Zhang Baiyu frowned slightly. "He's already been burned twice in a row. Getting him to take the bait again won't be so easy, I'm afraid."

The man might play the part of a mindless brute, but judging by all the details, calling him cunning as a fox would hardly be an exaggeration.

A normal man, once burned, would never show his face again.

This time they had gotten him purely on Tao Zhibai's coattails.

Letting him slip away today had plainly blown up the nest—after all, the man was no real fish, with a memory of only seven seconds.

Wei Zhao, however, looked not the least bit worried. "As long as he's a fish, he'll take the bait sooner or later. All we have to do is chum the waters well."

Zhou Yuan and Gu Tianque were at a loss.

Zhang Baiyu, though, caught on at once. "You mean to lay down heavier bait, my lord?"

Wei Zhao's gaze was dark and distant. "Something like the source of primal chaos—that he cannot refuse."

At that one sentence, Zhou Yuan and Gu Tianque nodded again and again.

As reincarnations of the Ancient Chaos Emperors, the two of them had the most say in this matter.

In the face of the source of primal chaos, even knowing full well that a pit lay before them, the two of them would absolutely try every means to seize it—at most taking a little more care along the way.

It was not recklessness; it was the base code born into their very bones, a code that destined them to be unable to defy it.

Such was the fate of the Ancient Chaos Emperors.

Everything under heaven has its gains and its losses. As reincarnations, they enjoyed every manner of heaven-defying advantage, and so naturally had to pay a corresponding price.

Zhang Baiyu offered a caution. "My lord, I fear you must also guard against Sikong Dao."

Wei Zhao nodded. "True enough. Twice is twice, but a third and fourth time is too much. Having him pull this every time is indeed a nuisance."

The source of primal chaos could lure Xing Jun in, but as had happened this time, once Sikong Dao intervened from behind the scenes, never mind whether the lure would succeed—even if he were hooked once more, he could not be held.

Even if, as just said, the heavenly dao would match him with an opponent of sufficient strength, precisely where that critical moment would fall was ultimately beyond control.

That feeling of losing control was, for a Wei Zhao accustomed to commanding the board, decidedly unpleasant.

Wei Zhao sank into thought. "We'll need to add a bit more fire to the mix."

Meanwhile.

After Xing Jun had seized Tao Zhibai's body and escaped through the spatial passage, he had not left Tianjun.

What lay before his eyes was a deeply hidden underground vein of ore.

Everywhere he looked were spirit jades of the very highest grade.

Spirit jade was of little significance to experts of the divine realm, but to cultivators at the lower levels it remained an indispensable necessity.

And for Xing Jun as he was now, it was hardly useless either.

The spirit jade had no direct effect on him, but the very existence of an entire spirit-jade vein could naturally screen out any sensing of aura.

At this very moment, judging purely by geography, he stood no more than ten kilometers beneath the New Heavenly Palace—yet even Wei Zhao could not detect the slightest trace of him.

Darkness right under the lamp—the most conspicuous place was the safest.

"So you still want me to keep giving Wei Zhao trouble?"

Xing Jun was no fool, after all.

He knew perfectly well that Sikong Dao was the one moving the pieces behind all of this, and that he himself was merely a pawn used to throw Tianjun into chaos.

Until Tianjun was thrown into utter chaos, even if he wanted to break away of his own accord, Sikong Dao would never allow it.

Boom!

Xing Jun slammed his fist into the ground.

The entire vein shuddered in response—yet, strangely, the tremor traveled less than ten meters before it was swallowed into nothing.

Xing Jun's eyes flickered. "This bastard really is unfathomable!"

Given his temperament, how could he possibly be content to be another's pawn—especially a pawn fated to be cannon fodder, a soldier sent across the river to die?

Yet facing such means, even he could not help but feel his hair stand on end.

Xing Jun promptly chose to play along.

Instinct told him that if he did not behave, he might not even need to wait for Wei Zhao to make a move—the one behind the scenes would dispose of him first.

"No, wait—if you want me to work for you, you could at least give me my body back, couldn't you?"

Xing Jun scratched his head.

He now occupied Tao Zhibai's body, which was admittedly not weak, but from the exchange with Wei Zhao just now it was plain to see that in this state he was no match for Wei Zhao at all.

Even given time to recover, it was hardly certain he could overtake Wei Zhao.

For one thing, he had only a single head left, so the ceiling of strength he could recover to was far below that of his normal state.

For another, he had felt it too—not only was his own strength recovering quickly, but Wei Zhao's strength on the other side was also growing rapidly at every moment.

And what was more, the rate at which Wei Zhao's strength grew even surpassed his own.

Comparing the two, the one who looked more like a monster was actually Wei Zhao.

Xing Jun naturally did not know the reason behind it, but he could at least conclude one thing: this iron wall called Wei Zhao was something he alone could never break through.

Xing Jun put on an air of utter indifference. "You want me to do your dirty work—you can't expect me to do it without giving me anything in return, can you? If you won't give me a thing, fine, I'll just sit right here and burn through time. I'll burn two hundred years if I have to."

Silence stretched on.

At last, a materialized seed of thought emerged out of thin air and hovered quietly before Xing Jun.

Xing Jun's eyelid twitched. He reached out at once and snatched it into his palm.

The next second, his entire sea of consciousness buzzed.

Xing Jun froze on the spot.

A full half-day passed before he finally digested the vast torrent of information within and came back to himself.

"So that's how it is! So that's how it is!"

Wild joy lit Xing Jun's face. "I am an Ancient Chaos Emperor! What right does a mere Wei Zhao have to order me about?"

As a reincarnation of an Ancient Chaos Emperor, he had always had some inkling of his own identity, though he never knew it clearly, and for the most part acted on instinct.

But with this seed of thought poured into him, his memories of a past life had awakened ahead of time.

Of course, a set of memories alone offered little real help to his actual strength.

The key was that within these memories he had found the method to obtain his past life's inheritance ahead of schedule!

And that was the hidden card Sikong Dao had granted him.

"The Blessing of the Sin God?"

Xing Jun carefully worked through the steps, his eyes full of fervor. "So by seizing this Tao Zhibai's body, I actually stumbled into the right move by pure chance?"

According to what was written here, obtaining one's past-life inheritance ahead of time normally required entering the Tomb Palace of Chaos, but there was also a way to bypass that step.

The core of it lay in the Blessing of the Sin God.

The Sin God had been charged by the Creator God with governing the Divine Prison, and the original purpose of establishing that prison was to seal away the Ancient Chaos Emperors.

Once one obtained the Blessing of the Sin God, to a certain extent it was equivalent to unsealing one's past life.

And thus one could naturally obtain the past-life inheritance.

The only catch was that this method trod entirely the internal paths of the Divine Realm, requiring connections and influence reaching to the very heavens within the Divine Realm's official hierarchy—something ordinary experts would not even dare to dream of.