Chapter 4909 — Enemies Everywhere

Boom! A deafening blast, and the deep-blue thunderbolt met the violet lightning head-on. An unthinkably thick arc of electricity burst outward in every direction—a magnificent spectacle of lightning blooming out of thin air.

The flash of inspiration did not free Wei Zhao from his predicament, but to his surprise it did neutralize a portion of the violet lightning. At the same time, his body—already pushed to its limit—was granted a moment to breathe, leaving at least some room to refine the rest of that violet lightning.

"Hah… hah…" Drenched in sweat, Wei Zhao knelt half-collapsed on the ground, wheezing like a bellows. Scorch marks covered him from head to toe, though thankfully none were fatal. It was sheer luck that he had survived this time.

"Heh, you really are a bold one, boy—coming up with a trick like that. Weren't you afraid your thunderbolt might get assimilated by the violet lightning and turn on you instead?" This time even Ghost Thing was shaken.

Lightning bolts attract one another. Wei Zhao's strike had been an overachieving one, but it was still far weaker than the violet lightning—assimilation was only natural. Judging by the results, though, Wei Zhao had clearly won his gamble.

"In a panic like that, who has time to think it through…" Wei Zhao felt a chill of hindsight at the very possibility, but a moment's thought let him guess the reason. "Looks like my guess was right—there's another master behind this violet lightning!" he said with relief.

"What do you mean?" Ghost Thing asked, baffled.

"If this were a heavenly thunderbolt without any will of its own, then my strike really might have been assimilated—my bit of intent is nothing before the might of heaven and earth. But if it isn't heavenly thunder, if it's just a bolt carrying the will of some being, then we each answer to our own master, and cancelling each other out makes perfect sense." Wei Zhao reasoned.

"Fair enough, but that's still just your speculation—mostly it was a gamble with your life. Your guts really are frightening, boy," Ghost Thing said with a sigh.

"What choice do I have? If I don't gamble now, I might never get another chance to," Wei Zhao said with a bitter smile.

"Good thing you won your gamble, boy. Otherwise I'd have been buried along with you—now that would've been a real loss. Tsk, tsk, one corpse, two lives!" Ghost Thing said with a deliberately aggrieved pout.

"By the way, is that even how 'one corpse, two lives' is used…" Wei Zhao was caught between laughter and tears. This thing had been the one egging him into this place, and now it had the nerve to complain—he truly didn't know what to say.

Still, he knew Ghost Thing was only joking. Back in the day, this thing had given up a grand position as an elder of the Azure Dragon Sect, schemed his way into the mortal realm, and ended up in this sorry state—yet not once had Wei Zhao heard him utter the word "regret."

Put plainly, Ghost Thing was simply one of those free-spirited, willful souls who dared do anything. As for regret? That word probably didn't even exist in his dictionary.

As the two spoke, the vast resentment around them suddenly thickened. If a moment ago it had merely been grievance and fury, it now felt like an out-and-out malevolent curse.

Wei Zhao was startled. He truly had never imagined that after all his suffering to withstand two lightning bolts, not only had the crisis not passed—by the look of it, it had only just begun. When had he become so widely hated?

"You've always been a magnet for hatred, boy—enemies everywhere you go, everyone coming after you. Aren't you used to it by now?" Ghost Thing seized the moment to snipe.

"Senior, could we be serious for a moment? From the look of things, more lightning is coming—and stronger than the last two. If I can't hold out, we're really done for in this godforsaken place," Wei Zhao said with a helpless smile.

"Relax, didn't you already find a way to handle it? I believe in you—you won't die!" Ghost Thing chuckled carelessly. His faith in Wei Zhao exceeded Wei Zhao's own; even now, he still had the leisure to joke.

Wei Zhao shook his head wordlessly. The desperate measure he had improvised had indeed worked, but who knew how strong the next bolt would be? What if even this wasn't enough?

In any case, they absolutely could not stay here any longer. Even if he had to measure the ground with his own feet, he had to find the formation's core and a way out as quickly as possible—otherwise today would end badly indeed.

Yet within moments, another bolt came crashing down from above, the resentment around it carrying what seemed a cruel delight. As Wei Zhao had expected, this one was stronger still—its color already trending toward deep violet.

Once it turned fully deep violet, it would be comparable in power to the giant electric eel—a terrifying killing move that could slay a Rift-Sea cultivator in a single ambush. A hundred Wei Zhaos couldn't withstand that.

This time Wei Zhao was prepared. The instant the jade pendant warned him, he unhesitatingly poured out every scrap of lightning power stored within him. A tremendously powerful deep-blue thunderbolt tore through the air first, meeting the violet lightning head-on!

Wei Zhao's heart was in his throat. Because this strike drew entirely on the surplus lightning power stockpiled from last time, its intensity far exceeded his own cultivation—stronger even than an ordinary lightning tribulation, verging on the scale of a tenfold tribulation.

A while ago, Wei Zhao would have sworn on his life that he could never unleash such a powerful thunderbolt—yet now he could take no joy in it. Even a true tenfold tribulation was still far, far weaker than the violet lightning overhead; how much it could offset was anyone's guess.

Sure enough, when his deep-blue thunderbolt met the violet lightning, it barely threw off a few sparks before being snuffed out clean in the blink of an eye—and then Wei Zhao began his third round of violent convulsions.

The pain was far less than before, but Wei Zhao's heart was sinking by the moment, for this was no good news at all. Pain is the body's most important self-protection mechanism; once the body goes completely numb, it means its functions have given up resisting entirely—in short, there was no saving him.

Of course Wei Zhao would not sit and wait for death. The only thing he could do now was to keep discharging, again and again, every scrap of lightning power he had most recently refined within his body!