The thing had deliberately concocted the banner of the River of Divine Consciousness, using the tempering of divine consciousness as bait to lure in cultivators from the small world of antiquity. Since these cultivators had already reached the stage of tempering their divine consciousness, their primordial spirits had more or less begun to take shape—yet they were not overly strong. To it, they were simply pastries delivered to its door, one bite apiece.

Think of those people from the Primordial Alliance, each of them brimming with enthusiasm, scheming every which way to reach the River of Divine Consciousness. Along the way they had to face a whole host of formidable blocking spirit beasts; the weaker ones became offerings on the spot, while even the stronger ones, after untold hardships in threading through the territories of those beasts and finally arriving at the River of Divine Consciousness, gained not the slightest benefit—instead, they had delivered themselves to the Nine Infants' maw, dying even faster than the offerings. How was anyone supposed to swallow that?

Had they not heard it this very moment from the Nine Infants' own mouth, the two of them would never in a thousand years have imagined that the legendary River of Divine Consciousness was in truth a thoroughgoing hoax!

Of course, if one took the divine consciousness grass into account, the rumor about tempering divine consciousness could not be called an outright lie. Unfortunately, few in the entire small world of antiquity knew of this. Among those who had entered for this trial, apart from Duanmu Yu, there was only Xue Jianming; everyone else, one presumed, had been kept in the dark from first to last.

"A single empty phrase, and it becomes a trap that invites the gentleman into the jar. Truly, sir, you have a fine hand for schemes," Wei Zhao could not help but exclaim.

It was plainly nothing but a simple lie, yet because of its great age there was no way to verify it, and so it had become an almost unsolvable trap. The crux was that the vast majority never learned the truth even unto death, and no one in the outside world had ever managed to expose it either. Thus the River of Divine Consciousness remained a legend that set hearts yearning, and the cultivators of the small world of antiquity still came on in wave after wave, like moths to a flame.

"A trifle!" So it said, but every one of the Nine Infants' serpent faces clearly bore the word "smug." Then it went on: "The things I've devised over these years are far more interesting than that. Come, come—it's rare to meet a human toy like you, so today I simply must try them out to my heart's content!"

Seeing the other so unable to wait, Wei Zhao was somewhat at a loss for words. Setting aside for the moment that the other was the ferocious and terrifying Nine Infants, why did he suddenly have the distinct impression of being trapped in a cave with the old mischief-maker Zhou Botong?

"Hold on—didn't you say you still have a guardian and an envoy? Their strength far surpasses ordinary spirit beasts, and surely among so many beast underlings a few must stand out. Can't they spar with you?" Wei Zhao asked instead, making conversation to stall for time, so as to drain the last bit of divine consciousness energy from the Star Ink Charcoal. Every fraction of strength recovered was another fraction of a chance at survival.

"No, no. You mustn't be fooled by those beasts' humanlike looks—they're all dregs, far too weak. One blow and they're dead." The Nine Infants shook its heads again and again, then continued: "My guardian can churn out clones without end, but the clones are too weak—a casual blow shatters them. It makes no difference whether the move is fierce or not; there's no way to test its true power. And its clones aren't unlimited either. Strike them too often and one day it may well scatter to the winds, and then I'd be short a right hand."

Just as the Nine Infants said, the Water Lily Guardian's clones could flow forth endlessly, but they were hardly strong. Even the Wei Zhao of before could have crushed them with ease, and to an existence like the Nine Infants they were even more fragile—utterly worthless for testing.

"Isn't there still an envoy?" Wei Zhao pressed on, still stalling.

"It's no good either. It's far thicker-skinned than the guardian and can block ordinary attacks, but that's all. Last time I struck only slightly too hard and nearly killed it—it slept for several hundred years before barely coming back to life. Of all these spirit beasts, those two are the only ones I value. I can't just up and kill them..." The Nine Infants' tone was full of relief.

Though it did not much care for its other beast underlings, it prized the Water Lily and the Brain-Eating Worm above all. After all, when it came to racial talent, even if those two could not match it, they were still uniquely endowed—one in a myriad.

Hearing this, Duanmu Yu glanced at Wei Zhao and could not help muttering inwardly: of your two right hands, one has already been taken by Wei Zhao, and the other has been beaten half to death and left in a sorry state. No wonder you're looking for Wei Zhao as a sparring partner...

"All right, enough idle talk. I'd guess you humans have about recovered by now, haven't you?" the Nine Infants said suddenly.

It was no fool; it knew Wei Zhao was stalling to recover in secret. But in its eyes Wei Zhao was at most a somewhat amusing toy—it never truly took him to heart, much less regarded him with caution. On the contrary, the more Wei Zhao's strength recovered, the happier it became. After all, that made him all the more durable!

"More or less." Wei Zhao nodded frankly. By now the last lingering trace of divine consciousness energy in the Star Ink Charcoal had been wholly absorbed. Though he had not returned to his peak, he had recovered some seventy or eighty percent.

"Good, then let's begin. First, something simple for you—a dual phase of water and fire." As the words fell, two of the Nine Infants' heads each spewed a stream of exceedingly pure energy: one black water, one crimson fire.

The moment the two energies left its mouths, they swiftly entwined about each other, and then forcibly fused into a single whole in which water and fire could no longer be told apart—truly an eye-opening sight.

"Mutual overcoming, mutual generation?" Wei Zhao was slightly taken aback at the sight. The question of how water and fire overcome and generate one another had been debated without end since ancient times, and the cultivation world had produced countless techniques and martial arts built upon that very notion. Conjuring similar moves was nothing remarkable—but to achieve the seamless perfection of the Nine Infants was exceedingly rare. Worthy indeed of an old monster left over from the age of antiquity!

"This is no mere mutual overcoming and generation. Experience it carefully—there's a surprise in store!" The Nine Infants was full of anticipation. This time it truly meant only to test its moves on Wei Zhao; it had fused not just two energies, and it had slowed the pace considerably, all so that Wei Zhao might see clearly and understand. Otherwise, if it had gone at it in earnest, Wei Zhao would have been killed before he knew what hit him—and would that not have been a thorough spoiling of the fun?

Before the words had quite faded, there came a boom—the rear half of that fused water-and-fire energy suddenly exploded away, and by the propulsive force of the blast its speed abruptly doubled.