Chapter 4300 — The Opening of the Mountain
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
Among the thirty-odd people on the platform, the Nascent Soul cultivators were merely the lowest tier. The Xuan Ascension cultivators, who stood above even the Nascent Soul stage, were not a few in number!
And these people came from a single academy. Eastern Continent was hailed as the strongest power on Cloud-Tier Island, and the name was well deserved indeed—truly a place where dragons lurked and tigers crouched.
Wei Zhao had been on Cloud-Tier Island for over a year and had seen no small number of top-tier cultivators, yet compared with these Xuan Ascension experts on the platform, there was still a considerable gap. Among all the people he had known or come into contact with, those truly able to rank alongside them—or rather, to hold a steady upper hand over them—numbered at most two and a half.
One was Di Xingdao. Though his nominal strength was only the peak great-perfection of the late Nascent Soul stage, he was a freak like Wei Zhao himself, one who could casually slaughter opponents above his level. Not long after recovering from his injuries, he had effortlessly defeated the early Xuan Ascension Nan Tian Liuguang with a single move—he could not be measured by common sense. Wei Zhao reckoned that even among Xuan Ascension experts, he must be a rather formidable presence.
Another was Shangguan Tianxia, the pavilion master of Chongtian Pavilion. Though Wei Zhao had never seen this top-tier magnate of the Northern Island's Three-Tier Pavilion make a move—had never even seen him unleash his aura—his intuition told him that with Shangguan Tianxia's strength, even on that platform he would surely rank among the very best.
As for the remaining half, that was the ghostly thing now lodged within the jade pendant's space. Wei Zhao had never seen its strength either, but it was, after all, a top elder of the spirit beast clan, a pillar-like existence among them; at its peak it should be no inferior to these people. Otherwise, if even it could not match them, the spirit beast clan would long ago have been wiped out by human forces rather than surviving to this day.
Only, the ghostly thing was now nothing but a broken remnant of a primordial spirit. So no matter how extraordinary it had once been, at present it could at most count as half.
Apart from these two and a half, among all the people Wei Zhao knew there was no one else who could rival these Xuan Ascension experts. After all, any Xuan Ascension expert, even placed on the Central Island, would already rank as a top-tier master—hardly common goods to be found on every street corner.
And now, on the platform alone, there were no fewer than seven Xuan Ascension experts. Yet even that was not the most outrageous part. What truly made Wei Zhao's eyelids twitch was the three seated dead center, whose auras were far more vast and profound than those of the entire crowd of Xuan Ascension experts!
In other words, these three were transcendent beings standing above the Xuan Ascension stage—and as for what realm lay beyond Xuan Ascension, Wei Zhao had never even heard tell of it.
Wei Zhao watched in secret alarm. No wonder so many people yearned for Eastern Continent and longed to be chosen by this Morning Star Yellow-Tier Cultivator Academy. With top-tier experts above the Xuan Ascension stage holding court here, it was nothing short of a living signboard.
Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao exchanged a glance. There was no way forward, so they could only follow the crowd's unwritten rule and sit down behind everyone else. There was nowhere else to go at the moment anyway; they might as well join the spectacle, and listen to the chatter around them while they were at it—consider it a broadening of horizons.
"Dean Ling Yuanqing actually came in person this year?" Sure enough, the two had barely sat down when a man in a yellow hat in the front row exclaimed in disbelief.