Chapter 4545 — The Five Elements Killing Qi

Such a horrifying, skin-crawling sight was enough to make even the Old Sect of the Western Hills' scalp prickle with numbness; his already grotesque face took on a further layer of bloodless pallor, and his heart shuddered with utter dread.

"This... is the legendary Five Poisons Swamp?!" Sick with belated fear, the Old Sect of the Western Hills hurriedly shot up into the sky, retreating a full several li before he dared stop, terrified that he too might follow in the bone claw's footsteps and be swallowed by this hideous swamp without so much as a speck of him left behind.

Since human cultivators almost never came to a place like this, not many in the Southern Continent's seas knew of the Five Poisons Swamp. The Old Sect of the Western Hills, however, was plainly a connoisseur of such things; even if he had failed to recognize it at first glance, if he still could not put two and two together after taking such a heavy loss, he would hardly have deserved his title as a titan of the evil path.

After all, experts of the Old Sect of the Western Hills' caliber tended to cling to their lives with the utmost care. They might be unfamiliar with any place or any environment, but those things capable of posing a lethal threat to them simply had to be known to them inside and out—precisely like the Five Poisons Swamp before his eyes.

Cultivators never tired of proclaiming that they defied Heaven and altered destiny, yet in truth, the higher one's station, the deeper one's reverence for the power of Heaven and Earth—for the stronger a man grew, the more keenly he knew his own insignificance, and the more clearly he grasped the vastness and terror of the cosmos.

To pit one man's strength against the power of Heaven and Earth—that was a realm countless people dreamed of. Alas, it was forever no more than a lovely fantasy; in truth, such a possibility had never existed and never would.

Any place that displayed the ferocious might of Heaven and Earth was, to cultivators, an absolute deathtrap and forbidden ground. However mighty one might be—Xuan Ascension, Mountain-Splitting, or even stronger, it made no difference. To defy Heaven in such places there was only ever one outcome: death.

By any measure, the Five Poisons Swamp before him fit the definition of a deathtrap to perfection. Never mind that the Old Sect of the Western Hills had already been caught off guard and left bleeding from a nasty wound—even if he had successfully withdrawn his bone claw in time, he would never have dared approach within half a step of the Five Poisons Swamp.

"Wah-yah-yah-yah! You vile, treacherous whelp—to think that even on the brink of death you'd try to drag this Patriarch down with you! Utterly vicious!" The Old Sect of the Western Hills finally caught his breath after that internal injury, his face livid with fury as he stamped his feet and raged. In his mind, that wretch Wei Zhao had surely known his death was certain, and so had schemed to drag him into a mutual destruction!

At that moment the Old Sect of the Western Hills was filled with shock and belated fear, silently thanking his lucky stars that he had been cautious enough to check his advance in time and thus narrowly escape calamity!

Otherwise, with that last strike—had his bloodlust truly overmastered him and he had charged in after Wei Zhao without a moment's hesitation—then no matter how strong he was, it would have availed him nothing. Even the indestructible bone claw could not withstand the Five Elements attack, let alone his own mortal flesh and blood. He would surely have perished alongside that little bastard, and worse—shattered to dust and scattered to the winds, utterly and irrevocably dead.

Watching the Five Poisons Swamp before him from several li away, his expression shifting through a myriad of changes, the Old Sect of the Western Hills knew that Wei Zhao had by now been reduced to soulless dust, and could never come out alive again.

After all, this was different from last time. The Southern Isle Forest had been extremely perilous too, but if one had the devil's own luck, there was still a sliver of a chance at survival. Yet once one fell into the Five Poisons Swamp before him, death was no longer a matter of probability—it was nailed down tight, without the slightest possibility of accident, unless the world itself had gone mad.

"Bah! He deserved worse than death—no more than he deserved, to be left without a corpse!" The Old Sect of the Western Hills spat viciously at the spot where Wei Zhao had fallen. Though it had not been by his own hand, dead was dead. This time, at long last, the goal had been achieved, and he had not been left covered in ignominy as he had last time.

The only thing the Old Sect of the Western Hills found slightly regrettable was that Wei Zhao had left not so much as an intact corpse—not even a scrap of bone remained in the end. It was rare to come across such promising material for forging a trump-card puppet, and to let it slip through his fingers like this—well, it would be a lie to say he felt no regret. One could only say that such was the will of Heaven.

Remote as this place was, it was still within the borders of the Southern Isle, and after that bloody lesson last time, the Old Sect of the Western Hills dared not linger here long, fearful of drawing the covetous eye of some powerful spirit beast. After cursing once more, he turned and swept away without a backward glance.

Nothing could have made the Old Sect of the Western Hills guess that Wei Zhao—whom he believed to be utterly annihilated, body and bone alike—was at this very moment not only alive and well under the swamp's Five Elements attack, but completely unharmed from head to toe. Not only that, but the spirit bird was the same.

With true qi wrapped tightly around every inch of their bodies, Wei Zhao and the spirit bird had been plummeting rapidly ever since they entered the Five Poisons Swamp. How long this descent had lasted, he could not tell; it felt as though the bottom were fathomless.

Long and tedious as the process was, it was not the least bit easy. Dense, concentrated Five Elements killing qi swirled on every side, and Wei Zhao could sense it clearly even wrapped in his own true qi. When he recalled the image of the Old Sect of the Western Hills' bone claw being effortlessly shredded by that Five Elements killing qi, the horror of the scene before him sent chills down his spine.

Anyone else—including a titan of the evil path at the Mountain-Splitting stage like the Old Sect of the Western Hills—would have been reduced to a heap of powder long ago in Wei Zhao's position. Yet Wei Zhao discovered to his astonishment that although these terrifying Five Elements killing qi currents had been swirling and circling around him the whole time, they showed not the slightest intent to attack him.

It was as if all the Five Elements killing qi around him had been rendered immune by the true qi enveloping him and the spirit bird. Such a strange, uncanny state of affairs—a moment's thought was enough for Wei Zhao to understand. It was likely precisely because of the Five Elements nature of his own true qi that these Five Elements killing qi within the swamp had mistaken him for one of their own.

That was the only possible explanation. After all, the gap in power between them was a thousandfold, ten-thousandfold at least. Had he not been mistaken for one of their own, then for Wei Zhao to try to withstand these Five Elements killing qi currents with his paltry true qi would have been no different from a fool's dream.

As he sank ever deeper, Wei Zhao could distinctly feel the Five Elements killing qi filling the space on all sides growing heavier and heavier. Its numbers were no longer as motley as at the start, but its intensity was now beyond all comparison.