Chapter 4572 — Staying On
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
"Up there, no. But down here, that's another matter." The Five-Bane Dragon shook its head.
"Why?" Wei Zhao was slightly startled.
"Because up there is spirit-beast clan territory—you could call it the heart of the Southern Island." The Five-Bane Dragon spoke. It had never gone up through that exit; more precisely, it had not taken a single step outside since being teleported here. But its master, the Five-Venom Flood Dragon, had spoken of these things often enough while alive, and besides, it had inherited the Five-Venom Flood Dragon's full strength—which involved the transmission of a primordial spirit, so many of the Five-Venom Flood Dragon's memories had been passed down to it as well.
"Oh, wonderful... the heart of the Southern Island... how am I supposed to dare go up there..." Wei Zhao could not help but fall speechless, pressing a hand to his forehead. The heart of the Southern Island was forbidden ground to human cultivators to begin with, and he had already drawn Vermilion Bird's attention before. To pop out now from such a suspicious place would be courting death!
In the Five-Venom Swamp before, the location had been so far out on the margins that perhaps no spirit beast bothered to guard it, but this side was another matter entirely. This was the spirit-beast clan's heartland on the Southern Island; stationing a few powerful spirit beasts to watch it was nothing more than a casual afterthought. Given the sheer pigheadedness Vermilion Bird had displayed before—practically a carbon copy of the West Mountain Old Sect—unless it saw a corpse with its own eyes, it would not give up easily no matter how much time passed.
"Exactly. You can't go back to the Southern Island now even if it kills you. Facing that devil cultivator of the West Mountain Old Sect, you might still have a thread of a chance, but if Vermilion Bird catches sight of you again in a place like the Southern Island's heartland, you won't even know how you died!" The Ghost Thing likewise did not approve of Wei Zhao taking this exit. It knew well how suspicious Vermilion Bird's nature was. If Wei Zhao burst out through such a suspicious exit, then without a second word he would be seized and his primordial spirit extracted—there was no second possibility.
"Why is that? You're a human cultivator appearing in the Southern Island's heartland—dangerous, certainly, but with your strength and Senior Ghost's protection, withdrawing unscathed shouldn't be too hard, should it? The surveillance formation won't react much to you. As long as you aren't caught red-handed by the guarding spirit beasts the moment you come out, there shouldn't be much of a problem, right?" The Five-Bane Dragon could not help but find it strange.
"There's something you don't know. Last time, after the West Mountain Old Sect hunted me and I fled into the Southern Island, I stumbled by pure chance into the spirit-beast assembly that Vermilion Bird and the others were holding—and I was publicly suspected right there. I nearly couldn't get away. In the end I barely escaped by pretending I needed to relieve myself. I'd say I'm already on the spirit-beast clan's wanted list by now. If I show up in the Southern Island's heartland again, it's walking straight into the net." Wei Zhao could only smile bitterly.
Originally he had been nothing but an insignificant nobody. Normally, even if he were discovered to be a human cultivator, he would simply have fled and that would have been the end of it—hardly worth a figure like Vermilion Bird making such a fuss. But who could help it that he had happened to overhear Vermilion Bird and the others discussing their grand scheme? If word of that leaked out in advance, it could easily ruin everything—might even cut the plan short halfway through. If Wei Zhao himself were in Vermilion Bird's position, he too would have put himself on the wanted list without hesitation, silencing him for good.