Chapter 4544 — The Five Poisons Swamp
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 3
"That'll work? Isn't it certain death?" Wei Zhao was both astonished and doubtful. When the Five Poisons Swamp had come up before, even the Ghost Thing had spoken of it in a tone thick with lingering fear, swearing up and down that it would leave even the Old Sect of the Western Hills at his wit's end—and now he was telling him to leap into it with the spirit bird? Was he tired of living and seeking his own death?
If he was doomed either way, he might as well have stayed and fought the Old Sect of the Western Hills to the bitter end. Why go to the trouble of fleeing all the way here just to pick himself such a bizarre graveyard? It was utterly pointless—better to have died at sea, at least that would have been cleaner.
"You can rest easy on that score. For anyone else it would be certain death, but you, lad, will most likely survive," the Ghost Thing chuckled.
"Senior, don't joke with me. If the Five Poisons Swamp can leave even a mountain-opening stage heretic cultivator helpless, how could I possibly have the ability to leap in and come out alive..." Wei Zhao said with a bitter smile. He had always been confident in himself, but he had never been one to be overconfident—this sort of thing simply didn't add up no matter how he thought about it.
"If you die, I'm bound to suffer right along with you. Do you think I'd joke about something like that?" Though the Ghost Thing had no physical form, he managed to convey a curling of the lip purely through his tone: "Think back to when Cloud Terrace Isle was opened—you survived even the crushing pressure of that five-element attack. And now you've already reached the peak of the mid Golden Core stage. Your strength is far beyond what it once was—how could you possibly perish in a paltry Five Poisons Swamp?"
"That's right!" Wei Zhao's eyes lit up at once. The terror of the Five Poisons Swamp lay in the five elements destroying one another, the five elements of heaven and earth cycling endlessly without rest—even the strongest expert could not withstand it. But he was different. He himself was of the five-element attribute. What did he have to fear from a five-element attack?
The Old Sect of the Western Hills was already close enough to see. Within the black mist, that hideous bone claw emerged once more, and the dense, almost materialized malevolence came pressing down on him from all sides. Wei Zhao hesitated no longer. He hurriedly did as the Ghost Thing had instructed, channeling his true qi with all his might to shield himself and the spirit bird, and without another word plunged with a splash into the Five Poisons Swamp.
Glub! Glub! Glub!
Watching Wei Zhao and the spirit bird vanish in an instant into the Five Poisons Swamp, leaving behind only a string of horrifying bubbles, the Old Sect of the Western Hills was struck dumb. He had been flying too fast, chasing too fiercely, and nearly failed to brake in time before plunging in after them—thankfully, at the critical moment, a full burst of true qi barely brought him to a halt.
Still, the Old Sect of the Western Hills had been lucky enough not to tumble into the Five Poisons Swamp himself, but the hideous bone claw he had condensed could not be pulled back in time, and it slashed almost flush against Wei Zhao's back straight into the mire.
CHI! An ear-piercing shriek split the sky in an instant, shattering the calm for hundreds of miles around. At the same moment, the multicolored mud that had swallowed the bone claw burst apart with a bang, and the immense power contained within it was enough to drain the color from the whole of heaven and earth.
That bone claw, which had not so much as chipped when facing Wei Zhao's top-grade bomb, crumbled in the wake of that single bang upon touching the mud—like weathered rock, it shattered with a clatter into fragments, and was promptly devoured by the Five Poisons Swamp below, not a scrap of bone left behind.