"Soul-Snatching Hand?" The very term sent an inexplicable chill down Duanmu Yu's spine, and she could not help saying, "That sounds like a technique of the evil cultivators, doesn't it?"

"Exactly. It was an evil cultivator's technique to begin with. I was once hunted on Cloud Terrace Island by an exceptionally powerful evil-cultivator magnate, and he meant to use the Soul-Snatching Hand to confine my primordial spirit and then fashion me into a puppet." Wei Zhao laughed as he spoke. The man he referred to was none other than Xishan Jiuzong.

"If it is the craft of an evil-cultivator magnate, then how do you know it too? Don't tell me you're an evil cultivator yourself?" Duanmu Yu instinctively took a step back. Beings of that kind were not confined to Cloud Terrace Island; the Little World of Antiquity had them as well, and there too they were the target of every hand.

"Do you take me for an evil cultivator?" Wei Zhao was somewhat at a loss for words.

"No." Duanmu Yu shook her head without hesitation. She had seen with her own eyes everything Wei Zhao did; his methods might be unfathomable, but they were a world apart from those of the evil cultivators. If even Wei Zhao counted as one, then evil cultivators would be as common as the sea itself.

"There you have it, then," Wei Zhao said, curling his lip.

"But if you are not an evil cultivator, how do you come to know the techniques of a master of that path?" Duanmu Yu asked, perplexed.

"The Soul-Snatching Hand left a deep impression on me. As it happened, I have been in a primordial-spirit state all this while, and as luck would have it, I ran into a bottleneck. Idle time is idle time, so I began to feel my way through all sorts of random consciousness techniques. I suppose I reaped a little something for my trouble," Wei Zhao said.

"So you learned the Soul-Snatching Hand?" Duanmu Yu was dumbstruck. She had witnessed Wei Zhao's astonishing insight when he dealt with the Sleeping Lotus Guardian, but in her understanding, even the most gifted of top-tier prodigies had to study any martial technique systematically from the ground up. Who ever heard of someone watching a technique used once and then working it out on his own?

Her understanding was not exactly wrong—at least, it held absolutely true for the Little World of Antiquity. After all, the finest masters there were no more than Nascent Soul old monsters. Compared to schools in the secular world, that was junior-high level at best. Still merely at the foundational stage, students of that tier naturally needed to learn step by step; no matter how prodigious, they could not conjure anything new.

But Wei Zhao was different. His true body was that of a Mystic Ascension master—one capable of obliterating an Opening Mountain magnate in an instant. A prodigy among prodigies. Even if he did not quite count as a proper university student, he was at the very least a high-schooler.

Different tier, different horizon. A junior-high prodigy could at most learn quickly and well, whereas a high-school prodigy had already reached the level where, given a single answer, he could work backward and derive the full solution to an entire problem set.

"I wouldn't say I've fully learned it. At most I've caught a glimpse of the door and felt out a few paths in." Wei Zhao spoke modestly, though it was no lie either, for what he had worked out was at best a crippled version of the Soul-Snatching Hand, its power far inferior to the terrifying might of Xishan Jiuzong. Not only could it not affect targets above the Foundation Establishment stage, but more importantly, every use inflicted a severe backlash upon his own primordial spirit. Were it not for the water bead that specifically nursed the primordial spirit, Wei Zhao would never have dared use it carelessly.

Even so, Duanmu Yu was struck speechless with astonishment. What kind of freak was this?

"You... why are you willing to tell me all this?" Duanmu Yu asked, hesitating. Not only the Soul-Snatching Hand of the present, but the jade-space of before as well—these were Wei Zhao's secrets. By the customary rules of the cultivation world, unless one were the closest and dearest of intimates, one would sooner die than divulge them to an outsider. So why had he taken the initiative to tell her?

"Hmm..." Wei Zhao gave it serious thought. Then he shrugged indifferently. "No particular reason. I simply feel you're a fairly reliable sort, so it came over me on a whim."

"You really trust me that much?" Duanmu Yu could not help but marvel.

"And shouldn't you be worth trusting?" Wei Zhao countered.

Duanmu Yu was stymied for a good while. At length she shook her head wordlessly. "I truly cannot see through you."

The greater one's power reaches the heavens, the deeper one's scheming—such is human nature. Yet in Wei Zhao's case it was entirely otherwise. The fellow seemed born by nature to break all common sense; whatever he did was so unexpected, so subversive of everything one knew.

"If I were so easily seen through, wouldn't that be trouble?" Wei Zhao chuckled. As he spoke, the water bead in his hand had imperceptibly dried up altogether—or more precisely, been absorbed by him. Wei Zhao rose to his feet at once, brimming with vigor, his whole condition far more radiant than before he was injured. Not only were his wounds fully healed, but by the look of it he had even improved somewhat.

Still, it was only a slight improvement. He was still a hundred and eight thousand li away from breaking through the barrier of Foundation Establishment Great Perfection.

"Tsk, tsk. This water bead really is a fine thing. If the Kappa clan hadn't been all but exterminated by that bastard the Sleeping Lotus Guardian, I might have gotten my hands on a few more. What a pity," Wei Zhao said with regret.

"Don't you still have a Holy Water Bead?" Duanmu Yu glanced at him.

Now that the Sleeping Lotus Guardian had fallen into Wei Zhao's hands, the Holy Water Bead on its person had naturally passed to Wei Zhao as well. It had hoped to haggle with the bead, to buy back its freedom thereby, but trapped in the jade space it had no such standing at all. Wei Zhao had but to think, and the Holy Water Bead was fished out—what did it have left to haggle with?

"True, but it's still a great pity, isn't it?" Wei Zhao gave his hand a flick and produced the Holy Water Bead, turning it over and over as he examined it closely. The crack was regrettable, but a flaw did not obscure the virtue; the pure, holy essence radiating from within was still intoxicating.

"One Holy Water Bead is worth at least dozens, even a hundred, ordinary water beads. You really are greedy," Duanmu Yu remarked. She harbored no designs on the Holy Water Bead—her need for such a thing was far less pressing than Wei Zhao's—and besides, it was the spoils of subduing the Sleeping Lotus Guardian. By both sentiment and reason, it belonged to Wei Zhao alone.

"Everyone in this world is greedy. What's so strange about me being a little greedy too?" Wei Zhao smiled, then gazed at the Holy Water Bead and muttered thoughtfully, "If an ordinary water bead can heal my wounds and leave me improved besides, then with a Holy Water Bead—might it help me break through the barrier and advance to the Golden Core stage?"

"You want to advance to Golden Core?" Duanmu Yu was astonished all over again.

"And don't you?" Wei Zhao countered.

"Of course I do. But even someone as profoundly capable as you—you run into bottlenecks too?" Duanmu Yu still found it incredible. After all she had witnessed, Wei Zhao seemed to her utterly unfathomable. She had assumed that if he set his mind to it, advancing to Golden Core would be as natural as water flowing into a channel. How could he, like any ordinary cultivator, run up against a bottleneck? (To be continued.)