"Hmph, you think flattery will send me off, boy? Let me tell you plainly—every one of you is my tribute, and not a soul will escape!" the Primeval Jumang King called down from on high.

"Is that so?" Wei Zhao gave it a faint, unreadable smile. Then, out of nowhere: "You don't actually believe that flying a little higher puts you beyond my reach, do you?"

"Boy, I'll grant you this much—your strength is real, enough to pose a genuine threat to me. But... do you have wings? Can you fly? That trick of yours may pack a punch, but can it truly wound me?" The Primeval Jumang King sneered without cease. To be safe, it now hung at least fifty meters above the ground. Not only could Wei Zhao's true-qi dan-fire bombs never reach it, but even if he could hurl one that high, it would have ample time to dodge.

Wei Zhao answered only with a soft chuckle, and then, without a word, vanished clean away—no warning, no trace.

"Damn, but he's fast!" the Primeval Jumang King muttered despite itself. It had already witnessed Wei Zhao's movement arts before; such speed was rare in its long life. And this time he was even faster than before. Last time it could at least catch a blur of his position; now it could not even tell where he had gone. His comings and goings were uncanny to the point of the absurd.

"You flatter me," Wei Zhao's voice said, suddenly from behind its head.

The Primeval Jumang King nearly jumped out of its skin, though it recovered swiftly and sneered: "True-qi voice transmission—clever tricks you've got, but what good are they?"

"You're overthinking it. I'm right here—why would I need true-qi transmission?" Wei Zhao reached out and clapped it on the back. It was unmistakably the man himself, flesh and bone, no trick of sound.

That scared the soul clean out of the Primeval Jumang King, so much so that it forgot to beat its wings. Down it plunged like a dead bird, and for the life of it, it could not fathom how Wei Zhao had appeared behind it. By all accounts the creature was nothing but a human at the consummation of Foundation Establishment—no wings, no flight. How had he suddenly arrived at such a height?

What terrified it more was that as it fell straight down, Wei Zhao stayed glued to its back, falling right alongside it—and behind him was unmistakably a powerful, savage surge of true qi!

The Primeval Jumang King's soul scattered in terror. Before Wei Zhao could make another move, it cast all face to the winds, let out a shriek, and fled in panic, gone from sight in the blink of an eye.

Whoosh! After landing calmly, Wei Zhao let out a long breath. He had racked his brains and pulled out every trick he had, and at last he had bluffed the thing into leaving. His efforts had not been for nothing.

"Boss, what in the world just happened?" Wu Chengtian and the others hurried over, all talking at once.

"Nothing much. I just scared it off," Wei Zhao said with a smile. He made it sound easy, but the scene just now had broken him into a cold sweat. If he had failed to frighten off this Primeval Jumang King and let it keep shadowing them from the sky, their whole expedition through the Primeval Trial would have been dead on arrival.

This time he had suddenly dissolved into a spirit-essence form and flown up into the sky, then abruptly condensed back into his spirit-essence body. It sounded simple, but it was in truth fiendishly difficult—after all, his opponent was a being comparable to late Golden Core. Fooling its eyes and ears was no easy matter.

What was more, once up in the sky, Wei Zhao had virtually no means of defending himself. If the Primeval Jumang King had fought back with all its might, he would have been in grave danger. It had been a genuine gamble, and he was lucky all his earlier groundwork had been laid well—the creature was already a bird startled by the mere twang of a bow, which was why he had managed to frighten it off so cleanly. Otherwise, the outcome would have been very much in doubt.

"Boss, you're incredible! Absolutely incredible!" Only then did the others catch on. So everything Wei Zhao had done just now had been an act. First he had blasted a giant red-scaled serpent to death with sheer power, and now he had scared off a Primeval Jumang King with sheer acting. Their boss was truly a man of both pen and sword—simply invincible.

"Brother Wei Zhao, what do we do now?" Ying Ziyu asked. The others all looked to Wei Zhao as well. If the swarm of fire bats at the start had been merely a show of force, this red-scaled serpent and the Primeval Jumang King had made them truly feel the peril of the Primeval Trial—life and death separated by a single thread.

"We keep moving forward, of course," Wei Zhao said with a smile.

"But... what if it comes after us again?" Yu Bing asked. The Primeval Jumang King was no fool. Even if Wei Zhao had frightened it off this time, it would soon think better of it. And even if it truly failed to work things out for a while, once it recovered from its injuries it would certainly not let the matter rest. If it set its sights on them again then, they would be in real trouble.

Every eye turned to Wei Zhao. His answer was eight words: "Meet force with force, meet water with earth."

It was not a satisfying answer, but it was the truest one Wei Zhao had. This was the Primeval Trial, after all, and anything could happen. With his current strength, there was simply no way to guarantee everyone's safety. Dangers like today's would come again, and some would be ten or a hundred times worse. All he could do was adapt as circumstances demanded.

At those words, silence fell over the group. At last they felt a sense of crisis such as they had never known. If they could not improve their strength quickly, they would not only become dead weight to Wei Zhao—they might well be buried in this godforsaken place.

Seeing the gravity in their faces, the corner of Wei Zhao's mouth curved up ever so slightly. That was exactly the expression he wanted. His determination to bring them all into the Primeval Trial this time had little to do with anything else—the most important reason was to temper them.

After the close call, Wei Zhao led Qiu Lingshan and the others onward. But the disciples of the Primeval Alliance on the other two paths were not so fortunate. The Primeval Jumang King and the red-scaled serpent were hardly the only ones out to plunder human tribute—other spirit beasts of sufficient caliber had been given the same charge.

For this once-in-a-millennium Primeval Trial, everyone had been thinking only of the River of Divine Consciousness and all manner of fortuitous encounters. None had imagined that what awaited them here was nothing less than wholesale slaughter.

Ling Tianyou's party had started with more than twenty people, but then they ran into a fox—a fox with two tails—and nearly the entire group, Ling Tianyou included, was very nearly wiped out. Fortunately, Ling Tianyou's reflexes were quick enough to flee into the dense forest at the first instant, and the fox had not fixed its attention on him right away, which was how he had scraped through by the narrowest of margins. (To be continued.)