Chapter 4567 — Earth-Breaking Stage

"Roar, roar—if you human cultivators can come here, then naturally so can I. But I never imagined you'd actually show up in a place like this, and a Nascent Soul cultivator at that! Not bad at all!" the Five-Slaughter Dragon said, unable to hide its astonishment. Wei Zhao had just been radiating killing intent without the slightest attempt to conceal his cultivation, so it was plain at a glance.

"Yeah, I never expected to run into you here either. The things that happen in this world really are beyond all prediction," Wei Zhao said with an answering laugh.

"Roar, roar—isn't there a saying among you humans, 'enemies are fated to meet'? Honestly, if I'd run into you under ordinary circumstances, even if I didn't beat you to death on the spot, I'd never be this friendly. I still remember how you ruined my plans back then!" The Five-Slaughter Dragon made a very humanlike expression of pursed lips, which on the face of a dinosaur looked bizarre no matter how you sliced it.

"Oh? And now?" Wei Zhao asked with keen interest.

"Now? Ahh…" The Five-Slaughter Dragon heaved a long sigh that nearly bowled Wei Zhao over, and said with a wistful exhalation, "It's far too lonely for me in this place. Forget a living creature—I haven't seen so much as a blade of grass or a tree. It's all barren desert, the same thing over and over, and no sunlight ever breaks through. Any of you restless humans would have been driven mad long ago, wouldn't you? But I don't dare go out. Now I've finally run into a person—and an old acquaintance from the mortal world, no less—so of course I'm overjoyed. Rest easy, I won't do you any harm."

"Haha, good to hear. To be honest, I stumbled in here by sheer chance and now I'm trapped with no way out. But tell me—why can't you get out? Don't tell me you can't withstand the pressure of this swamp. Those five-element killing qi shouldn't have any effect on you, should they?" Wei Zhao asked, puzzled. He knew that the Five-Slaughter Dragon, like himself, possessed all five elemental attributes, so in theory it shouldn't be unable to endure even the five-element killing qi.

"Roar, roar—you think this swamp could trap me?" The Five-Slaughter Dragon burst into laughter at this. It did not answer Wei Zhao's question directly; instead it abruptly spread the pair of enormous wings on its back and gave them a single light beat, and its whole massive bulk shot skyward in an instant.

Wei Zhao, standing close enough to touch it, felt his eyelid twitch. At such close range he had actually felt no powerful air current at all, yet the Five-Slaughter Dragon's speed had reached a limit beyond what the naked eye could catch in the blink of an eye. That alone proved the Five-Slaughter Dragon's mastery over such things had reached perfection; if it truly went all out, its speed could far exceed what it had just shown, so fast that even a spirit bird could not hope to match it.

Terrifying! Wei Zhao could not help but lose himself for a moment. In his memory, this Five-Slaughter Dragon was not a spirit beast known for its speed; for it to suddenly reveal such an astonishing display was truly beyond comprehension.

Yet that was still nothing. The speed the Five-Slaughter Dragon displayed had only left Wei Zhao dazed. But what it did next in the Five-Poison Swamp made even the imperturbable Wei Zhao gape, speechless for a long while.

After it leaped into the Five-Poison Swamp overhead, strictly speaking, the Five-Slaughter Dragon did nothing particularly special. It merely swam a carefree circle through the Five-Poison Swamp. That in itself was no wonder—after all, like Wei Zhao, it possessed all five elements, and the five-element killing qi would not attack Wei Zhao with his true qi shielding his body. Naturally it would not attack the Five-Slaughter Dragon either.

But what left Wei Zhao dumbstruck was that when the Five-Slaughter Dragon suddenly released the mighty aura hidden within its body, those dense, ceaselessly prowling five-element killing qi—as though they had encountered a fiend incarnate—scattered and fled in every direction. The Five-Poison Swamp was the domain of the five-element killing qi, yet at that moment, within a radius of several li around the Five-Slaughter Dragon, there was not a single wisp of five-element killing qi to be found. They had all fled of their own accord!

The five-element killing qi were not living things; they possessed no thought or consciousness of their own. But even pure killing intent, once condensed to such a degree, was bound to develop a trace of sentience. That was why, when faced with an existence far above them, they took the initiative to flee.

And yet, the strongest stretch of that five-element killing qi had brought Wei Zhao pressure and intimidation not one bit inferior to the spirit beast guardians he had seen before. How could such a terrifying existence be frightened into this state by the Five-Slaughter Dragon?

Sensing that vast aura spilling down from the Five-Poison Swamp layer overhead, that heaven-and-earth-covering sensation as though a god or demon had descended, Wei Zhao was utterly shocked. Though he was far from such a level himself, he could at least tell that the Five-Slaughter Dragon before him was absolutely far above the Mountain-Opening Stage!

The Old Sect of the Western Mountains, hailed as the giant of Mountain-Opening Stage demonic cultivators, seemed utterly insignificant before the Five-Slaughter Dragon of this moment. Even the three giants of the Eastern Continent's Morning Star Academy that Wei Zhao had seen were far inferior—they were simply not existences of the same order.

"What… what cultivation is this?" Wei Zhao swallowed hard, staring up at the Five-Slaughter Dragon overhead, his face full of shock.

"Earth-Breaking Stage," the ghost thing explained, feigning indifference—yet even its tone now carried a rare note of barely concealed shock. The Five-Slaughter Dragon before them was simply not what it had been when they saw it in the mortal world!

Had it not already confirmed the creature's identity a moment ago, the ghost thing would never have equated the two. It would have assumed it was seeing the progenitor of that Five-Slaughter Dragon from the mortal world—after all, the gulf in their strength was more than a hundred thousand li wide!

How much time had passed? At most, not even two years. Wei Zhao's growth from early Foundation Establishment all the way to his current Nascent Soul Stage was already outrageously, astonishingly fast. Yet this Five-Slaughter Dragon had actually become an Earth-Breaking Stage existence outright. Before it, Wei Zhao did not even qualify as the lesser of two sorcerers. Had this world gone stark raving mad?!

"Earth-Breaking Stage?" Wei Zhao was struck with awe, though he did not fully understand. It was the first time he had heard the term, but the name alone told him it was no small matter.

"The stage above Mountain-Opening is the Earth-Breaking Stage. Any existence that reaches this level can be considered a master of great divine powers," the ghost thing explained mildly.

Wei Zhao understood at once. The Five-Slaughter Dragon was indeed an existence above the Mountain-Opening Stage. This trip to the Southern Continent had truly not been in vain. Even setting aside all the fortuitous encounters and the explosive growth in strength, just the broadening of his horizons and experience far exceeded what he had before.

Before coming here, Wei Zhao had thought that a Profound Ascension Stage expert was already the pinnacle of Cloud Terrace Island. He had known nothing of Mountain-Opening Stage giants, much less that above Mountain-Opening there was still the Earth-Breaking Stage! (To be continued…)