Chapter 1756 — Night Market Sightings, Part Two: Sure Enough, a Crowd Was Gathered Before a Stall Watching the Commotion

Behind the stall stood a burly, thick-limbed fellow, and above his head hung a signboard bearing the large characters "Wang Laoba, Hunter's Specialties." Beside Wang Laoba was a butcher's block, and on it lay a jumbled heap of animal carcasses.

There were wild boar, roe deer, pheasant, and other game, but at the very front of the block, in the most conspicuous place of all, lay the carcass of a creature black as coal, something like a pheasant.

"Wang Laoba, I say—have you gone mad for money? You're calling this a black phoenix?" A young man pointed at the black pheasant's carcass and addressed the fellow called Wang Laoba.

"I checked it against the picture book. This is plainly the legendary black phoenix. If you don't want to buy it, then stand aside and watch—there's always someone who knows quality when he sees it!" Wang Laoba seemed unwilling to argue the matter with the young man, and spoke with an angry huff.

"Tsk. The black phoenix is a legendary spirit beast. I don't know what a spirit beast is either, but if it's a spirit beast, it must be formidable. With your skill, you could kill a spirit beast?" the young man retorted, unconvinced.

"I..." Wang Laoba's face fell into embarrassment, but he said, "You say it isn't, so it isn't. I'll sell it just the same—ten thousand yuan, take it or leave it! If you don't want it, I'll take it home and stew it into soup myself!"

Wei Zhao looked at the black phoenix and frowned. Wei Zhao had come out of a mountain village himself; his little brother Ergoudan's family made its living by hunting, so Wei Zhao knew a thing or two about pheasants. This thing before him was absolutely not a pheasant!

The two were somewhat alike, but absolutely not the same! What exactly it was, Wei Zhao could not say, so he could not rule out the possibility that it was a spirit beast. As for whether Wang Laoba could have killed a spirit beast, that was not so strange—a spirit beast with no attacking ability, like the Thunder Pig, was easy enough to kill. Not all spirit beasts had the power to attack.

Moreover, spirit beasts differed in strength according to their grade.

Only, Wei Zhao was somewhat puzzled: could there really be a spirit beast in these parts? Places where spirit beasts appeared were generally places where the spiritual energy of heaven and earth was extremely dense, and such places were usually occupied by sects and clans. Could there be some sect nearby?

Ten thousand yuan was not much to Wei Zhao, but to these simple mountain folk it was already an astronomical price, and so the looks they cast at Wang Laoba were mostly mocking. Most of the people nearby had come for the spectacle; there was not one who truly meant to buy.

If Wang Laoba had asked a few hundred yuan, perhaps someone would have bought it to try something new, but ten thousand yuan for a pheasant to eat was far too poor a bargain.

"This is a phoenix?" Wei Zhao spoke up and asked.

Wang Laoba had faced too much of this sort of doubt today, and had not meant to answer Wei Zhao at all, but when he looked up, Wei Zhao and his companions were plainly dressed in the clothes of a great city—out-of-town tourists for certain. His eyes lit up. Perhaps these city folk knew quality when they saw it. So, all smiles, he said, "You're tourists from out of town, aren't you?"

"That's right. That's why I'm curious." Wei Zhao nodded with a smile.

"Then that explains it. You don't know the legends we have here..." Wang Laoba said with great solemnity. "The little town we live in is called Darknight Town, and near here there is a mountain called Darknight Spirit Mountain. The outer ranges around it are called the Darknight Mountains. That's where I do my hunting."

"Darknight Spirit Mountain?" Wei Zhao was slightly startled. Why did it sound so much like the Ice-Snow Spirit Mountain? Could it truly be a place brimming with spiritual energy? At the Ice-Snow Spirit Mountain there were spirit beasts about—this Wei Zhao knew well. The white giant serpent Yang Qiqi had encountered, for instance, was a kind of spirit beast; at the very least, Wei Zhao knew of no species that matched the white giant serpent. It was a thing that was a snake and yet not a snake.

The same went for the Thunder Pig at Wei Zhao's side. Call it a pig, and yet it did not much look like one—what pig was ever so small? It was more like a chibi pig out of a comic. These were all spirit beasts that had undergone mutation, and they too lived in places rich in spiritual energy! So it was in Zhang Liju's ancient tomb as well.

"That's right. According to the old folks, long, long ago there was a sect on Darknight Spirit Mountain called Darknight Palace, a very, very formidable sect. The people there were all masters of martial arts, and they could live forever without growing old..." Wang Laoba said. "And around Darknight Palace there lived certain spirit beasts. These spirit beasts were different from ordinary wild beasts—they had spiritual intelligence, and like the people of Darknight Palace they too could become immortals... Among them the most famous was a kind of black phoenix called the Dark Phoenix. They say whoever eats the black phoenix will live forever without growing old..."

"Wang Laoba, are you trotting out the bedtime stories you tell your children to hoodwink people?" A woman selling goods at another hunter's stall beside Wang Laoba's could not resist a jab. Today Wang Laoba had bagged such a strange pheasant; though the pheasant had not sold, plenty of his other game had, and it had hurt her own business, so the woman was rather displeased.

"A fairy tale isn't necessarily untrue. Didn't you hear the same story when you were little? We grew up together as bare-bottomed brats, all listening to the popcorn-selling grandpa tell stories under the same big tree, and you believed it then too, didn't you?" Wang Laoba shot back. "And I've already said it was the old folks who told it, not something I made up myself. What are you getting so worked up for?"

"Hmph..." The woman had nothing to say, but she still gave a sniff.

"All right, Uncle Wang, why don't you go on?" Wei Zhao said with a smile. "I find it rather interesting!"

"Fine, then let's go on. They say whoever eats that black phoenix will live forever without growing old, and can even become a master of the martial arts..." Wang Laoba said.

"If it's so wonderful, why don't you eat it yourself?" The woman curled her lip in scorn.

"I... a rough fellow like me would get no use from eating it, and I wouldn't know how to eat it anyway. Better to sell it for hard cash..." Wang Laoba flushed. In truth, he did not much believe in legends and such either—otherwise, would he be offering it up for sale?

"It does sound rather good. Then we'll buy it. Can you make it a little cheaper?" Wei Zhao asked, his face betraying nothing, while in his heart a mighty storm was rising! Legends were not necessarily baseless. On Darknight Spirit Mountain there might well be a Darknight Palace!

Perhaps it was something like the Ice Palace—one of those ancient sects that simply kept no contact with the mundane world, so that people took it for a legend...

"Cheaper I can't do. I, Wang Laoba, have already made my bold claim—if it won't fetch ten thousand, I'll take it home and stew it into soup myself." Wang Laoba was one of those blunt, single-tracked men, and rather fond of saving face.