Chapter 4512 — A Precarious Moment
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
"Heh heh, still not giving up even now? Admirable persistence—just a bit stupid. You don't even know how to bow to the inevitable. A brainless puppet is all you're fit to be!" The Xishan Old Sect hovered leisurely within the black mist, watching Wei Zhao flee madly across the ground.
Wei Zhao kept running without breaking stride, though inwardly he could not help but sneer. "Bow to the inevitable"—that's advice meant to make a man switch sides. Right now you're trying to refine me into a puppet. Who in the hell would willingly become a human puppet? A heretic cultivator is a heretic cultivator—even a Mountain-Opening giant has no culture...
Of course, sneering was sneering. Wei Zhao was not so foolish as to turn back and trade barbs with the Xishan Old Sect; that would only slow his flight. Perhaps he still had a sliver of a chance at life—and to squander that last sliver just to win an argument was a stupidity he would never stoop to.
And yet, that sliver of a chance Wei Zhao imagined was, in the eyes of the Xishan Old Sect, not worth a fart—more precisely, not even worth that.
True enough, Wei Zhao's speed at full exertion of the Super Butterfly Microstep movement art was indeed extraordinary. He had previously outrun Cheng Haonan in his fully blackened state, a feat enough to leave the vast majority of seasoned Nascent Soul cultivators far behind. Unfortunately, his opponent now was the Xishan Old Sect.
The gulf in strength between them was simply too vast—so vast that their very understanding of movement and speed belonged to two entirely different orders. Wei Zhao's speed was still only speed in the plain spatial sense, speed as ordinary people conceived it. The Xishan Old Sect's understanding of speed, however, had already reached the level of space-time.
That sounded mystical in the extreme, yet in the present reality, Wei Zhao's form had already blurred into a string of afterimages; even a powerful bow and swift arrow would struggle to keep pace with him. Such extreme speed was enough to make one's jaw drop. And then look at the Xishan Old Sect in midair—its manner of movement had departed entirely from the range a normal mind could accept.
One instant it had been left a full four or five li behind; the next, the Xishan Old Sect, shrouded in black mist, would materialize without the slightest warning directly above Wei Zhao's head. It felt as though it had shattered the bonds of space itself, achieving something as uncanny as a spatial leap.
Time and again the same sinister thing happened. No matter how Wei Zhao adjusted his course, no matter how he concealed his aura, it was useless. Whenever he managed to open up a bit of distance, the Xishan Old Sect would appear above him at its leisure. All his efforts were in vain.
Had Wei Zhao's nerves not been tough enough, anyone else would surely have collapsed to their knees by now. This immense, ever-present pressure was truly enough to drive a man to despair. In truth, even Wei Zhao, facing this unprecedented situation, could not keep his mind from wavering ever so slightly.
"Heh heh, at last this sect has caught its chance!" Delighted at the sight, the Xishan Old Sect sent a tendril of malevolent, darkness-made-substantial divine sense instantly enveloping the crown of Wei Zhao's head—one strike to strip away his soul. Soul-Hooking Hand!
If it had merely wanted to kill Wei Zhao, then with the Xishan Old Sect's methods, a hundred Wei Zhaos would long since have been reduced to dust. But its heart was set on capturing Wei Zhao to make a puppet, so it had no wish to strike too hard.
A corpse could serve as a puppet too, true—but only an ordinary puppet. To refine a trump-card puppet, the minimum requirement was living flesh. Of course, so long as the flesh was alive, that was enough; as for the soul and divine sense, the cleaner they were wiped out, the better. After all, such things brought no benefit whatsoever to the refining of a trump-card puppet—only harm.