This time Wei Zhao had no chance to dodge. His vision went black, and a single thought flashed through his mind: "Flowers blooming in pairs! The朱頂紅!"

The朱頂紅 was the name of a flower. In outward appearance these two man-eating blossoms were indeed the common朱頂紅 of the mortal world—except that the mortal world's朱頂紅 was no ferocious, terrifying man-eater, but a purely ornamental bloom.

Had he only realized in time that these were朱頂紅, Wei Zhao would never have fallen for it so easily, for the朱頂紅 had another, more formal name: the twin-blossom flower.

Flowers blooming in pairs—the twin-blossom flower always grew as a matched couple and never on its own. Since this man-eating blossom bore such an identical signature, growing in pairs naturally followed as a matter of course. When you saw one...

...you had to be ready for two. Unfortunately, Wei Zhao had understood a little too late.

In the very instant those giant twin-blossom jaws clamped shut on him, a sudden inspiration struck Wei Zhao. He abandoned at once any notion of escaping by transforming into his Primordial Spirit, and instead let himself be carried straight down into the creature's maw—he wanted to see just what manner of thing this twin-blossom man-eater really was.

Those keen, hideous saw-teeth did not so much as graze a hair on Wei Zhao. In the pitch darkness he felt as though he had entered a tube, and soon after was conveyed deep underground.

Moments later the surroundings opened out abruptly, and there was even a measure of light—enough to make out the scene without relying on spiritual sense at all.

At first glance it was a tree hollow less than ten meters across—but not an ordinary tree hollow. This one was very much alive, for countless green tendrils thrust out from its walls, any one of which could bind a man fast and leave him unable to stir.

Four such tendrils were wrapped around Wei Zhao even now. They gripped him crushingly tight, and what made the scalp crawl was that their tips bore needle-sharp spines, each capped with a bead of dark-green sap—by the look of it, poised to inject itself into his body.

This time Wei Zhao dared not be careless. Being squeezed was one thing, but if this sap—whatever devilish stuff it was—were truly injected into him, heaven knew what might come of it.

He needed no struggle and no expenditure of effort; Wei Zhao's way of breaking free of those four green tendrils was simplicity itself. He turned into his Primordial Spirit, and they all grasped at nothing at once.

Discovering they had lost their target, not only these four tendrils but every tendril in the whole tree hollow went mad, frantically hunting for Wei Zhao's trace. Alas for them, Wei Zhao was at that moment a mere mass of Primordial Spirit; no matter how wildly they thrashed in every direction, it was all in vain.

The tendrils did not stay mad for long. Once they had confirmed there was no Wei Zhao in the hollow, they quickly quieted down. Even when Wei Zhao reappeared in his Primordial Spirit Body form, they showed no reaction whatever, treating him as though he were empty air.

Wei Zhao was not much surprised by this. By now he had largely worked it out: this twin-blossom man-eater, though it showed some tendency toward vegetation turning sentient, was still very, very far from those truly sentient beings he had encountered before—the Half-Moon Lake in the back hills of the northern island of the heaven tier, for instance.

Not only was the gulf in tier vast as heaven from earth, the degree of evolution was just as different. The Half-Moon Lake possessed a wholly independent individual will, along with refined faculties akin to spiritual sense. This twin-blossom man-eater had none of that. It seemed to act purely on instinct; once he had slipped past its instinctive mechanism for telling friend from foe, it was a blind thing through and through.

The one thing Wei Zhao could not quite fathom was this: a being whose evolution was so far from complete—why had it deliberately spared his life just now? Could it, like those other spirit beasts, need to keep captives alive to present as tribute to that "lord" of theirs?

By all reason, a twin-blossom man-eater's foremost instinct was to feed. Once his prey-self fell into its mouth, he ought to have been chewed to pulp—that was what made for easier digestion and absorption. Yet when Wei Zhao had fallen into its maw just now, those dangerous, hideous saw-teeth had chosen restraint, remarkably enough, and delivered him down here without a scratch.

Had it been otherwise, Wei Zhao would not have suddenly changed his mind and thrown himself into the snare. He simply wanted to see what this twin-blossom man-eater was really made of.

Wei Zhao looked all about him. Just then a faint shout rose from somewhere below—familiar, on first hearing—and when the voice came again Wei Zhao recognized it at once: "Fei Yangnian!"

So that string of footprints he had seen earlier belonged to Fei Yangnian. The fellow was out of luck indeed, to have landed in the mouth of a twin-blossom man-eater.

To Wei Zhao, Fei Yangnian hardly counted as one of his own, but there was some connection between them, and meeting him here he could not simply leave him to die. He turned at once into his Primordial Spirit form and bored downward, and sure enough, directly below lay another sealed tree hollow, with Fei Yangnian trussed up like a parcel by a heap of green tendrils right in the middle.

Wei Zhao smiled at the sight and at once condensed into his Primordial Spirit Body form before him.

Fei Yangnian's eyes blurred; at first he could hardly believe it, but then he caught on and blurted in astonishment, "Senior Lin, you got caught too?"

"Heh, you could say so." Wei Zhao smiled, noncommittal.

"That's not right—why aren't you tied up by these things?" Fei Yangnian found Wei Zhao's easy, unburdened air utterly baffling. The man hardly looked caught; he looked for all the world like a sightseer on holiday.

"Oh, because they're reasonable sorts," Wei Zhao said, improvising nonsense on the spot.

"Uh... I'm in this state already, Senior Lin, so spare me the teasing..." Fei Yangnian smiled bitterly.

"I'm not teasing you—can't you see they look right through me?" Wei Zhao curled his lip, then asked, "By the way, how did you get dragged in here? This place isn't anywhere near the main road. With the little strength you've got, where would you find the nerve to go blundering through the deep woods alone?"

Fei Yangnian's cultivation was only the peak of the mid Foundation Establishment stage—far from outstanding even among experts of his own level. His qualification for this ancient trial had come thanks to Wei Zhao in the first place. With strength like that, venturing into the deep woods alone was a sure recipe for being dead within minutes.

"You misunderstand, Senior Lin—where would I get that kind of nerve? I only ended up here because I was fleeing for my life and ran without looking where I was going. I thought I might catch my breath for a bit, but who knew I'd escape the wolf's den only to walk into a tiger's lair..." Fei Yangnian smiled bitterly. (To be continued.)