Chapter 4850 — The Road of Giants

"Heh heh, now he's really putting on airs and playing the fool—time for him to make a proper spectacle of himself in front of my Wang Xinyan!" Bao Zuoliang and Su Kesheng mingled with the crowd, sneering without end.

But before their sneering could run its course, Wei Zhao casually tossed out a seventh-grade Great Return Pill and said with a faint smile, "Will this do?"

"It will, it will—of course it will!" The staff member nodded again and again. Other treasures still had to be examined by a specialist appraiser, but this seventh-grade Great Return Pill skipped even that procedure entirely. Never mind whether it qualified for auction—it could serve as the finale lot and no one would object.

"Damn it, this bastard really isn't short on spirit jade!" Bao Zuoliang stared, dumbstruck. Even he, the only son of a city lord, could never spend with such extravagance.

They came to the familiar auction hall. This time, since none of the great personages would attend, no VIP boxes had been set aside. Still, given the status of the three of them, they were assured good seats even without a box. Ordinary folk only dared watch from afar, not venturing close, lest they give offense and bring trouble down on themselves.

The auction had not yet begun. Wei Zhao chatted and drank tea with the two women while listening to the buzz of conversation around them. Most of it circled back to the guild's last special auction, though he noticed many people also bringing up the same matter—it seemed that before long, an epochal trial was to be held here.

What a coincidence. Last time on West Island he had happened upon the West Island Trial, and now his visit to East Continent had landed him in the path of another epochal trial. It sounded like something formidable indeed.

"An epochal trial? What does that mean?" Wei Zhao could not resist asking the two women.

"Oh, you mean the trial that opens three months from now—the legendary Road of Giants of the East Continent's Yellow-Rank sea region," Wang Xinyan explained with a smile.

"The Road of Giants?" Wei Zhao was taken aback, and instinctively recalled the Giant Realm that the ghost thing had explained to him. Could this trial actually produce top-tier experts of the Giant Realm?

"That's right. They say it's a very special and very important trial ground. If you want to advance to the Mystic Ascension stage, you must enter the Road of Giants, because only there can you summon the lightning tribulation," Huang Xiaotao added.

"Indeed. Everyone knows that to assault Mystic Ascension, one must undergo the lightning tribulation. Only within the tempering of that tribulation, harmonizing two attribute spirit roots with each other, is there any chance of advancing to Mystic Ascension. Outside, it is very hard to summon the tribulation—and without the tribulation, naturally there is no assaulting Mystic Ascension," Wang Xinyan nodded.

"So that means only by entering the Road of Giants can one summon the lightning tribulation, and only then have a chance at Mystic Ascension?" Wei Zhao said thoughtfully. This differed somewhat from his conception of the Giant Realm—at the very least, only the Mountain-Opening stage counted as the Giant Realm. Still, strictly speaking, Mystic Ascension was the preparatory class for the Giant Realm, so calling it the necessary Road of Giants was not far off.

"Mm-hm. So this grand auction has come at just the right time. Everyone wants to seize the chance to buy more good things in preparation, so they won't be caught off guard in the trial. Especially since the last auction released five Lightning Mystery Pills all at once—it was like sending coal in the snow," Huang Xiaotao laughed.

"Those five from last time were all carved up by the upper echelons of your academy, weren't they? Ordinary disciples would find it very hard to get their hands on any. Don't tell me they all already have one?" Wei Zhao asked, puzzled.

"That's impossible. Pills like the Lightning Mystery Pill are simply too rare. I hear the vast majority of trial-goers don't have one. Since they can't obtain them, in the end they can only force their way through the tribulation—but the risk is enormous. One failure, and the likely outcome is body and spirit both annihilated," Huang Xiaotao shook her head.

"That dangerous?" Wei Zhao was startled. Cultivators who could reach the peak of Nascent Soul perfection were, so to speak, one in ten thousand; for anyone to get that far was extraordinarily hard-won. And yet they had to face such peril—the cruelty of the cultivation world truly was beyond ordinary comprehension.

"Advance or fall back—no one is willing to stop there. But even without a Lightning Mystery Pill to protect the body, as long as one takes proper precautions, the danger to life can actually be avoided when assaulting Mystic Ascension. Failure, however, is unavoidable; the only recourse is to find a way to start over next time. The hardships of it—only they themselves can fathom," Wang Xinyan sighed.

Without a Lightning Mystery Pill, it meant relying solely on one's own strength to withstand the lightning tribulation head-on. And before such heavenly majesty as the tribulation, personal strength, however great, was ultimately insignificant. To scrape through alive by any means at all was sheer luck—and at such a moment, one still wanted to seize the opportunity to assault Mystic Ascension?

It was not absolutely impossible, but it was essentially no different from seeking death. Beneath the lightning tribulation, the slightest lapse of focus was a road to death—let alone an uncontrolled breakthrough assault!

So assaulting Mystic Ascension absolutely required a Lightning Mystery Pill to protect the body; this was already common knowledge acknowledged throughout the cultivation world. And the number of Mystic Ascension experts had always been extremely sparse—barely a tenth the number of Nascent Soul perfection experts. Apart from the inherent difficulty of the assault, the scarcity of the Lightning Mystery Pill was the most crucial factor.

"Yes. In this world, after all, there are more rootless cultivators than anything. They have no deep background, and it is hard for them to possess overwhelming power, so they can only rely on their own efforts, step by step, rule by rule, to break through their realms. Yet having barely endured to Nascent Soul perfection, they are barred at the door by the Lightning Mystery Pill and cannot advance a single step further. This is the tragedy fated to rootless cultivators," Wei Zhao shook his head and sighed.

He himself was a rootless cultivator through and through. Had he not enjoyed so many wondrous strokes of fortune all along, he too would now be facing this near-insoluble predicament. The old saying goes that a single coin can bring a hero low; in today's cultivation world, it is a single Lightning Mystery Pill that brings countless rootless experts low—truly a thing to make one sigh.

Still, there was no helping it. In the cultivation world there was never any fairness to speak of—and on Cloud-Rank Island, where the weak were meat for the strong, it was displayed in its most vivid form.

Facing a pack of cultivators who clamored to defy heaven, for heaven to be so accommodating as to send down the lightning tribulation only on the Road of Giants was already quite benevolent. They still wanted fairness? Fairness, my ass—one bolt of heavenly thunder blasting every heaven-defying bastard to slag, that would be fairness!

Wang Xinyan and Huang Xiaotao exchanged a look of shared feeling and said nothing. Had they not taken the East Sea Divine Nun as their master, they too would be rootless cultivators, with everything left to their own striving—how could they have attained their present strength?

"By the way, since this Road of Giants opens in three months, are you two going to venture in?" Wei Zhao asked instead.