Chapter 4572 — Staying On

"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.

"Er... so that's what happened. Then you really can't go up through that exit." The Five-Bane Dragon was somewhat astonished at this and looked Wei Zhao over again, never having imagined that Wei Zhao had crossed paths with the likes of Vermilion Bird. To have escaped unscathed with his meager strength—that was sheer dumb luck, plain and simple.

"Ah. Looks like Heaven means for me to stay here and cultivate a while longer. Well, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. With both ends blocked, there's nowhere to run anyway. Let's just cultivate together, the two of us—at least we'll have company." Since there was truly no road left to take, Wei Zhao could only accept reality with good grace.

"That's about all we can do." The Five-Bane Dragon nodded. Originally the vast space had held only itself—boring and depressing. Now that its old friend Wei Zhao was here for company, that was a good thing in its eyes.

"By the way, how do you usually cultivate?" Wei Zhao suddenly asked. The other was a top-tier spirit beast at the Earth-Opening stage, and he was genuinely very interested in the question—all the more since the Five-Bane Dragon, like him, possessed all five elements. Perhaps there was something in it worth learning from.

"Me? My cultivation is sleeping. Before I met you people, I was still asleep—slept over a year at a stretch." The Five-Bane Dragon's answer nearly made Wei Zhao's jaw drop. Sleeping is cultivation—was there any justice left in this world?

Wei Zhao instinctively turned to glance at the spirit bird beside him. He had never once seen the creature cultivate either; it just hopped and skipped about playing all day, and yet had broken through from the late Foundation Establishment stage all the way to its current Nascent Soul stage. And the Five-Bane Dragon, an existence at the Earth-Opening stage, simply buried its head and slept—one good sleep and it leveled up. If all spirit beasts of the clan were like these two, then they were absolutely, positively Heaven's favorites!

By comparison, Wei Zhao himself, a human cultivator, could barely claw his way up a few levels despite all his bitter toil. Set beside these two, he was utterly pathetic! And if that was true of Wei Zhao, it went without saying for other human cultivators—speak of it and it was nothing but tears.

"You kid really don't need to envy them. Cultivating in dreams is an innate gift of the vast majority of dragon-clan spirit beasts. Dragons, after all, are terribly fond of sleep. If you expected them to cultivate only while awake, they'd probably wear themselves out to death over a lifetime and still not gain a few levels—in which case the dragon clan would have been wiped out long ago." The Ghost Thing explained with a smile from the side: "Don't forget, wasn't I myself recovering in deep slumber this whole time? Besides, the Five-Bane inherited the Five-Venom Flood Dragon's powerful legacy—if it didn't sleep long enough, it couldn't possibly digest all that strength."

"Still, that's just absurd, all right? A casual nap and you level up—if human cultivators who fight tooth and nail, who can't level up even by swallowing pills, heard about this, wouldn't they just spew a mouthful of old blood..." Wei Zhao said, at a loss for words.