Chapter 4889 — Flee, Now

As the authors of this whole affair, Bao Zuoliang and Su Kesheng had no mind for the reactions of the crowd outside. The two of them stared fixedly at Wei Zhao in the tribulation node, watching him grow ever more relaxed beneath the lightning, and their eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets.

"Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!" Bao Zuoliang bore no resemblance now to his earlier smug confidence; the man had turned hysterical, his face hideous as he snarled, "Impossible! There's no way he can withstand a tribulation this powerful! I'm seeing things—yes, that's it, I must be seeing things. That thing was electrocuted to death in there long ago; only the corpse is stiff with electricity, that's why it hasn't fallen over. It has to be that!"

Just then, Wei Zhao shifted into a more comfortable position inside the tribulation node, shattering this self-deluding fantasy on the spot.

Bao Zuoliang was tongue-tied, the muscles of his face twitching and jerking wildly. Compared with the utterly composed Wei Zhao in the tribulation node at this moment, it was he who looked more like he had been struck by lightning.

"Maybe he took a great many Thunder Mystery Pills beforehand, and that's how he's endured such a fierce tribulation?" Su Kesheng stood to one side, his brow furrowed in gloom. He had racked his brains and could devise no other explanation—yet Thunder Mystery Pills could only form a lightning-buffering layer on the surface of the body; in the end all that lightning power still had to enter the body, just in a gentler manner.

Never had he heard that taking too many Thunder Mystery Pills enabled one to withstand such terrifying tribulation lightning. No matter how gentle and harmless the method, that much lightning power was still very much real, was it not?

Any ordinary person ought to have been blown to pieces by now—how could anyone come out of it completely unscathed?

"Who cares how many Thunder Mystery Pills he ate! This time he dies—he dies!" Bao Zuoliang could not be bothered with any of that; his head was filled with nothing but killing Wei Zhao at any cost. The tribulations of ten people had already reached the Lightning-Commanding Banner's limit, yet he clenched his teeth, hardened his heart, and forced upon Wei Zhao a fifteen-fold tribulation!

That delighted Wei Zhao, but it spelled disaster for Bao Zuoliang himself. He had already drawn three ten-fold tribulations in succession, and the Lightning-Commanding Banner had been flung about until it was glowing red hot, on the verge of catching fire. Now he had straightaway brought down a fifteen-fold tribulation—no matter how fine the thing was made, it could not withstand such abuse.

*Chhh!* Under the crushing load, the Lightning-Commanding Banner finally gave out completely. A tongue of flame burst suddenly from its surface, and in an instant it was burned to ashes.

"Er…" Bao Zuoliang and Su Kesheng were dumbstruck at the same time, staring blankly at the pile of ashes before them, unable to react. The Lightning-Commanding Banner had failed to smite Wei Zhao dead, and had instead burned itself to cinders—what kind of absurd horseshit was this?!

After staring blankly for a good while, Bao Zuoliang suddenly let out a wail, his face woebegone as he muttered, "My twelve million!"

The Lightning-Commanding Banner had been bought by him at a grand auction for the sum of twelve million spirit jade. Its uses were rather limited, but on a special occasion like the Road of the Titans it was an existence comparable to a divine artifact, and so its price was naturally absurdly high. Even for the son of a city lord, twelve million spirit jade had made his heart bleed.

The reason he had bid on the thing in the first place was indeed partly to prepare for the Road of the Titans trial, but mostly it had been a spur-of-the-moment impulse; in truth, he had rather regretted it the moment the hammer fell.

That it now happened to be usable against Wei Zhao counted as a rare instance of putting it to full use. By Bao Zuoliang's reckoning, once this was done he would secretly sell the Lightning-Commanding Banner on the black market—first, to destroy the evidence, and second, to recoup his losses. Killing two birds with one stone.

And now, fine enough: the evidence had been destroyed clean, but the twelve million spirit jade had gone up in smoke along with it. This time Bao Zuoliang had taken a loss of capital and blood!

"Forget it, forget it. Twelve million spirit jade for the life of that fellow surnamed Lin—not too bad a bargain!" Bao Zuoliang could only console himself thus. He had seen that Wei Zhao was already struggling on the brink of death back when it was a ten-fold tribulation; now, with a fifteen-fold one, it would surely be the last straw that broke the camel's back.

If even a mighty one of the Mountain-Opening stage could be smitten dead, why on earth should Wei Zhao, a mere cultivator at the perfection of the Nascent Soul, not die?!

"This… Young Master Bao, maybe we should just go…" Su Kesheng, however, tugged at Bao Zuoliang with a bitter smile, for at this moment he clearly saw a figure slowly walking out of the tribulation node—and who else could it be but Wei Zhao?

*Aiya!* Bao Zuoliang's eyes went wide on the spot, and he could not speak. The look he bent on Wei Zhao was as though he were beholding a ghost. To have weathered even a fifteen-fold tribulation—and judging by his bearing, with ease! What in the hell was this thing, man or ghost?!

As Wei Zhao's gaze swept over, both their hearts leapt into their throats, and they hastily hid themselves thoroughly behind a boulder. Though they had failed to smite Wei Zhao dead, the two of them had after all done a guilty deed; if they met Wei Zhao's eyes, they might well give themselves away.

"Run… run, now…" Bao Zuoliang, rage forgotten, turned and fled, his face ashen with fright. He dared not linger a single step longer in this place. A fifteen-fold tribulation could not kill Wei Zhao—and what was more outrageous, the man had actually succeeded in his Xuan Sheng breakthrough. Facing such a horrifying, appalling freak, was he to stay and wait for death if he did not run now?!

The two cowards grew more frightened the more they thought, and while Wei Zhao had not yet noticed them, they fled helter-skelter in a panic.

In truth, the two of them were overthinking matters entirely. Wei Zhao had never suspected that the pair was behind any of it; he had assumed it was all because he had too many attribute spirit roots—especially his lightning-attribute spirit root, which had become something like a lightning rod, and had thus drawn down tribulation lightning far beyond the usual scale.

Glancing around at the other tribulation nodes, Wei Zhao found it rather strange that, apart from Bao Zuoliang and Su Kesheng, who had left at some unknown time, not a single other person had broken through—Wang Xinyan and the others included.

Could it be that they had been affected by him? Wei Zhao puzzled inwardly. Perhaps because he was this lightning rod, he had drawn all the tribulations of those nearby onto himself?

It must be said that this guess was quite close to the truth—only Wei Zhao's lightning rod was not inborn but man-made, manipulated from behind by those two cowards.

By now there were hardly any onlookers left; the vast majority had been frightened away, and the few who remained were the bold-hearted. Yet even they, seeing Wei Zhao emerge, showed not the slightest inclination to come nearer.

After all, Wei Zhao's strength was simply too great. Back at the perfection of the Nascent Soul he had already been comparable to the mid Xuan Sheng stage; now that he was a cultivator of the early Xuan Sheng stage, would he not have become an invincible existence among the Xuan Sheng stage?