Chapter 3665 — The Thunder Pig Awakens!
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
Just then, a muffled peal of thunder rolled across the sky; the clouds darkened, the wind rose in a frenzy, and in the blink of an eye countless columns of rain came lashing down, each one as thick as a thumb, stinging sharply where they struck his face. The downpour had come out of nowhere!
He had barely any familiarity with the surrounding terrain to begin with, and the storm crushed visibility and spiritual perception to the barest minimum. To keep moving outside at a time like this would be little short of courting death.
Even at the early Foundation Establishment cultivation that Wei Zhao possessed, he had no choice but to find shelter from the rain. This was a thundershower, after all—quick to come, quick to go—so it should not cost him too much time.
Slipping swiftly down from the treetop, Wei Zhao had meant only to find a dense canopy to shelter beneath, but a glance caught in passing revealed something unexpected on a broad trunk: a hollow.
After a brief inspection to confirm that no powerful spirit beast's aura lingered within, Wei Zhao ducked straight inside. Compared with the howling wind and driving rain outside, a dry, comfortable tree hollow was an irresistible lure just then—no exception for Wei Zhao.
To his surprise, the hollow was quite spacious—empty and open, roughly twenty square meters to the eye, with no obvious marks of chiseling. It looked like a naturally formed cavity.
He swept his gaze around the place. When his eyes fell upon a pile of something in one corner, his expression abruptly sharpened and his heart clenched.
The pile was a heap of bones! Four or five skeletons in all, by the look of them—and these were no wild beast's remains, but the bones of real human beings!
A chill of horror seized him in that instant.
Human traces in a tree hollow were hardly strange. This was the outer reaches of the back mountain, where cultivators came and went every year. But human bones—four or five skeletons heaped together—that was enough to shake anyone!
Could cultivators have slaughtered one another and then piled the corpses here? Wei Zhao could not help but wonder.
Doubling his vigilance toward everything outside, Wei Zhao examined the skeletons closely and found that every single bone bore deep, jagged tooth marks. The answer all but leaped out at him then: these people had not died at human hands—they had become the rations of some powerful spirit beast!
That conclusion instantly broke him out in a cold sweat.
These people had most likely come here for the same reason he had—to shelter from the rain, or simply to find a place to rest and recover. And in the end, every one of them had become the rations of some powerful spirit beast. What did that mean?
It meant that Wei Zhao had now trodden in their footsteps, and had very likely already been marked by that powerful spirit beast lurking out of sight!
From first to last, this tree hollow had never been a safe harbor. It was a living, breathing trap—one that had left many a cultivator dead with no place even to be buried!
The strong prey on the weak! Those four words flashed through Wei Zhao's mind. In the world beyond the back mountain, all manner of rules held sway; man and man, even man and spirit beast, could dwell in peace. But here, none of those rules applied at all.
Here there were only two identities: you were either the predator or the prey.
He still had no idea what that spirit beast looked like, but Wei Zhao knew that he had already become its prey—prey that had blundered into its trap.
With no idea at all of the enemy's true nature, staying here any longer would most likely mean sitting and waiting for death. So Wei Zhao made his choice at once: of all the thirty-six stratagems, flight was the best. Even if he really had been marked and could not withdraw unscathed, at least he could choose another battleground—there was no need to fight on the enemy's home ground!