Chapter 4818 — A Sparring Partner

The two of them, pursuer and pursued, raced on for a full night, one behind the other, and by the time dawn broke, Wei Zhao found himself deep in a vast, boundless wilderness of ancient forest, with no village ahead and no inn behind—utterly removed from the sphere of the academy's influence.

The Venerable Xishan surveyed his surroundings with a silent, cold laugh. He had assumed the boy would try to slip secretly into the main city, in which case he would truly have had some trouble on his hands. But as things stood now, the boy had picked out his own burial ground—and saved him every bit of effort.

Within a hundred li there was not so much as a ghost to be seen. No matter how great a commotion was raised, no one would come to interfere. He truly did not know whether to call the boy a fool or to praise him for his good sense!

Just as the Venerable Xishan was about to make his move, Wei Zhao ahead suddenly came to a halt. That gave the old man quite a start, and he could not help growing suspicious. What was the boy up to now?

"This place will do," Wei Zhao said mildly. "The feng shui isn't much to speak of, but it's more than enough to bury a tail. Come out."

The Venerable Xishan was momentarily stunned. All along the way he had followed with no small care, keeping several li behind so as not to startle the quarry, and he had taken great pains to conceal his own aura. And yet the boy had actually noticed him?!

Impossible. The boy had to be bluffing, hoping to get lucky and scare him out. The Venerable Xishan had already meant to strike, but now he changed his mind. In the spirit of a cat toying with a mouse, he would see how long Wei Zhao could keep up this one-man show.

"Heh, still skulking about and refusing to come out—are you fooling yourself?" Wei Zhao grinned. Then, without the slightest reservation, he revealed the strength of the late Nascent Soul stage and said coolly, "Hurry up and come out and fight me. I'd reckon our strength is about even, so let's skip the dawdling and get straight to it. You've been sneaking and hiding for days—are all you devil cultivators as fond of the dark as you are?"

Only then did the Venerable Xishan realize he had indeed been discovered. Yet inwardly he could not help but marvel. He had concealed his aura so thoroughly—how had the boy figured out that he was a devil cultivator?

Suppressing his puzzlement, the Venerable Xishan immediately appeared without hesitation, releasing his full, formidable aura, and sneered, "Hmph. Are your eyes failing you, boy? This old man is late Mystic Ascension, and you are merely late Nascent Soul. How are we 'about even'? We're worlds apart!"

"Worlds apart or not, we'll know once we fight. Enough of your drivel. My hands have been itching for a long time." As he spoke, Wei Zhao cracked his knuckles, pop pop pop. He had expected the creature to strike long ago; he had not thought it would drag on like a turtle until now. Though he had to admit—this turtle could certainly run.

"Itching, are they? Hmph, I'd say it's your hide that's itching for death, you reckless dog, daring to provoke even our Old Xishan Sect. Today I, the Venerable Xishan, will take your head to celebrate the old sect's founding!" the Venerable Xishan jeered.

"Old Xishan Sect? You're with the Xishan devil faction too?" Wei Zhao was taken aback. He had only heard from the ghost thing that this was a devil cultivator; he had never expected to run into the Xishan devil faction all the way out here in the Eastern Continent. Truly, enemies are bound to meet on a narrow road. He had assumed the creature was simply a killer hired by Ren Zhongyuan and his lot to deal with him.

"Hmph. To have provoked our Old Xishan Sect and still lived this long—count that as your good fortune. But today your luck runs out. Prepare to die!" With that, the Venerable Xishan thrust out his claw and grabbed toward Wei Zhao.

Wei Zhao instantly felt an incomparably terrifying suction rushing at him head-on, as though it meant to drag him bodily over by main force. This was no mere snatching at a distance. Had he not been on his guard beforehand, with true qi shielding his body, that single move would have burst every meridian and blood vessel inside him; he might well have been reduced to a cloud of blood mist on the spot.

A devil cultivator was a devil cultivator, after all—the first move he made was a technique of such utterly insidious venom!

With a turn of thought, Wei Zhao suddenly abandoned his resistance. His whole body was instantly dragged over, and the Venerable Xishan was overjoyed at the sight. "You lot who style yourselves the righteous sects, always so fond of boasting—all that rot about fighting above your cultivation realm, and it comes to no more than this!"

This move of his was called the Belly-Ripping Claw, and as the name suggested, once his claw landed the result was instant disembowelment. Even a true qi shield was useless, for the shield would be pierced in an instant by the claw tips he had trained specifically for that purpose, and as for the flesh and blood that remained, that need not even be mentioned.

The distance between them closed rapidly, and just as it looked as though the blow would land, Wei Zhao did not try to slow himself at all. Instead he suddenly jetted true qi from his back, going with the current, and his speed abruptly leapt by a whole tier, so that his whole body hurtled at the Venerable Xishan like a cannonball.

The Venerable Xishan was startled at the sight, and by the time he reacted, Wei Zhao was already right before his eyes. Both palms were surging with fire, a blazing crimson, carrying the profound mystery of the yin-yang and eight trigrams, and they came crashing down one after the other.

"Insolent! Reckless whelp who knows nothing of death!" The Venerable Xishan flew into a rage at the sight. A mere late Nascent Soul cultivator daring to do such a thing—plainly he was not taking him seriously at all.

His Belly-Ripping Claw, which could draw a man through the air, did indeed appear riddled with openings to many a capable fighter—just as now, when it was all too easy for a man to turn one's strength against one. It was only a pity that these people all forgot he was a late Mystic Ascension expert. How could a being of his caliber so easily lay himself open?

When an opening is especially glaring, the odds are great that it is a trap laid on purpose. Those fighters who saw this move of his and thought they had found their chance—when they rode the tailwind of that mighty suction to turn strength against strength, the results were all too ghastly to behold. Not one exception.

And now, beneath his Belly-Ripping Claw there was about to be one more dead soul. On the surface the Venerable Xishan put on a show of shock and fury, but in his heart he was nearly splitting with laughter. A simpleton like this had once managed to escape from under the old sect's nose? His dog-shit luck must have defied the heavens!

In the blink of an eye the two had come face to face. The five fingertips of the Venerable Xishan's hand oozed a hideous, chilling black qi, and without dodging or evading he thrust straight at Wei Zhao's raging-fire eight-trigram palms.

To most onlookers, the most fearsome thing about the Belly-Ripping Claw was its mighty, blood-bursting suction, and so long as one could withstand that force, one could deal with it with ease—after all, the claw itself truly had no fearsome power to speak of.

In truth it was precisely the opposite. The suction was mere misdirection; what was truly terrifying about this move was still the Belly-Ripping Claw. The more unassuming a thing appears, the more often it proves fatal.