"What is it?" Startled, Duanmu Yu turned just in time to see a gigantic loach come sweeping across the mud at furious speed—none other than the Brain-Eating Bug, whose skull Wei Zhao had just crushed in his claw. The foul thing was still alive!

A centipede survives even when hacked to pieces; how much more so a creature like the Brain-Eating Bug, whose vitality defied all natural law. Wei Zhao even suspected it had once devoured the brain of some earthworm-type spirit beast—for even with its head gone, the remnant of its body could live on and become a brand-new, independent creature.

I underestimated it! Wei Zhao cursed inwardly. Had he finished off the body along with the head just now, there would be no trouble now. But the Five Elements Eight Trigrams Flood Dragon form had been pushed to its limit; had he forced himself to sustain it any longer, he might well have dug his own grave. He'd had no choice but to release it early—and never imagined it would leave such a lurking menace behind.

Unfortunately, realizing it now came too late. Wei Zhao's present state was not quite the depths of total exhaustion, but for the time being he truly had no strength worth speaking of. His only means of preserving his life was to revert to his primordial spirit and leave the rest to fate.

Yet that was the very last resort. In primordial-spirit form he would for the most part be immune to harm, but the moment he ran into anything that countered a primordial spirit—elixir fire, for instance—it would mean instant and utter ruin. Even at his peak Wei Zhao would never dare do such a thing rashly, and now, weak to the point of being knocked over by a single blow, he might not even need an enemy to target him; a stiff gust of wind might scatter his spirit to nothing.

A Brain-Eating Bug was a Brain-Eating Bug, after all. Beaten into a wretched wreck it might be, but this deathbed ambush still carried full force. Even at less than half its prime strength, it was quite enough to deal with an ordinary Golden Core expert.

For an instant Wei Zhao even fancied he could hear the Brain-Eating Bug's exultant shriek. If the ambush landed, it could turn the tables completely—and trigger its brain-devouring gift!

Unfortunately, it had forgotten one thing: Duanmu Yu might be a mere, unremarkable Foundation Establishment cultivator at the great perfection stage, but this woman's methods were nothing like as feeble as her cultivation tier suggested.

BOOM! An iron leaf blocked the Brain-Eating Bug's ambush solidly at the final instant, and with such force that it flung the creature rebounding backward. One Leaf as a Mountain!

Yet the enemy's strike was simply too powerful. Duanmu Yu too was sent flying, and even so she did not forget to look after Wei Zhao on her back—twisting her body over before they hit the mud so that she landed beneath and he above. She wound up face-first in the muck, her whole face plastered with mud.

"Why go to such lengths?" Wei Zhao was somewhat moved. In truth, Duanmu Yu had no need to do this at all; he could have leapt clear before they landed. It was only that doing so would have damaged his primordial spirit somewhat.

"Pfft!" Duanmu Yu spat out a mouthful of muck that had gotten up her nose, and while spitting it out with no regard for appearances at all, she said offhandedly, "It's nothing. So I ate a mouthful of mud—what's the big deal?"

"You really are a regular tomboy!" Wei Zhao said from the heart.

"Tomboy? What's that supposed to mean?" Duanmu Yu frowned.

"The young lady is truly a stout fellow," Wei Zhao rephrased himself.

At that, Duanmu Yu laughed out loud, not taking it to heart at all. She knit her brows and kept wary watch on the Brain-Eating Bug, that thing that would not lie down and die. That One Leaf as a Mountain just now had been her strongest effort, and even so she had not been able to outmatch a Brain-Eating Bug reduced to this sorry state—the gap between them was truly frightening.

And that was not all. The most troublesome part was that the Brain-Eating Bug had now become wholly a loach, burrowing silently through the thick mud—so deep that even spiritual sense could not detect it.

Mud could, to a great extent, counter spiritual perception. Wei Zhao had learned that much back on Cloud-Tier Island, when he had relied on exactly this to evade the spiritual-sense lock of the Old Western Mountain Sect. The two kinds of mud were not comparable, but the effect was much the same—and Duanmu Yu's spiritual sense at her level was not strong to begin with, so failing to find the Brain-Eating Bug was only natural.

Had Wei Zhao not been reduced to the present state of utter weakness, his powerful spiritual sense might well have been able to lock onto the Brain-Eating Bug. But that was pure hypothetical—as things stood he was barely holding his primordial spirit together on the strength of the Sacred Water Pearl, and to force out his spiritual sense in search of the Brain-Eating Bug would be self-mutilation. Suicidal, even.

"Let's go," Wei Zhao said with a sigh. The river water had been creeping up all this while, already nearly over their calves, and the sense of foreboding in his heart was growing stronger by the moment. His instinct told him that if they did not retreat to the bank at once, something truly terrible was going to happen.

"But..." Duanmu Yu knew things were looking bad as well. The Brain-Eating Bug was hiding somewhere unknown, but of one thing she could be certain: if she went on trying to harvest the Spirit-Sense Grass, it would definitely ambush her again. She had just used Leaf-Fall Knows Autumn twice in a row and One Leaf as a Mountain once—her true qi had been drawn down considerably, and she might not be able to withstand another round.

To withdraw was the wisest course.

But the Spirit-Sense Grass was right before her eyes, within reach, and to give it up like this would be a shocking waste—perhaps a regret for a lifetime!

"While there's life, there's hope; this Spirit-Sense Grass grows here and won't run off. Once I've recovered, we'll simply come back for it—one extra day of waiting is all it takes," Wei Zhao consoled her.

The words smacked somewhat of self-deception. The Spirit-Sense Grass did indeed grow here and could not run off on its own—but who was to say the Brain-Eating Bug had no interest in it? Once they left, it might very well swallow the thing in a single gulp.

"All right," Duanmu Yu said at last, reason conquering impulse. Her mind made up, she turned without hesitation and carried Wei Zhao back toward the bank.

The two had expected the Brain-Eating Bug to leap out and bar their way, incorrigible as ever, but not a stir came from the mud. Whether it had already fled far away, or was still lurking there in the muck, eyeing them hungrily, they could not tell.

Then, unexpectedly, a figure came speeding toward them from the distant bank, and when they could make out the face, both Duanmu Yu and Wei Zhao felt their hearts lurch at once: the newcomer was Xue Jianming!

No one could have imagined running into this thing, at this time, in this place!

"Well, well, you two certainly got together quickly enough. Broad daylight and all—aren't you worried about offending public decency? You two are remarkably uninhibited, truly fucking romantic!" Xue Jianming said, sizing up Wei Zhao and Duanmu Yu with a sidelong, mocking glance.

"Watch your mouth!" Duanmu Yu's eyes went wide at once. Tomboy she might be, but that did not mean she held her reputation as a woman cheap; if she let Xue Jianming run his mouth unchecked, then she and Wei Zhao would never be able to clear their names even by leaping into the Yellow River.