Chapter 2227 — Being Hosted
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
The whole way there, he had been healing himself on the Great Fire Lion's back, so by now his injuries were already half mended.
"Thank you all!" Wei Zhao said with heartfelt gratitude.
Had the Great and Little Fire Lions not appeared so suddenly, Wei Zhao truly would not have known what to do. This confrontation had been more than a little risky!
Still, it was not that Wei Zhao lacked patience. The spirit beast's essence core had merely been the fuse; judging by Tagan Long's attitude toward Sun Jingyan, a clash between the two had been inevitable sooner or later. And once Tagan Long went back and brought stronger experts down on him, it was better to take the risk now.
"No need for thanks. You are the savior of my Fire Lion clan — you saved the Little Fire Lion, and for that you suffered an attack from the Tagan family. It is we, the Fire Lion clan, who owe you!" The Great Fire Lion spoke, and what stunned Wei Zhao was that it actually understood human speech and could speak it!
When that voice sounded, Wei Zhao was astonished beyond words, and beside him Sun Jingyan and the Thunder Pig were also staring wide-eyed, hardly able to believe it.
The Thunder Pig could write to communicate, which was already marvelous enough, but who would have thought the Great Fire Lion could actually speak human language? That felt even more like a dream.
"Some ancient spirit beasts that have stepped into the Heaven Rank have the aptitude to speak human tongue. There is nothing strange about it," the Great Fire Lion said with a shake of its head, seeing the amazement on Wei Zhao and the others' faces. "This little thing beside you is quite formidable too. When it reaches Heaven Rank strength, it should be able to speak as well."
Hearing the Great Fire Lion's explanation, Wei Zhao finally understood. He had never expected the Great Fire Lion to be a Heaven Rank spirit beast — he had overlooked that before.
"You are a Heaven Rank spirit beast? Then you must be able to contend with Heaven Rank experts?" Wei Zhao looked at the Great Fire Lion in surprise.
"It cannot be put quite that way. Spirit beasts do, to some extent, stand ahead of human cultivators, but as the ranks climb higher, that advantage shrinks ever smaller," the Great Fire Lion explained. "Take us attacking-type spirit beasts: at Yellow Rank we can already hold our own against early Heaven Rank experts, but by the time we reach early Heaven Rank ourselves, we can only contend with mid-to-late Heaven Rank experts. And if both are at the peak of late Heaven Rank, who wins and who loses is anyone's guess."
"Oh? There is such a theory?" Wei Zhao was greatly surprised to hear it.
"Naturally. It is much like the distinction between external-school and internal-school cultivators among you humans. Before the peak of late Heaven Rank, internal-school cultivators always hold the advantage, always a step ahead of external-school cultivators of the same rank. But once the peak of late Heaven Rank is reached, many external-school cultivators gain the upper hand!" The Great Fire Lion nodded and went on: "Take skills like Iron Fist or the Golden Bell Shield — if cultivated to the very peak of late Heaven Rank, to the utmost extreme, then a Golden Bell Shield cultivator, it may be said, cannot be matched by any internal-school expert at the peak of late Heaven Rank, because no one can kill him!"
"So formidable!" Wei Zhao was dumbfounded. He had never imagined that the Golden Bell Sect and the like might hold the potential to stand at the very summit of the martial world.