Wei Zhao ignored him, raising a hand and hurling a Roaring Fire Eight-Trigram Palm straight at his face. Barring the unforeseen, Fei Yangsheng was a dead man.

But just then, Leng Leng suddenly shouted, "Watch out!"

The words had barely left her mouth when a pitch-black arrow came hissing silently through the doorway, its speed beyond strange, its target fixed squarely on Wei Zhao, who was on the verge of finishing Fei Yangsheng.

The black arrow came with utter abruptness. Had Wei Zhao not already received the jade pendant's warning before Leng Leng's cry, and used his true-qi jet technique to force himself a full body-width aside, he would surely have been struck.

"Waaah, you wretched spirit-body—I've finally found you! You dare ambush me to my face? Today is the day you die!" Sun Baimei came charging in after that shout, bedraggled from head to toe.

Wei Zhao's heart tightened at once. The man had taken a true-qi bomb directly to the face and been blasted out of a fifth-floor window, and he still hadn't died. This thing's vitality was monstrous—far harder to deal with than an ordinary late-Foundation Establishment expert!

"What did you say? He's a spirit-body?" Leng Leng gaped in fresh shock, and in her mind flashed the warning Wei Zhao had given her a moment ago. So it was real after all—she had not been hallucinating. This creature truly was no ordinary man!

"Of course he's a spirit-body—but in a moment he won't even be worth a fart. Before Sun Baimei, every spirit-body is nothing but food for me to swallow." Sun Baimei laughed uproariously.

He had taken a fair wound just now, but that changed nothing about his nature as a spirit-body's natural bane. Before him, any spirit-body was a lamb with no power to fight back, while he was destined to be the vicious wolf.

As he spoke, Sun Baimei abruptly raised his enormous sleeve, and a suction force without peer poured out from within. This move was made specifically to subdue spirit-beings like spirit-bodies. Even though Wei Zhao was now far stronger than he had been half a month ago, he still could not keep his footing, and came within a hair of being caught.

This kind of overwhelming suppression was a thorny problem indeed. Even Wei Zhao could not think of an effective counter on the spot. His ability to fight above his level in spirit-body form had always fallen short of what his true body could do, and now his opponent was the natural bane of spirit-beings besides: a peak early-Foundation Establishment cultivator against a late-Foundation Establishment one—there was almost no chance of victory to speak of.

Fortunately, he had gotten the drop on the man with that true-qi bomb. Otherwise Wei Zhao would never have stood and fought; he would have turned and fled, just as he had last time.

Repeating the old trick, Wei Zhao flung out a bolt of lightning power to break the man's technique. Last time he had escaped thanks not only to the true-qi bomb he had cooked up, but to this very move.

But Sun Baimei had been ready for it. Somehow a sheet of plastic had appeared in his hand, and lightning power, weak as it was, could not pierce that thick plastic at all—it struck the surface and did nothing whatsoever.

"Wahaha! Pitiful little tricks! You stupid spirit-body, did you think I'd fall for the same loss twice? I already grabbed a mortal and questioned him—so long as you block with this stuff, no lightning will work!" Sun Baimei gloated.

He was determined to have Wei Zhao's spirit-body, and to that end he had studied countermeasures in detail—including how to deal with lightning. The move was not powerful; striking him would only numb him a little. But it was enough to interrupt his techniques, and impossible to guard against.

At first he had not known what to do either, but electricity was used so widely in the mortal world that wherever there were people, there was sure to be power. All he had to do was grab any ordinary person and ask, and he knew how to handle electric shocks. With the advantage of forethought against the unprepared, blocking Wei Zhao's bolt of lightning was no difficulty at all.

Wei Zhao inwardly cried out in misery. He had just gotten the drop on the man with a true-qi bomb, and now the man had turned the tables on him in the blink of an eye—with nothing but a sheet of plastic that could be found on any street. In his alarm, his whole body was dragged toward the man.

"I told you—whatever I set my eyes on can never escape my palm!" Sun Baimei laughed in excitement. Swallow this abnormally powerful spirit-body, and he could charge straight for the Golden Core—the thing he had dreamed of all his life!

"Not a chance!" At last Leng Leng snapped back to her senses and hurried to help, heedless of her internal injuries. She was standing not far from Sun Baimei at the doorway; she spun and swept a kick at him.

Whatever Wei Zhao might be hiding, whatever his reasons for trying so hard to get close to her—compared with Sun Baimei and Fei Yangsheng, Wei Zhao was plainly a friend, not a foe.

And really, when she thought about it, Wei Zhao had given her plenty of hints already—the top-grade spirit jade, the divine-sense message, even those stories he had told her before. She had taken them for idle nonsense at the time, but looking back now, he had clearly been hinting all along; it was only that she had been too set in her assumptions to consider it.

Leng Leng's sudden attack caught Sun Baimei somewhat off guard, but one was late Foundation Establishment and the other early—the gap in strength was far too great. He had never taken Leng Leng seriously at all.

One hand still raised, sleeve pulling at Wei Zhao; the other swung the plastic sheet straight at Leng Leng. Flimsy as the thing was, once wrapped in his true qi it carried killing force all the same.

Bang! Leng Leng took the blow head-on without dodging, and spat out a mouthful of blood—but her kick landed squarely on Sun Baimei's chest, and he too grunted and staggered back a step. Just as Wei Zhao had done against Fei Yangsheng, she had chosen to trade wound for wound.

"You think piddling strength like that can beat me?" Sun Baimei snorted, overflowing with dominance. The gap in strength was plain for all to see; however unexpectedly tough Leng Leng proved, dreaming of felling him just like that was far too naive.

Just like now—he fought two at once, and Leng Leng was left coughing blood on the spot, while he only grunted and bore not a scratch. The gap in strength had long since decided the outcome.

But Sun Baimei immediately sensed something wrong. The chest Leng Leng had kicked was rapidly freezing over with a layer of ice. If it were only ice, that would be one thing—but the crucial point was that the instant this layer of ice formed, it vanished again into nothing, replaced by a piercing chill through his chest. The surrounding flesh went dead to all feeling, and even his heart seemed about to stop beating!

"Frac—fractured-ice constitution!" Sun Baimei's face turned hideous at once. His chest had gone cold and stiff, his true qi could not circulate smoothly, and his pulling technique collapsed—Wei Zhao slipped free once again. (To be continued.)

For the fastest updates, please read without pop-ups.