At such a horrifying speed, whatever the body might be—even a slab of the softest tofu—it would already have become a weapon of utter terror. There is a saying: speed is force. The destructive power of light speed is beyond imagination, and near-light speed is no different.

A near-light-speed attack was not merely dreadful; the crux was that it left no room to dodge. Essentially, once it locked on, it might as well have already struck. Fortunately, the Nine Infants' water-and-fire energy had accelerated gradually; otherwise, Wei Zhao would not even have had time to react.

Even so, Wei Zhao could not fully evade it by blasting true qi. At this rate, a bloody hole was bound to be punched through his body.

Yet Wei Zhao was not so foolish as to insist on meeting the blow head-on. The instant he saw things turn grim, he transformed into his primordial spirit—and so the near-light-speed water-and-fire energy pierced clean through his primordial spirit, and then absolutely nothing happened.

"Ai ya!" The Nine Infants let slip a human curse with perfect naturalness. It had been looking forward to a fine show of what became of Wei Zhao after being struck, only to find its opponent playing dirty like this. If he turned into a primordial spirit, what the hell was there left to test?

At that moment Wei Zhao shifted back into his primordial-spirit form and said with a curl of his lip, "What kind of bizarre move is this? Crackle-crackle, like a string of firecrackers—do you think it's New Year's?"

Despite his words, he had to admit the creature's wild imagination really had something to it. The buildup to that move had been a bit cumbersome, but if it could be refined, the terrifying near-light speed at the end alone would be enough to make it an invincible killing technique.

"What the hell is a string of firecrackers?" the Nine Infants muttered, shook its head, and went on, "Again!"

This time it switched to another move, also a strange one born of wild imagination—and in the end Wei Zhao dodged it all the same.

"You turn into a primordial spirit every single time—what the hell is there left to test!" The Nine Infants was furious now. Its moves could only work against physical bodies; against a primordial spirit it had no recourse at all. After all, it was itself a primordial spirit—if it truly devised a move targeting primordial spirits, it would be the first to be hurt.

In other words, no matter how powerful the move, no matter whether it could be dodged, so long as Wei Zhao turned into a primordial spirit, the whole bellyful of novel techniques became mere decoration. This was outright cheating!

"I'm not stupid. Knowing full well I can't dodge, would I still take it head-on? How much water do you think has flooded my brain?" Wei Zhao retorted matter-of-factly.

"Then how about this: as long as you cooperate and spar with me properly, I promise to let her go!" The Nine Infants rolled its eyes and proposed, pointing at Duanmu Yu off to the side.

But Wei Zhao shook his head and said indifferently, "No need. I don't need you to release her—I can take her out of here just the same."

"Insolent boasting!" The Nine Infants did not believe a word of such nonsense and immediately made ready to give Duanmu Yu a proper taste of suffering as punishment. But before it could act, Wei Zhao across from it struck first.

Not a true-qi bomb, nor the five-element killing qi—Wei Zhao knew well that attacks of that caliber were useless against the Nine Infants. But he had one means that absolutely restrained primordial spirits: pill fire.

Ordinary fire-type attacks had little effect on powerful primordial spirits, and in this extremely bizarre underwater environment, fire attacks, if not entirely unusable, would at least be greatly restricted. Pill fire was different. Ordinary water simply could not extinguish it, and above all it was the natural bane of all primordial spirits.

A blob of pill fire was flung onto one of the Nine Infants' heads in the blink of an eye. The Nine Infants howled in agony, and that head was scorched black in an instant—a thoroughly sorry sight.

What rather disappointed Wei Zhao, however, was that the pill fire's damage seemed only to cause it searing pain, not enough to inflict real injury.

After all, the gap in their power levels was too great. Wei Zhao was still only at the Great Perfection of Foundation Establishment, while his opponent, able to be master to the Water Lily Guardian and the Brain-Eating Worm, must be at least at the Nascent Soul stage. Moreover, it was currently in a primordial-spirit body state; though it feared pill fire, its endurance was far better than that of a pure primordial spirit.

"You actually know pill fire?" The Nine Infants was stunned. Its opponent was plainly a primordial spirit too—it would never in a thousand deaths have guessed that Wei Zhao possessed such a means as pill fire. It had taken him for a harmless little rabbit, and now all at once the fellow turned out to be a big bad wolf. Luckily its own cultivation was deep; otherwise it would have been in serious trouble!

"I'm an alchemist, after all, big or small. Would it make sense if I didn't know pill fire?" Wei Zhao countered with a half-smile.

"You're an alchemist?" It was not only the Nine Infants who was shocked; even Duanmu Yu at the side wore a look of astonishment. Alchemists were a rare profession even on Cloud Terrace Island, and all the more so in the small world of antiquity.

"Genuine article, no fakes." Wei Zhao grinned.

"No wonder!" Duanmu Yu finally understood. No wonder Wei Zhao had been so free-handed before, casually producing piles of pills to give away—so all those pills had been refined by his own hand. The man was practically a walking pill dispensary.

"Hmph, don't think knowing pill fire makes you something special. At your level, that pill fire of yours is no more than scratching an itch to me!" The Nine Infants' face clearly could not hold itself together. From the very start it had looked down on Wei Zhao as a toy; now to be slapped in the face by its toy—how could it bear that?

"Is that so? Then I'll reluctantly scratch you a few more times." As Wei Zhao spoke, he casually slapped two more streaks of pill fire onto its face. The Nine Infants' body was enormous, and perhaps because of its invincible loneliness, its control over this primordial-spirit body was noticeably sluggish; unable to dodge in time, it again suffered two heavy blows. It said it was only an itch, but to be scratched into howling—truly, there was no one else like it.

"Boy, don't push your luck!" The Nine Infants was finally provoked to rage. Though three consecutive hits of pill fire had only caused it pain without any injury to sinew or bone, it was still thoroughly annoyed—and above all, thoroughly humiliated. To be slapped in the face again and again with pill fire by a mere human—just whose toy was whose here?

"Courtesy demands reciprocity. Since you want to test your new moves on me, naturally I can test my pill fire on you. Fair and reasonable—how is that pushing my luck?" Wei Zhao grinned. Taking a beating passively had never been his style. If he were truly being crushed one-sidedly by his opponent's power, that would be one thing—but the key was that he had run into the Nine Infants' primordial spirit, and he just happened to know pill fire. What more was there to say? (To be continued.)