This was the grand move he had painstakingly held in reserve the whole way here; as for mightier ultimate techniques like the Thunder Burial, in his present condition he simply could not unleash them at all. Yet even a small dan-fire true-qi bomb, caught completely off guard, was more than enough to give Sun Baimei and Fei Yangsheng a proper drubbing.

Sure enough, Sun Baimei and Fei Yangsheng had no chance to react whatsoever; they were blasted straight backward, and when they clambered to their feet both faces were streaked with blood—a truly wretched and bedraggled sight.

"Waaaah! I'm furious!" Sun Baimei stamped his feet and cursed in a rage. The injuries were beside the point—after all, neither he nor Fei Yangsheng had been standing especially close, so at the moment they merely looked pitiful; the actual damage was not grave. The real issue was that the duck he had thought cooked had flown out of the pot the very moment the lid was lifted. How could he not be frantic?!

Cursing in a fury on one side, he gritted his teeth and gave chase again on the other. This time Sun Baimei and Fei Yangsheng were truly ruthless; they even brought out all manner of trump cards they had kept buried at the bottom of their chests, determined to stop Wei Zhao at any cost.

Yet what astonished them beyond measure was that even with their speed pushed to its limit, this time they could not catch Wei Zhao at all—instead they could only watch helplessly as he drew farther and farther away, until in less than a moment he had vanished without a trace. Not even a shadow of him could be found.

"This... have we gone and seen a ghost?" Fei Yangsheng's mouth hung open wide enough to stuff a duck egg into.

"Ghost my ass!" Sun Baimei spat out a resentful curse, then said with utmost unwillingness: "But this Primordial Spirit is unexpectedly strong—not only can it maintain a human form, it even has such endless tricks up its sleeve. What a pity it escaped; otherwise this time we truly would have had hope of breaking through to the Golden Core!"

"So do we still chase?" Fei Yangsheng asked.

"Let's give it one more try—if we're lucky, we might still catch up!" Sun Baimei still clung to a sliver of hope. Giving up here and now was simply impossible for him. He had finally encountered such a powerful Primordial Spirit; if he could capture it, it would be worth a hundred years of bitter cultivation, and no amount of time spent would be too much.

He had already made up his mind: during this trial in the mortal realm, he could skip everything else, but this Primordial Spirit alone—by whatever means necessary, he absolutely had to capture it!

In the time the two of them spent talking, Wei Zhao had already fled dozens of li away. Just now, riding the shockwave of the dan-fire true-qi bomb and employing the true-qi jet technique at the same time, his speed had in an instant been pushed to its utmost—and as he grew more and more familiar with his Primordial Spirit body, his speed not only failed to drop, but actually showed a tendency to grow ever faster.

Even more, Wei Zhao felt that his present speed was actually faster than it had been back on Cloud Terrace Island—could it be because the Primordial Spirit body was lighter?!

Having finally shaken off Sun Baimei and Fei Yangsheng, by the time Wei Zhao slowed down he had already reached the edge of a forest, and it looked as though a small county town lay not far ahead.

Wei Zhao hesitated a moment. He was in his period of weakness now, and by rights it was best to consolidate his strength somewhere undisturbed; but the forest was somewhere he dared not linger any longer—who knew whether he might run into those two again? By comparison, going into the small county town would be safer. Since he could not be a hermit in the woods, then he would be a hermit in the marketplace.

Walking for twenty minutes along a not especially wide road, Wei Zhao soon entered the county town's urban district, and the flow of people and traffic around him thickened accordingly. Gazing at this long-unseen scene of worldly bustle before his eyes, Wei Zhao could not help but feel as though a whole lifetime had passed.

Three years—though he had only been gone three years. In the mortal realm that might amount to no more than going abroad to study, hardly enough to stir much feeling; but he had gone to Cloud Terrace Island, utterly cut off from the world. Whether he could even return had been an unknown, and moreover so much had happened during those three years. It was inevitable that things had changed and people were no longer the same.

"Hah, at last I'm back." Wei Zhao stretched lazily, and his mood immediately improved a good deal. The tension of being hunted moments ago was entirely gone; instead there was a kind of warmth, as of coming home.

It was only a pity that this was not West Star Mountain, nor East Sea City—merely an obscure little county town.

Beep beep beep! A shrill horn suddenly sounded behind him, and an electric three-wheeled cart pulled up behind Wei Zhao. A middle-aged man's head poked out: "Where to?"

"What?" Having been away from the mortal realm so long, Wei Zhao did not react for a moment.

"I said, where to? Are you getting on or not?" the middle-aged man said with a frown, a cheap cigarette butt clamped between his lips.

Only then did Wei Zhao understand—so this was a little three-wheeled motorbike taxi. He quickly shook his head: "I'm not going anywhere."

"Then what the hell are you waving at me for? Too much time on your hands? Wasting my time!" The middle-aged man sped off cursing, the little three-wheeler weaving and darting through the traffic and the crowds, vanishing without a trace in the blink of an eye—a display of real technical mastery.

Wei Zhao stared dumbfounded, and only after a long while did he shrug with a bitter smile. This, indeed, was the mortal realm he knew so well.

He looked around at his surroundings. Though this county town was nowhere near as prosperous and developed as East Sea City, its downtown area was not bad at all—people coming and going, traffic bustling, the streets lined densely on both sides with all manner of shops. It was only that there were not as many towering high-rises as in the big city, and the surroundings were a little more cluttered.

Recalling the two men who had just been hunting him, Wei Zhao did not dare be careless. Right now he had to find somewhere to rest properly. Though the downtown here was crowded, if those two refused to give up and came after him, there was still a chance he would be discovered.

He was in a Primordial Spirit body now, and his body was to some extent a substantial existence, so in the eyes of ordinary people he was no different from a normal person. Whatever ordinary people could do, he could do too—but that was no guarantee of safety.

Ultimately he was still a Primordial Spirit body, and in the eyes of someone like Sun Baimei, who specialized in cultivating such arts, he was by nature a great big lightbulb. Even mingled among a crowd, he would be recognized at a glance. He had to find a safe place to hide first.

Wei Zhao glanced around, then found a secluded corner of a roadside park and recovered some of his physical strength and true qi on the spot. Just now, in order to save his life, his true qi had been all but exhausted—fortunately the jade pendant had come along this time as well; otherwise, merely replenishing his true qi would have been a great trouble, and without ten days to half a month there would have been no hope of recovering.

With the aid of the jade pendant's space, Wei Zhao recovered extremely quickly, yet he still felt very weak. His present condition was like that of a patient just recovering from a severe illness: though the jade pendant's space could provide an endless supply of tonics, his body could not take them in. True recovery was not a matter of a single day and night. (To be continued.)