Only now did they finally make out what those three dark shapes were. At first glance they were slender, savage birds—not as enormous as the ghost-eyed golden eagles Wei Zhao had seen before, but far from small, standing a good three meters tall on the ground.

Had that been all, it would have been nothing. The crux was the faces of these three great birds: they were unmistakably three human faces, male and female alike, chirping and jabbering as though they could speak and converse with one another. The more so it went on, the more unnerving it became. Qiu Lingshan and the other women were frightened out of their wits, hurriedly ducking behind Wei Zhao—even Leng Leng, a peak Foundation Establishment expert, was no exception.

That terror had nothing to do with the strength of one's cultivation. The crux was the sheer outlandishness of a human face set upon a bird's body; for humans especially, it was likely more ghastly and horrifying than any ferocious, hideous thing.

It was not only the others—even Wei Zhao could not help but draw a sharp breath at the sight. "Goumang?!"

A human face on a bird's body—that was an image found only in ancient myths. Yet here they had run into one in the Primordial Trial Ground, which opened but once in a thousand years. This was downright unbelievable!

"That image really does belong to Goumang and no one else. Could those ancient myths and legends all be true?" Wu Chengtian and the others were struck dumb. They were all cultivators, and precisely for that reason they knew myths and legends were just myths and legends, a world apart from reality. But now even Goumang had shown up—was it still mere myth and legend?

"Heaven knows..." Wei Zhao was speechless. The appearance of these three Goumang shook everyone no less than an overturning of their worldview and their whole understanding of life!

In the brief moment the crowd stood stunned and silent, the three Goumang had already wolfed down the corpses in their grasp. Yet each still wore a look of wanting more, and their greedy gazes soon fell upon Wei Zhao and the others, staring until their scalps tingled.

"Heh, looks like they haven't eaten their fill." Wei Zhao gave a cold laugh. He was, after all, a man who had seen great things; Goumang's horrifying appearance could at most make him mutter uneasily to himself. Once he had recovered, in his eyes they were no different from ordinary spirit beasts—destroy them if they must be destroyed, kill them if they must be killed.

Besides, the strength of these three Goumang was not so outrageous as to defy description. They were of course far stronger than the fire bats from the beginning, but at most they were comparable to Foundation Establishment experts—nothing at all beside the mighty spirit beasts Wei Zhao had encountered on Cloud Terrace Island.

That said, judging by how effortlessly they had hunted down and slain a peak mid-stage Foundation Establishment expert, each Goumang before them was no weaker than a peak Foundation Establishment expert—a lethal threat to Qiu Lingshan and the rest.

The three Goumang cocked their heads and jabbered among themselves for a while. The crowd looked on utterly baffled, and Wu Chengtian could not help saying, "Just what kind of bird-talk are they speaking?"

"What else? They're surely deciding who to eat first. Fatty Lai, you'd better watch out—you've got the most meat, so you'll be the first to go," Ying Ziyu teased, mustering her courage. She had been frightened badly just now, but she had always been bold, and by this point she had recovered. Apart from their rather unnerving appearance, these three Goumang were not truly so fearsome—Wei Zhao was here, after all.

"Not necessarily. I've got plenty of meat, sure, but fatty meat doesn't taste good. It's you girls with your delicate, tender flesh who ought to worry." Fatty Lai laughed back.

Wei Zhao could not help but smile at this. He had been a little worried that the three Goumang might frighten the courage out of everyone, and that if something went wrong at the critical moment it would be trouble. But now, seeing this, he realized he had been fretting over nothing—their mental fortitude was far better than he had expected.

The three Goumang jabbered on for a good while, and at last seemed to have reached an agreement. Suddenly all three shot straight up into the sky. The crowd instantly formed a defensive formation as though facing a great enemy—but the outcome exceeded all expectations. The creatures simply left, with no intention whatsoever of touching them.

The crowd exchanged bewildered glances, though they were plainly relieved. Had it truly come to a fight with those three Goumang, the outcome would have been very much in doubt.

Only Wei Zhao did not relax his guard in the slightest, still straining his divine consciousness to probe every trace of movement around them. A moment later the corner of his mouth curved, and he said with amusement, "Playing such tricks on us—leaving and then returning. They really have become cunning."

"Leaving and returning? They're back?" The crowd was startled. Though the fear from before was gone, the oppressive, ferocious air of those three Goumang was very real, and to say they felt no nervousness at all would be a lie. To them, these three were a hundred percent savage beasts.

"It's not that they've come back—they never left at all. Just now it was only an illusion to deceive us," Wei Zhao explained. The range of his divine consciousness was vast; if he could not even lock onto Goumang of mere peak Foundation Establishment level, that would truly be absurd.

"So cunning!" The crowd hastily held their defensive formation, guarding against the three Goumang as though against a great enemy. Even a peak mid-stage Foundation Establishment expert had become their fodder—the crowd's own strength need not be mentioned. If they could not form a defensive formation, they likely would not even fill the gaps between the creatures' teeth.

A moment later, two dark shapes abruptly burst from the dense forest at high speed, attacking the group from left and right at once—the two Goumang they had seen before.

"Leng Leng!" Wei Zhao called out. He himself took on the Goumang on the left, and at the same time Leng Leng, with perfect understanding, took on the one on the right.

Two fists were no match for four hands. Wei Zhao's own cultivation was, after all, only peak Foundation Establishment; he could handle one, but taking on two at once would be difficult. At such a moment Leng Leng had to step forward and bear the burden, for if Qiu Lingshan and the others were left to face a Goumang ambush directly, even with a defensive formation the outcome would be uncertain.

Facing the onrushing Goumang, Leng Leng met it head-on with a Shattering Ice Palm, but the creature paid it no mind at all—it casually blocked with a single wing, and by the look of it was entirely unaffected by the shattering ice aura, showing not the slightest sign of frostbite or slowed movement. (To be continued.)