Chapter 11652 — My Disciple Never Imagined

"After today, the name of the Prince of Qi's Estate is to be struck from the Inner Royal Court for good!"

"Otherwise, how is our young junior brother ever to rest easy beneath the Nine Springs?"

Zhang Tailing sighed, at a loss for words, then said helplessly, "But in the state they're in now, even I as your master can't very well strike at them directly—unless you're willing to wait it out, to wait until they've fought to a decision."

He did not go on to say the rest.

In truth, if it really did come to that, no one could say for certain how things would turn out.

It would be fine if Wei Zhao emerged the victor—but if it was the Three Ancestors of the Prince of Qi's Estate, then afterward it would surely come to a fight to the death with no survivors. Even with his strength as a peak early-stage Heaven-Rank Venerable, facing three ancestral elders of the Prince of Qi's Estate resolved to die together, he would find it hard to walk away unscathed.

Li Hongshou, however, grinned wide. "Master, you worry too much. Your disciple has long been prepared."

With that, she drew from her bosom an ancient bronze mirror, its surface so eaten with rust that its original appearance was all but invisible.

The one thing certain was that this bronze mirror must be unimaginably ancient.

Zhang Tailing frowned slightly.

The bronze mirror faintly gave off an aura of extreme ill omen.

But before he could open his mouth to stop her, Li Hongshou had already bitten open her fingertip in her impatience and smeared her fresh blood across it in a circle.

The next second, the ancient bronze mirror began to emit a chilling green ghost-light.

Under its projection, a spatial gate slowly opened above the crowd.

Sensing the extreme danger radiating from that spatial gate, Zhang Tailing's eyelids twitched wildly, and he hurried to stop her. "Disciple—no!"

Unfortunately, it was already too late.

A gaunt hand reached out from the spatial gate, followed by a long arm covered in red hair, until at last a three-meter-tall crimson ape slowly came into everyone's view.

The supreme aura it gave off set even Wei Zhao's heart pounding in fright.

Not even a quasi-god powerhouse had ever filled him with such instinctive tension and dread.

Once it appeared, the crimson ape made no movement at all, standing rooted to the spot as though petrified.

No one understood why.

But from the ill-omened aura that clung to it, even a fool could sense that this thing was dangerous in the extreme.

In Wei Zhao's mind, Shi Wushuang's earlier words suddenly came rushing back.

Shi Wushuang had once told him that the Heavenly Dao Academy's concentration of resources on cultivating so many elite experts had, at its core, one purpose: to resist the outlander fiends.

Shi Wushuang had never spoken of the fiends in any concrete detail, but the crimson ape before his eyes made Wei Zhao instinctively certain that this was one of the outlander fiends!

Zhang Tailing struck without warning.

A bolt of incomparably pure lightning-attribute power took the form of a thunderbolt and crashed straight down upon the crimson ape's head.

Wei Zhao's eyelid twitched. Li Hongshou's master was truly no ordinary figure—quite apart from anything else, this one thunderbolt alone was enough to leave the vast majority of experts looking on hopelessly.

Unless one were inside the New World, even a thunder-play expert like himself would find it hard to compare.

Yet the crimson ape did not stir in the slightest, and was wholly unharmed.

"..."

Zhang Tailing was stunned for a moment.

His judgment matched Wei Zhao's—he was certain this crimson ape was an outlander fiend, and his thunderbolts had always been devastatingly effective against fiends and the like.

Normally, even if he could not finish it in a single blow, surely he ought at least to be able to break its skin?

But reality was simply that absurd.

No matter how he varied his attacks, the crimson ape showed not the slightest reaction, and remained utterly unharmed throughout.

Wei Zhao and the others all watched with something close to stupefaction.

They could sense the intensity of Zhang Tailing's attacks perfectly clearly—were any of them to take such a blow, they would be maimed if not killed outright—yet against this crimson ape it had no effect whatsoever.

The word for it was simply: invincible!

The one bit of good news was that for reasons unknown the crimson ape stayed utterly motionless, and made no move to invisibly corrode its surroundings. So far, apart from being a little chilling, it was practically harmless to man and beast alike.

Just as everyone was puzzling over this, another crimson ape dropped down from the spatial gate.

Its condition was identical to the first.

Looking at the two crimson apes frozen in stone and striking poses, everyone was utterly dumbfounded.

The crux of it was that the thing would not move, and no attack could break through its defense—that was genuinely maddening.

Li Hongshou murmured, dazed and speechless, "How can this be? How can this be?"

By her reckoning, having schemed so painstakingly to summon a legendary outlander fiend—especially at this critical juncture—the Prince of Qi's Estate ought to have been flattened in a matter of minutes.

But what on earth was this situation?

Zhang Tailing was indeed helpless against these two crimson apes, yet at this rate, even if more crimson apes came down, they would be mere decoration.

Nothing more than indestructible statues—what was the point?

But just as everyone was at their wit's end, Wei Zhao suddenly made a discovery that made his hair stand on end.

One of the crimson apes had moved.

In fact, Wei Zhao had not seen how it moved; he had only noticed that its posture was slightly different from when he had first laid eyes on it.

The change was slight—hard for an ordinary person to detect.

But for an expert of Wei Zhao's caliber, so long as he was paying attention, even a movement of a hair's breadth could hardly escape his perception entirely.

"Did it just move?"

It was not only Wei Zhao who noticed this, but Zhang Tailing and the Three Ancestors of the Prince of Qi's Estate as well.

The problem was that, looking at it now, it was still as motionless as before, still in the invincible state where no attack could break its defense.

So that although everyone knew perfectly well that it truly had moved just now, they still felt as though it had all been some kind of illusion.

The scene once again sank into an eerie stalemate.

After a moment, a third crimson ape descended.

Still the same petrified, motionless, invincible state.

Zhang Tailing could not help but turn to Li Hongshou. "Give me the bronze mirror. This cannot be allowed to continue."

Li Hongshou clutched the ancient bronze mirror to her chest and cried excitedly, "Master, don't force me! Everything I've done is for our young junior brother—he was your most beloved junior disciple too, wasn't he?"

Zhang Tailing frowned. "Your wish to avenge Xiaonan, I understand. Even if you're dead set on wiping out the Prince of Qi's Estate, I wasn't going to say anything—but not by these means."

Li Hongshou retorted, "What's wrong with these means?"

Zhang Tailing pointed at the crimson apes. "They are outlander fiends. Once they slip out of control, the consequences are unimaginable. When that time comes, it won't just be the Prince of Qi's Estate that suffers—it will be the entire Inner Royal Court!"

Li Hongshou choked for a moment.

But the next instant she craned her neck and said stubbornly, "So what? Young junior brother is gone. Even if the whole Inner Royal Court is buried with him, it's only what they deserve!"