Chapter 4524 — Retreat Is the Best Policy
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
At the same instant, a mighty divine sense like a heaven-spanning blazing wave swept abruptly over Wei Zhao's head. Wei Zhao reckoned his own strength was no longer to be counted weak, yet beside the master of this divine sense he was at most a single grain of sand, while the other was at the very least a vast and boundless sea of dunes—there was no comparison between them at all.
In that instant the shock that rose in Wei Zhao's heart was even more stunning and terrifying than when he had faced the Xishan Old Sect, that devil-cultivator titan of the Mountain-Opening stage. That feeling of every hair on his body standing on end in an instant once again made Wei Zhao taste deeply what it meant to be utterly beyond reach, to look up and be awed.
"This is..." Wei Zhao could not help drawing a sharp breath, and cautiously communed with Ghost Thing in his mind through divine sense.
Ghost Thing was silent for a moment, then slowly uttered two words in a tone of the utmost complexity: "Vermilion Bird."
Wei Zhao fell silent at once. No wonder it was so terrifying and dreadful; no wonder a single casual wisp of divine sense was far more shocking than the Xishan Old Sect's—so it was a top-ranked elder of the spirit-beast clan!
No wonder a single divine sense alone was so scorching and fearsome that even Wei Zhao, long accustomed to wielding wild fire, could scarcely withstand it—so it was Vermilion Bird, that very ancestor of all fire-players.
Apart from the former king of the spirit beasts, top-ranked elders like Vermilion Bird were the peak existences of the spirit-beast clan. And the clan had always strictly upheld the natural law of the strong devouring the weak; that a top-ranked elder could overawe so many mighty spirit beasts spoke volumes of how fearsome his strength must be.
Yet Wei Zhao then reflected: Ghost Thing, now cooped up within the jade pendant's space, had once been an existence of the same rank as Vermilion Bird, and their strength must naturally have been much the same.
Though he had long known that Ghost Thing was a top-ranked elder of the spirit-beast clan, Wei Zhao had in truth never had any clear measure of just how strong Ghost Thing had been in his prime, and had privately made all sorts of guesses by the tiers of human cultivators—Nascent Soul stage, Mystic Ascension stage, Mountain-Opening stage, all had been conjectured; back in the mundane world he had once absurdly taken him for a Heaven-rank grand perfection... and now at last he had some sense of it.
At the same time, Wei Zhao broke out in a cold sweat without meaning to. Thank heavens that when he first met Ghost Thing in the mundane world, the thing was already a battered, broken primordial spirit—otherwise, had it retained even a ten-thousandth of its strength, he would not have known how he died...
Silent for a long while, his heart still quailing, Wei Zhao at last managed to collect himself and asked, "Senior, are we still leaving or not?"
Both being top-ranked elders of the spirit-beast clan, Ghost Thing and this Vermilion Bird were plainly acquainted—only whether that acquaintance was good or ill, friend or foe, Ghost Thing alone could know.
"Leaving or not?" Ghost Thing gave a laugh half self-mocking, half explanatory: "Let me put it to you this way—had this been back in my heyday, Vermilion Bird would have had to call me elder brother. But if he were to discover me in my present state, he would stop at nothing to scatter my soul and snuff out my spirit—and you, lad, would be burned to ashes along with me."
"Uh... then we had best make haste and retreat—retreat is the best policy..." Wei Zhao shrank his neck and at once made to back away. Against the Xishan Old Sect's pursuit he had at least been able to bluff and bluster with Ghost Thing's aid and frighten him off, but once it came to Vermilion Bird, there could be no shred of luck. R1152