Chapter 4552 — The Effect Is Obvious
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
The Five-Element Killing Qi generates and restrains itself in turn—five fundamental elemental killing auras blended into a single whole. That is by no means as simple as one plus one. Take the aftershock that had just washed over Wei Zhao: had any one of those elemental auras been singled out, even with no protection at all, his present physical constitution would have been more than enough to shrug it off. It could not have harmed a single hair on him—utterly negligible.
But now, with all five fused into the Five-Element Killing Qi, its power had multiplied not a thousandfold but ten thousandfold. Even though Wei Zhao had been extremely cautious, that one brush nearly finished him—he had almost pitched headlong off the platform and only caught himself in time, jamming his hands down and gritting his teeth until he rode it out.
"Being carved to pieces by ten thousand knives"—before this, Wei Zhao had only ever said such a thing in passing. This time he truly experienced it. Even with his formidable body and his iron resolve, without absolute determination he could never have endured it. Lacking that resolve, no amount of strength would have been enough.
The time he spent caught in the Five-Element Killing Qi was in truth only a fleeting instant—less than the blink of an eye. Yet to Wei Zhao's senses that instant stretched endlessly. Men speak of a day feeling like a year; here, his body racked as though by blades, it was truly a second feeling like a year. In that brief moment, Wei Zhao was soaked through as if he had just bathed, every inch of him from head to toe drenched in his own cold sweat.
"Hoo…" Having finally survived his first intimate encounter with the Five-Element Killing Qi, Wei Zhao exhaled a long, turbid breath like a man spared from death. Even the pressure the Old Sect of the Western Hills had brought to bear on him had not been this much. Shaking his head with a bitter smile, he said, "The Five-Element Killing Qi really is terrifying. To think there could be such a dreadful thing under heaven—I've certainly learned something today."
"Count yourself lucky, kid. The power of the Five-Element Killing Qi is something no human or spirit beast can withstand. Any other expert—never mind the mere Golden Core stage, even a Nascent Soul cultivator—would have been dead beyond any doubt from just that one brush. It is only a freak like you, with a five-element spiritual root constitution, who could take it head-on and come away with all limbs intact." Ghost Thing's tone actually carried a note of envy.
Even in his former days at full power, he would never have dared to use the Five-Element Killing Qi to temper himself the way Wei Zhao just had—it was unthinkable. Only a freak like Wei Zhao could possess such opportunity and such fortune.
Understand this: the fiercer the tempering, the faster the improvement—an eternal truth. The premise, of course, is surviving it. Otherwise it is simply seeking one's own death.
"If the Five-Element Killing Qi is that terrifying, Senior, why didn't you say so earlier? Good thing I was cautious and didn't jump straight in. I only caught that insignificant little aftershock—if the Five-Element Killing Qi had struck me directly, I'd have been dead for certain." Wei Zhao stuck out his tongue, still shaken.
That was the truth. The experience just now had made it clear to him: though his unique five-element spiritual root constitution allowed him to cultivate by means of the Five-Element Killing Qi, to fully withstand it was pure fantasy. At most, his capacity to endure was far greater than that of other cultivators.