul stage—it might be worth an attempt, and perhaps he really could break the one-month limit. But now a full month and a half had passed. No matter how she thought about it, it was impossible.

"In that case, why didn't you try to open it once back then—throw me out first, then teleport yourself again afterward?" Wei Zhao couldn't help asking.

"I did think of that, and I even asked those two West Island guards specifically. They said it might not succeed, and that in your condition at the time, you'd have had a hard time enduring the tremendous strain of the teleportation process. I was afraid something would happen to you, so I didn't dare try." Huo Yudie shook her head, then added, "Besides, even with my strength at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage, unleashing my strongest move twice in quick succession is simply impossible—that's not something you can do while holding anything back."

"I see." Wei Zhao nodded in sudden understanding. He himself could unleash his strongest killing move repeatedly, so he had subconsciously assumed others were freaks of the same kind.

Strictly speaking, being able to unleash one's strongest killing move repeatedly was in itself an exceedingly heaven-defying ability. An ordinary person simply couldn't do it—and it wasn't merely a matter of talent. Anything that could serve as one's ultimate trump card necessarily consumed an enormous amount of true qi. Many people would exhaust every last drop of their true qi with a single move.

It was only because Wei Zhao had the jade pendant to replenish his true qi that he could squander it so recklessly. For a cultivator like Huo Yudie, without a month or so, there would be no recovering at all—and by then, the daylilies would have rotted through.

"I really did want to risk giving it a try back then. Maybe I could have gotten you out—only then I definitely wouldn't have been able to leave myself, and I was afraid that even if you made it through the teleportation, you'd land on the other side and be targeted by Kaizi and his accomplices. I thought about it for a long time before giving up on the idea," Huo Yudie said.

"Hm? So it really can be done that way—if I unleash my move from outside the teleportation array, there's a chance I could send you out?" Wei Zhao's eyes lit up at her words.

He had only asked casually just now; he'd never imagined it was actually feasible. After all, before the trial began, according to what Yan Xinlan had said, to open the teleportation one had to channel true qi from inside to strike the array's core, and people on the outside couldn't attack it at all. Wei Zhao had assumed this was an ironclad rule—he hadn't expected it wasn't entirely so.

"I think it might be possible. When I asked those two West Island guards, they didn't completely rule it out—they only said it would be extremely difficult," Huo Yudie said, trying hard to recall.

"Then here's what we'll do: you go into the teleportation array first, and I'll try from the outside. If it works, you get out!" Wei Zhao decided on the spot.

"What? You can open it?" Huo Yudie was startled. She had long since given up any thought of leaving—she'd never imagined that at this point Wei Zhao would still have the confidence to give it a try.

"I can't guarantee anything, but there's no law against trying. We're just sitting around idle anyway—if it doesn't work, we'll think of something else," Wei Zhao said with an unconcerned smile.

By his reckoning, this trial teleportation array might well identify the power level of its teleportation target, but the motive force it ultimately used to teleport was still the powerful true qi absorbed by the array's core.

In other words, even after a month had passed, so long as the true qi generated was sufficient to convert into the power of teleportation, the array would operate!

After all, that one-month limit was set only for the utmost limit of true qi power that an ordinary cultivator at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage could unleash—but it absolutely did not include him, Wei Zhao!

Of course, this was merely Wei Zhao's own conjecture; whether it would ultimately succeed could only be known by trying.

So long as this theory held, Wei Zhao believed the two of them should be able to leave smoothly, for the power of the move he could unleash far surpassed that of an ordinary cultivator at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage. Though a month and a half had now passed, it was not as if there was no possibility of success!

"Oh, all right then." Seeing Wei Zhao so full of enthusiasm, Huo Yudie, though she thought it unlikely, obediently stepped into the teleportation array as instructed.

After Huo Yudie had taken her place at the center of the array, Wei Zhao observed the position of the array's core for a moment. This was a fully enclosed, special type of teleportation array, and as a safeguard of some sort, the core happened to be recessed into the outermost corner—the very place most difficult to attack! (To be continued...)