The two exchanged a look, everything understood without a word. Leng Leng gave a slight nod, then bent her head again to tending her own condition. The day's expenditure had been considerable, and barring the unforeseen she would have to carry the main burden again tomorrow—no room for the slightest negligence.

The night passed without incident. By the time dawn broke, everyone had more or less returned to peak condition, and they promptly set off again under Wei Zhao's lead.

For the next two days straight, their journey proved thrilling but safe. True, they met no end of spirit beasts blocking their path, but the vast majority were only of Foundation Establishment caliber—so much so that Wei Zhao did not even need to lift a hand. Leng Leng and Qiu Lingshan and the rest could handle them, which made the whole affair a veritable course of live combat training.

As for the occasional powerful spirit beast on par with a Golden Core expert, a single true-qi dan-fire bomb from Wei Zhao generally settled the matter; at worst it frightened the creature off. So long as they did not run into two or more at once as had happened before, there was no great problem.

Of course, Golden Core spirit beasts generally held domains of their own—one territory, one master—and unless one happened to tread right on a boundary line, the odds of such an encounter were not especially high.

Yet on the evening of the third day, Wei Zhao and his party received an uninvited guest.

As usual, Leng Leng and the others were conserving their strength together, while Wei Zhao kept watch from his customary perch on a tree trunk. Suddenly his expression shifted: at the very furthest reach of his spiritual sense, a flying spirit beast was clearly approaching his position at speed.

"Jumang?" Wei Zhao was briefly startled. The outline of the flying beast was exceedingly blurred, but judging by the wings it was most likely the primordial Jumang he had crossed paths with before.

His first thought was that the Primordial Jumang King had come after them, but he quickly rejected the notion—the creature's build was not large at all, nothing like the colossal frame of the Jumang King. At most it was an ordinary Jumang.

An ordinary Jumang, naturally, was nothing to fear. To say nothing of Wei Zhao, even Leng Leng and the others, after these days of live combat training, could handle one with composure. Yet Wei Zhao's expression was somewhat grave. For reasons he could not name, this Jumang gave off an indefinable aura of danger—a sensation he had never felt even when facing the Primordial Jumang King and the Crimson-Scaled Serpent.

"Something's coming from the sky. Everyone, be on your guard," Wei Zhao said, not daring to be careless, and at once warned Leng Leng and the others below.

They instantly braced as if facing a mortal foe. They knew full well this thing must be no trifle—otherwise, given Wei Zhao's habits these past days, he would never have been so tense and deliberate, would never even have spoken a warning, but would have let them discover it for themselves, thereby testing their readiness in a crisis.

In recent days Wei Zhao's role had not been that of a pure guardian but of an instructor. Yet before the creature's strength was made clear, this was plainly no time to be testing them.

Moments later, the thing was a mere li away. Though an unfathomable aura wreathed its body, enough to deceive the spiritual sense of the vast majority, at this distance, if Wei Zhao still could not make out its true face, then all his years would have been wasted.

"A bug?" Wei Zhao blinked. It clearly had a pair of enormous Jumang wings, yet its body was in fact that of a plump, pale, tender worm. The sight was truly so bizarre as to seem faintly ridiculous. How could it be a worm?

"A bug? What bug?" Leng Leng and the others below were baffled. Their spiritual sense did not reach so far—and even if it had, they could never have seen through the unfathomable aura about the creature.

Wei Zhao did not answer, nor did he relax his vigilance in the slightest. However comical the creature's appearance, the ever-strengthening instinct of danger did not lie. In the world of cultivation, those who judged by appearances generally did not live long—and Wei Zhao had never been one of them.

In the blink of an eye, the distance between them had shrunk to no more than twenty meters. The creature alighted unhurriedly on the trunk of a great tree opposite, coming to face Wei Zhao squarely.

"You're Wei Zhao?" the brain-eating worm said, sizing him up with keen interest.

Wei Zhao was mildly startled at the words. He could guess the creature had come for his group, but he had not expected it to call him by name outright. He asked bluntly, "How do you know?"

"Simple. Because I ate the Primordial Jumang King," the brain-eating worm replied with striking candor.

The answer stunned everyone. Leng Leng and the others below exchanged glances, unable to suppress the suspicion that the thing was boasting. A worm this small devouring the colossal Primordial Jumang King—what kind of joke was that?

Wei Zhao, however, fell into thought. For the moment he too could not imagine how the creature had eaten the Jumang King, but by instinct he chose to believe it—for this was indeed a thing of extreme danger, far more dangerous than the Primordial Jumang King!

"Then... who are you?" Wei Zhao asked.

"An envoy. In their words, the envoy of that lord," the brain-eating worm said, still entirely candid.

"An envoy?" Wei Zhao's eyes flickered slightly, for he saw the pair of enormous wings behind the creature dissolve into nothing in an instant. Now its form was that of a thoroughgoing pale tender worm, looking all the more harmless.

While Wei Zhao studied the brain-eating worm, it studied him in turn. As for Leng Leng and the others below, it had not the slightest interest in so much as another glance—Wei Zhao alone seemed to hold its attention.

"Are you here to capture tribute as well?" Wei Zhao probed further. This creature's conduct was utterly unlike every spirit beast they had met before. All of them—the Primordial Jumang King and the Crimson-Scaled Serpent included—had cared from first to last only about the number of tribute, showing almost no interest in him, this troublesome human. This worm envoy was the exact opposite.

"You could say so," the brain-eating worm replied noncommittally. It was an envoy; unlike the Primordial Jumang King, it did not have to deliver a full quota of human tribute to stay alive, and even if it did nothing at all it would suffer no punishment. But since it had run into them, a little effort by the way would do no harm.

"Good. I have no more questions." Wei Zhao nodded, and the instant he finished speaking, Leng Leng and the others below, catching his meaning, bolted forward along the road. This was the signal long agreed between them. Dangerous as it was to do so at night, when a careless step might bring them face to face with other unforeseeable perils ahead, with a powerful foe before them it was still far better than all remaining here.

The brain-eating worm was unsurprised. A pair of wings abruptly burst forth from its back once more, and at once it loosed at the fleeing group one of the signature techniques of the primordial Jumang clan: the wind blade. (To be continued.)