Chapter 4010 — Heavy Losses
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 3
Hong Zhong did not reach out to save them—first, because he truly had no strength to spare for it at that moment; and second, because even had he saved them it would have been useless. To this day there had never been a single case of anyone surviving after the siren's song had destroyed their divine sense.
What astonished Hong Zhong greatly, however, was this: Wei Zhao, whose strength was several degrees weaker even than the two lieutenants, had not followed them into that wretched fate. On the contrary, he stood calm and unshaken, seemingly untouched altogether.
Hong Zhong could not help but marvel inwardly, and his estimation of Wei Zhao rose another notch. He had meant to shield Wei Zhao from the siren's song, but the protection he could extend was strictly limited; Wei Zhao had received no more care than the two lieutenants, and yet here he stood without a scratch—passing strange indeed.
Little did he know that Wei Zhao's own divine sense and spiritual power had always been extraordinary, and that he carried with him a master capable of regenerating the primordial spirit. The ghost fellow could well be called a grandmaster in the realm of divine sense; this paltry assault was nothing worth mentioning.
Yet before Hong Zhong could finish his marveling, the flying spirit beast beneath them gave a sudden lurch, then began to veer drunkenly, tilting this way and that as though it might plunge at any moment.
Hong Zhong and Wei Zhao both paled at once. This was the boundless open sea: below there was not a single spot to set foot, and countless vicious sea beasts lurked in the depths. To fall here—even one of Hong Zhong's strength would face certain death, to say nothing of Wei Zhao, who had only reached the middle stage of Foundation Establishment.
"It will not even spare the flying spirit beast—it means to see us dead without fail!" At this critical juncture Hong Zhong ground his teeth hard, resolved to risk everything in one desperate gamble, and threw the whole of his divine sense into the struggle, straining with all his might to hold the siren's song at bay for the flying spirit beast.
Seeing this, Wei Zhao quietly signaled the ghost fellow: if it truly came to the worst, he would have no choice but to beg the ghost fellow to intervene and save them—after all, they all sat in the same boat, and once the flying spirit beast perished, every one of them would die.
Of course, that was the last resort. Unless it came to the very final moment with no alternative, Wei Zhao would never dare expose the ghost fellow's existence before Hong Zhong; this secret was a matter of grave consequence, and the two of them were not yet close enough for that.
Fortunately, once Hong Zhong threw his full strength into it, the flying spirit beast struggled awhile and at last steadied itself again, and Wei Zhao breathed a sigh of relief.
He had thought they had finally escaped calamity, but no—just at that moment another volley of water arrows came streaking up from below, forcing Hong Zhong to hurriedly free his hand once more to suppress them. This time, however, it was not nearly so clean and crisp as before.
Hong Zhong's stunning strength still succeeded in suppressing the vast majority of the arrows, but one slipped through the net—a single water arrow came whistling straight for the flying spirit beast's wing!
By then it was too late for Hong Zhong to react. And once the flying spirit beast's wing was injured, there would be no flying out of this boundless sea at all—no village ahead, no inn behind, nothing but death here.
Bang! At the final instant, as they watched helplessly while the flying spirit beast was about to be struck, a powerful palm-shaped true qi came crashing into the water arrow—it was Wei Zhao's doing: the twenty-third stance of the Frenzied Fire Eight-Trigram Palm!