Chapter 4543 — A Chase and a Flight
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
With a piercing shriek that tore through the air, the bone claw instantly traced a lightning-bright arc, hurtling straight for the crown of Wei Zhao's head with a speed no eye could follow, as though determined to crush it to pieces in a single grasp.
Before the claw had even arrived, the dreadful malevolence radiating from it had already overwhelmed him; the spirit bird beneath him could not so much as stir its wings, and bird and rider alike plunged straight downward.
"Detonate!" Fortunately, Wei Zhao had been ready for exactly this. In that sliver of an instant, the top-grade bomb he had been hurriedly assembling all this while flew from his hand, meeting the hideous bone claw above him dead-on.
BOOM! A thunderous blast rang out across the whole of the Weihu Sea in an instant; tidal waves surged up, the skies and waters changed color, and every soul in Weihu City turned pale with shock. The folk of Mocheng were already well acquainted with that devastating roar—but this was their first time living through it.
At the edge of the shockwave, the spirit bird burst out with Wei Zhao, reeling and staggering, beating its wings frantically as it fled at top speed. At the heart of the blast, the bone claw—though it had taken a vicious hit with no chance to brace—merely paused in its motion. It was not so much as scratched.
"Heh heh, and you thought a little piddling strength like that could ambush this Patriarch? What a pipe dream!" The Old Sect of the Western Hills sneered as he drew the bone claw back. Wei Zhao's top-grade bomb was enough to kill a high-tier Nascent Soul expert outright—even a Xuan Ascension cultivator caught off guard would come away black and blue. But to take on him, the Old Sect of the Western Hills? He was still a long, long way off.
Listening to that jeering laughter behind him, Wei Zhao felt a chill creep into his heart. The assembly time this round had been short, true, but the top-grade bomb was, after all, his final killing move—even the Furious Flame Thousand Bursts Fist could not match its power. And yet even that had done nothing at all against the Old Sect of the Western Hills.
It wasn't that Wei Zhao had mistimed his strike; his strongest killing move simply had not been able to scratch his foe in the slightest. It had barely interrupted the man's attack—that was all. The gulf between them was enough to drive a person to despairing silence.
"Run, and run fast. If that crooked, heretical bastard catches up to you again before you reach the Five Venoms Marsh, you're a dead man, kid," the Ghost Thing urged in his mind.
"You don't say..." Wei Zhao shook his head again and again with a bitter smile. He needed no urging to flee for the Southern Island for all he was worth—and this time was far more dangerous than the last. Before, the Old Sect of the Western Hills had still wanted to use him to refine a trump-card puppet, and so dared not lightly harm his flesh. Now there was no such scruple. The man had opened with a killing move.
The top-grade bomb might just barely block one strike, but a second was utterly out of the question. And he knew well enough that his enemy could lock onto him with his divine sense and appear at his heels with a mere turn of thought. To think of shaking him off on the spirit bird's speed alone—how could that possibly work?
"Rest easy. So long as your absolute speed can outstrip that crooked, heretical bastard, you needn't fear him dropping in on you out of nowhere. He can no longer lock onto you with his divine sense," the Ghost Thing said with a sudden laugh.
"Huh? But I haven't smeared on any marsh mud?" Wei Zhao blinked.