護花近衛 - 第3677章 蕭喬遇襲 - 清風書屋

There were only two possibilities for Xiao Che and Qiao Hongcai's present circumstances: either all their herbs had been seized, or the herbs were still in their hands and they were still running.

Either way, before noon tomorrow, the two of them and Meng Zhou's lot would all have to be back at the Rear Mountain Hall—otherwise, as that bald elder of the Rear Mountain Hall had said, whoever failed to make it would meet an exceedingly ugly death!

That made things simple. Wei Zhao need only hold the only road ahead of everyone else. Whether he ran into Xiao Che and Qiao Hongcai first or Meng Zhou's crew first, the problem would be solved either way.

With enough strength at one's command, even the knottiest problem could be cut clean through.

No sooner thought than done. Seeing the sky darken further by the moment, Wei Zhao stowed the Heavenly Thunder Pig into his jade pendant's space and set off at once.

As has been said before, here in the rear mountain—even in this outermost region, the least dangerous of all, and even for a capable hand like Wei Zhao at the early Foundation Establishment stage—moving about at night was perilous in the extreme.

For not only was one's perception dulled and one apt to lose one's way, but one was also liable to blunder into powerful spirit beasts never seen by day. It was in their nature, after all: many spirit beasts emerged only at night to hunt and forage.

To put it simply: against the same early-Foundation-Establishment spirit beast, if Wei Zhao stood a fifty-fifty chance by daylight, then by night he might not even have three chances in ten.

However mighty a cultivator grew, one thing could never be changed from first to last: humans are not nocturnal creatures. Night has always stood on the side against humanity.

Fortunately, the moonlight tonight was passably bright, so Wei Zhao was at least not in danger of losing his way midway.

He raced on without pause, brushing past several powerful spirit beasts along the way—among them even a dangerous creature to rival the Nine-Tailed Cloud-Piercing Leopard—but in the end he slipped past them all, each narrow escape ending in safety.

Of course, it would have been no great matter even had he failed to avoid them. After all, the great spirit-beast deity Ghost Thing still kept watch within the jade pendant's space—scaring off a few early-Foundation-Establishment beasts would have been the work of a moment.

A full night of hard running, and at last, as the sky began to brighten, Wei Zhao reached his destination.

He now stood less than twenty li from the Rear Mountain Hall, in a rare stretch of open ground on the outer fringe of the rear mountain. The reason was simple: an ancient tree some thirty zhang tall grew here.

Amid the dense forest all around, where the tallest trees reached barely ten zhang, this ancient giant stood out like a crane among chickens. Its vast canopy blocked out great swaths of sunlight, and naturally nothing could grow beneath it, which left the ground about it rather open.

Standing atop the canopy, the superb vantage meant he could monitor everything around him perfectly—and this spot happened to lie on one of the only roads back to the Rear Mountain Hall. What the other new disciples of the Skyward Pavilion and the Mystic Mechanism Pavilion were up to, Wei Zhao had no way to know, but at least the Qingyun Pavilion newcomers sent out in this direction would not be slipping past under his nose.

From the height where Wei Zhao stood, scanning downward, one or two people moving stealthily might still possibly slip by unnoticed—but if Meng Zhou's lot came as a group, there was no chance of that whatsoever.

After keeping watch for a little under half an hour, sure enough, just as Wei Zhao had expected, a dense stir of rustling arose not far below, startling whole flocks of small birds into the air.

Someone was approaching fast—and not a few of them!