Chapter 2227 — Being Hosted

The whole way there, he had been healing himself on the Great Fire Lion's back, so by now his injuries were already half mended.

"Thank you all!" Wei Zhao said with heartfelt gratitude.

Had the Great and Little Fire Lions not appeared so suddenly, Wei Zhao truly would not have known what to do. This confrontation had been more than a little risky!

Still, it was not that Wei Zhao lacked patience. The spirit beast's essence core had merely been the fuse; judging by Tagan Long's attitude toward Sun Jingyan, a clash between the two had been inevitable sooner or later. And once Tagan Long went back and brought stronger experts down on him, it was better to take the risk now.

"No need for thanks. You are the savior of my Fire Lion clan — you saved the Little Fire Lion, and for that you suffered an attack from the Tagan family. It is we, the Fire Lion clan, who owe you!" The Great Fire Lion spoke, and what stunned Wei Zhao was that it actually understood human speech and could speak it!

When that voice sounded, Wei Zhao was astonished beyond words, and beside him Sun Jingyan and the Thunder Pig were also staring wide-eyed, hardly able to believe it.

The Thunder Pig could write to communicate, which was already marvelous enough, but who would have thought the Great Fire Lion could actually speak human language? That felt even more like a dream.

"Some ancient spirit beasts that have stepped into the Heaven Rank have the aptitude to speak human tongue. There is nothing strange about it," the Great Fire Lion said with a shake of its head, seeing the amazement on Wei Zhao and the others' faces. "This little thing beside you is quite formidable too. When it reaches Heaven Rank strength, it should be able to speak as well."

Hearing the Great Fire Lion's explanation, Wei Zhao finally understood. He had never expected the Great Fire Lion to be a Heaven Rank spirit beast — he had overlooked that before.

"You are a Heaven Rank spirit beast? Then you must be able to contend with Heaven Rank experts?" Wei Zhao looked at the Great Fire Lion in surprise.

"It cannot be put quite that way. Spirit beasts do, to some extent, stand ahead of human cultivators, but as the ranks climb higher, that advantage shrinks ever smaller," the Great Fire Lion explained. "Take us attacking-type spirit beasts: at Yellow Rank we can already hold our own against early Heaven Rank experts, but by the time we reach early Heaven Rank ourselves, we can only contend with mid-to-late Heaven Rank experts. And if both are at the peak of late Heaven Rank, who wins and who loses is anyone's guess."

"Oh? There is such a theory?" Wei Zhao was greatly surprised to hear it.

"Naturally. It is much like the distinction between external-school and internal-school cultivators among you humans. Before the peak of late Heaven Rank, internal-school cultivators always hold the advantage, always a step ahead of external-school cultivators of the same rank. But once the peak of late Heaven Rank is reached, many external-school cultivators gain the upper hand!" The Great Fire Lion nodded and went on: "Take skills like Iron Fist or the Golden Bell Shield — if cultivated to the very peak of late Heaven Rank, to the utmost extreme, then a Golden Bell Shield cultivator, it may be said, cannot be matched by any internal-school expert at the peak of late Heaven Rank, because no one can kill him!"

"So formidable!" Wei Zhao was dumbfounded. He had never imagined that the Golden Bell Sect and the like might hold the potential to stand at the very summit of the martial world.

"Of course, for external-school cultivators, the higher one goes, the harder it is to advance," the Great Fire Lion said. "Those who can cultivate external skills to the utmost extreme — in the thousand years I have lived, the only ones I know of are two men who appeared in the jianghu some dozen years ago... one attacking, one defending, working in perfect accord. Those two could be called invincible in this world! They had both cultivated external skills to the extreme: one akin to Iron Fist, of boundless strength, unstoppable and ever-victorious; the other akin to the Golden Bell Shield and Iron Shirt, body firm as iron, impervious to blade and spear, untouched by water or fire! The only ones who could shake those two, I fear, are the legendary Heaven Dao experts..."

"Heaven Dao?" Wei Zhao drew a deep breath at the term. He had heard it mentioned now and then before, but had never had a clear answer.

"Legend says that the rank above Heaven Rank is called Heaven Dao... so it is for human cultivators, and so it is for us spirit beast cultivators. But no one has ever seen with their own eyes anyone who reached that rank... it is all legend," the Great Fire Lion said.

"Then... what of those two men?" Wei Zhao asked, curious. He had not expected such formidable external-school experts to exist in this world.

"They vanished. And vanishing together with them were a great many experts at the peak of late Heaven Rank from all the various sects and schools..." the Great Fire Lion said. "Since then, the rules of the jianghu have changed a great deal... but those people never returned."

"A great many experts at the peak of late Heaven Rank?" Wei Zhao frowned, thinking of his own vanished master, and of the master of that little candy girl. Could they all have been among that group that disappeared together?

And was his own master one of those experts at the peak of late Heaven Rank? What exactly had happened in all this?

Still, regarding his master's disappearance, Old Man Wei must surely know some of the secrets of those years. Yet he said not a word of it, only telling Wei Zhao that the time was not yet right, and that knowing too much would do no good. And Wei Zhao understood well enough: once Old Man Wei decided not to speak, no amount of asking would get it out of him!

And he was simply no match for Old Man Wei anyway. The old fellow was strange indeed — it seemed that whenever Wei Zhao grew stronger, he grew stronger too. No matter what level Wei Zhao cultivated to, he could not withstand a single punch from the old man, who could blast him clear off the Western Star Mountain with one blow...

Now that he thought about it, he was already a mid Earth Rank expert. He wondered whether he could give the old man a fight now.

Wei Zhao shook his head. The old man and his master really were both unfathomable figures...

"Heh, this is merely jianghu hearsay. It is only that the Wulonghaote Mountains where I live — the upper range of those mountains — was once the seat of an ancient sect, so I happen to know a little more. In truth, I do not know the specifics either — where they went, what they did, of these things I know nothing," the Great Fire Lion said. "At least, I have never heard anyone speak of them again..."

"Very well." Wei Zhao nodded, then suddenly thought of something very important: "You said the upper range of these mountains was once an ancient sect?"

"Yes, though it is no longer," the Great Fire Lion said.

"What kind of ancient sect was it?" Wei Zhao asked.

"That I must beg leave not to say more of. This ancient sect once did my Fire Lion clan a kindness, and of their affairs I cannot speak to you," the Great Fire Lion said with a shake of its head. "Just as you are a benefactor of our Fire Lion clan — if anyone asked us the particulars of your affairs, I too would have nothing to tell them."

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