The crowd immediately began to line up. Wei Zhao, Ling Tianyou, and Bing Wushuang happened to be standing right in front of Wei Yidao. Wei Yidao, who had been struck silent by the thirty thousand spirit jades, now furrowed his brow again. "So paying thirty thousand spirit jades makes you something special? You can even cut in line ahead of me. I say, why don't the three of you just go straight in?"

It was nothing but a sarcastic gibe, but Wei Zhao glanced at him, then turned to Yu Hou and said, "Steward Yu, we can go straight in, can't we? Paying a little extra spirit jade doesn't matter."

"You may." Yu Hou was quite decisive and opened a green channel for them on the spot. Watching Wei Zhao and the other two stride off ahead, Wei Yidao's face turned livid. Unfortunately, in front of Yu Hou he did not dare so much as let out a peep, and could only swallow his anger.

Once inside the trial grounds, Ling Tianyou introduced the place to Wei Zhao and Bing Wushuang: "The terrain of this Great Snake Island is plain as day. The snake's tail is the only entrance and exit. Follow the snake's body all the way up, and eventually you'll reach the snake's head. It's just that very few people ever truly make it there. It's too hard."

"How so? If it's just about reaching the snake's head, why not simply ride a flying spirit beast over? What's so hard about that?" Wei Zhao asked curiously.

"Brother Lin, you don't know. The whole of Great Snake Island is shrouded in an extremely peculiar archaic formation. It's said to very likely be the Great Snake's own protective formation. Flying spirit beasts simply can't fly above it, and even if they force their way in, it's extremely dangerous—a near-certain death." Ling Tianyou shook his head.

"If flying spirit beasts won't do, is walking overland so hard?" Bing Wushuang asked.

"Very hard. Danger lurks everywhere along the way. Spirit beasts and traps alike can snatch the life of a fine Golden Core expert at any moment. The Great Snake Island trial is not only the most secretive trial in the Taigu minor jianghu, but also the most dangerous. Though I can't be compared to you two, by rights my strength shouldn't count as poor, should it?" Ling Tianyou asked in return.

"Not poor at all." Wei Zhao and Bing Wushuang shook their heads at the same time. Even setting aside his terrifying top-tier growth potential, Ling Tianyou's present strength alone was by no means poor; at the peak of the late Foundation Establishment stage, he was fully a match for an ordinary early Golden Core cultivator, and in theory more than capable of handling most of the Taigu minor jianghu's trials.

"Then you surely can't imagine it. On the several occasions I came here before, every single time I ran into danger dozens of times over, and every time my master had to drag me back from the edge of life and death. It's only now that I've grown familiar with the place and gained some experience, so things are a little better." Ling Tianyou smiled bitterly.

"That savage?" Even Wei Zhao could not help his eyelid twitching. He knew Ling Tianyou's strength well enough. At the peak of the late Foundation Establishment stage, the man had twice escaped from the hands of Xue Jianming, a newly ascended Nascent Soul old monster—enough to show how extraordinary he was.

That was right, twice. Once was at the end of the Taigu trial, when Wei Zhao rescued him. The other was after they returned to the Taigu minor jianghu and everyone went their separate ways. Though Ling Tianyou did not go into detail, given Xue Jianming's temperament, he could not possibly have let him off so easily—yet Ling Tianyou had still made it safely back to the Thousand Blades Sect, which showed he was no ordinary figure.

And yet a ruthless man like that had nearly been frightened into a trauma by Great Snake Island. It was truly beyond all expectation.

"Of course, with the strength you and Brother Bing possess, such dangers are nothing much—just a little care is all it takes." Ling Tianyou shook his head with a laugh. He did not know Wei Zhao's exact strength, but from Bing Wushuang's attitude he could be certain it was at least above that of an ordinary Nascent Soul old monster. A figure like that could roam the whole of the Taigu minor jianghu unhindered, let alone a mere Great Snake Island.

"Let's talk about the Spirit Consciousness Fruit. You need to tell the two of us what it looks like and what its habits are," Wei Zhao said with a smile. Though Yu Hou had just given them a cloud-and-mist spiel outside, how much of it was true and how much false was still unknown. At most, those who came in here kept a wary eye; the main focus was certainly still on the Spirit Consciousness Fruit, and Wei Zhao was no exception.

"What it actually looks like in reality, I honestly don't know either, because I've never seen one. Everything I know about the Spirit Consciousness Fruit comes from ancient texts and my master. It's said the fruit is deeply bound up with the Great Snake clan—one saying even holds that it is simply a part of the Great Snake's body. Its appearance closely resembles a snake's gall; in other words, whatever a snake's gall looks like, that's what the Spirit Consciousness Fruit looks like," Ling Tianyou explained.

"Then it should be fairly easy to identify." Wei Zhao nodded. The most hateful thing when searching for heavenly treasures was a lack of distinguishing features—something that looked no different from weeds at a glance. That was truly a headache.

"True enough, but unfortunately the Spirit Consciousness Fruit is still very hard to find." Ling Tianyou smiled bitterly and spread his hands. "All told, I've been to this place four times already. I don't know how many times I've combed it from the snake's tail to the snake's head, and to this day I've found nothing. That should tell you just how rare the Spirit Consciousness Fruit is."

"Didn't that Steward Yu say just now that there's no time limit, and that as long as you're willing you can stay here and keep searching? If you come again, you'd have to pay the entry spirit jades all over again—so why bother leaving at all?" Bing Wushuang cut in.

"The rules are indeed like that, but very few people actually do it. As for why—why don't you two feel it for yourselves?" Ling Tianyou kept them in suspense.

Wei Zhao and Bing Wushuang exchanged a glance, then for the first time seriously sensed their surroundings. After a moment, Bing Wushuang furrowed his brow slightly. "The spiritual qi concentration here is lower than outside. Strange. Logically speaking, the rarer a Taigu trial ground, the denser its spiritual qi ought to be, so as to nourish all manner of heavenly treasures. How could this place be worse than an ordinary locale?"

"This is still the snake's tail. The closer you get to the snake's head, the thinner the spiritual qi becomes. By the time you reach the snake's head, you can barely sense a trace of spiritual qi at all—no different from the mortal realm," Ling Tianyou added.

"But even if the spiritual qi is somewhat thin, surely there's nothing to stop someone from persevering if they've a mind to?" Bing Wushuang was puzzled. When it came to thin spiritual qi, nowhere could compare to the mortal realm, that veritable graveyard of spiritual qi. True, everyone's daily cultivation was inseparable from spiritual qi, but if one truly set one's mind to it, one could endure in the mortal realm itself until the seas ran dry—let alone here on Great Snake Island.

"It's not just a matter of spiritual qi…" Wei Zhao shook his head, sensing the surroundings. "Besides the spiritual qi, there's an extremely faint, extremely thin rank odor in this place. What exactly it is, I don't yet know, but staying here too long will likely lead to chronic poisoning. Am I wrong?"