"Senior Sister Duanmu, you're safe and sound too—thank goodness." Fei Yangnian hurriedly bobbed and scraped in greeting, but the very next moment he saw the Sleeping Lotus Guardian crawling out behind the two of them, and his eyes went wide as saucers. With a shriek he turned and ran.

After a few steps, though, he realized no one was chasing him. He glanced back and saw Wei Zhao and Duanmu Yu studying him with strange expressions, while the Sleeping Lotus Guardian stood meekly behind them. Only then did Fei Yangnian catch on. Scratching his head awkwardly, he asked with a sheepish grin, "This is...?"

"A new recruit of mine," Wei Zhao said offhandedly, making it up as he went.

Duanmu Yu found it amusing; the Sleeping Lotus Guardian was furious but dared not speak out. I was merely trapped by you, it thought—when did I become your recruit?

Fei Yangnian, of course, knew nothing of the truth behind it, and at these words he was filled with sudden awe. He had never witnessed such near-unstoppable marvels as the Mirror Flower and Water Moon or the Ancient Well Without Ripples, but the Sleeping Lotus Guardian was the leader of all the spirit beasts present—a mighty being he could only look up to. That Wei Zhao could subdue even such an existence as this proved his vast and wondrous powers!

"A true elder is a true elder—formidable indeed!" Fei Yangnian hastily plastered on a look of utter, prostrate admiration, then sidled over to the Sleeping Lotus Guardian and fawned, "Greetings, Brother Spirit Beast. My name is Fei Yangnian. From now on we're comrades on the same road—I'll be counting on your kind care."

"Trash," the Sleeping Lotus Guardian snorted with immense disdain, turning its head away and refusing to bother with such a specimen. If it weren't under someone else's thumb, Fei Yangnian would have been crushed to death by a single finger the moment he dared come sidling up like that.

Fei Yangnian came away with a snout full of dust, yet he felt no embarrassment at all; he simply turned and went on currying favor with Wei Zhao. Wei Zhao was the real pillar of support—so long as he pleased Wei Zhao, everything else would follow.

He hovered about Wei Zhao, attending him before and behind, exhausting every art of flattery, until even Duanmu Yu beside them could stand it no longer. Frowning, she said, "Aren't you tired of this?"

"Uh..." Fei Yangnian could only smile bitterly. He didn't want to be like this either, but if he didn't flatter and fawn, what if Wei Zhao found him a burden and cast him off? In this deep mountain forest crawling with danger, how would he survive?

"All right, save your effort. We don't go in for that sort of thing around here. If you want to tag along, tag along—just don't make trouble for me," Wei Zhao said with a curl of his lip. He did not regard Fei Yangnian as one of his own, and his trust in the man did not even match his trust in Duanmu Yu—after all, the latter at least counted as a friend in life and death. Still, he was not so hard-hearted as to abandon Fei Yangnian; if the man wanted to follow, then let him follow.

Meanwhile, just as the Sleeping Lotus Guardian had said earlier, Leng Leng and the others had run into no small trouble: a gigantic black mantis fully two men tall blocked their path.

"A Golden Core spirit beast!" Leng Leng hastily shielded Qiu Lingshan and the others behind her. Sensing the fierce, terrifying aura emanating from the creature, her heart could not help but lurch.

They had been traveling for days on end. Along the way they had encountered five or six more spirit beasts, large and small, blocking their path, and now everyone, Leng Leng included, was in poor shape. Their stamina, true qi, and spirit had all been worn down to a certain degree—especially Ying Ziyu, who had been wounded in a close-quarters, split-second exchange with a mid-Foundation-Establishment spirit beast last time and still had not recovered.

That time, though, it could not be blamed entirely on Ying Ziyu's recklessness; the situation had truly been desperate. The group had been set upon by two spirit beasts at once, and if she had not fought desperately to buy Leng Leng and the others time, whether any of them would have lived was anyone's guess. One could only say that this land of the Primeval Trials was far too perilous. Without Wei Zhao's protection, every moment they stood here was a gamble; if they could fight their way out alive, every one of them would surely be reborn anew.

And not only Ying Ziyu—Qiu Lingshan and the others had all taken their share of scrapes. To run into a gigantic black mantis comparable to a Golden Core cultivator at a time like this, even if it was only the weakest early-Golden-Core, was absolutely a matter of life and death.

"What do we do?" Everyone looked to Leng Leng as one. She was the strongest among them, and over the past few days she had shown enough decisiveness and responsibility. They already trusted her deeply; even if they did not follow her every word, in a critical moment her word was absolute.

"Kill!" Leng Leng spat out the word with ferocity, and her whole bearing shifted with it, faintly taking on an air of iron and blood. Her delicate frame stood without hesitation before the black mantis, yielding not an inch.

"Kill! Kill! Kill!" Qiu Lingshan and the others roared in unison, and their auras seemed invisibly to fuse into a single whole. The defensive formation Wei Zhao had taught them had been mere show a few days ago, but now it had taken on real shape; live combat between life and death is the surest spur to progress—that saying was indeed no lie.

"Huff, huff—a pack of ant-like human dregs dares to challenge me? Where do you get the nerve?" The black mantis's insect face showed no expression, but its contempt and mockery were plain. It did not regard Leng Leng and the others as worth a glance.

"Just a mantis, and it's got quite the mouth on it," Wu Chengtian said with a grin.

"You can't put it that way—there's some basis for its arrogance. After all, it's no small feat for a mere mantis to grow this big; no telling how much filth it ate to absorb so much nourishment!" Fatso Lai chimed in with a chuckle.

"Exactly. A mantis this big is still pretty frightening to look at. From its voice it sounds like a male—later on, its wedding night will be the night it dies; by their custom the bride eats the groom. How tragic, how very tragic!" The rest of Yu Bing and the others joined in the ribbing. Facing a powerful foe, tension was inevitable; this was their way of easing the mood, lest they be too nervous later and blunder in the confusion.

"Nonsense! You're talking about ordinary mantises. I am the exalted Mantis King—how could a female mantis possibly eat me!" The black mantis was stung into a fury by their teasing and, forgetting its contempt and mockery, immediately swung its two scythe-like forelimbs and charged.

At first glance its speed did not seem great, but its body was long and its stride enormous—three steps alone carried it across a hundred feet. Dropping from above, it came before Leng Leng, and that pair of black scythe forelimbs in an instant became two black lightning bolts. Its attack was so fast that it tore a wailing shriek from the air itself, and the first to bear the brunt was Leng Leng.

"Leng Leng, look out!" the others cried in alarm. At a time like this they had to hold their formation and dared not charge in rashly; unless Leng Leng merged herself into their formation of her own accord, they could not help even if they wanted to. But that would mean she could not lightly use powerful moves like Drawing the Ground as a Prison, for fear of hurting her own people—so unless it was absolutely unavoidable, she could only face the enemy alone out there. (To be continued.)