Chapter 184 — The Mantis and the Oriole

Gongsun Heng gave a scornful laugh: "These must be wandering bandits—no telling which lot. Hunt them down? How? Once they run into the Little Mountain Realm, the sect can do nothing."

"What are we to do... what are we to do..." Chunyu Cheng was utterly at a loss.

Gongsun Heng shrugged and spread his pale hands: "We leave it to Senior Brother Zuo."

"Senior Brother Zuo is only one man..."

"Nothing to be done. Accept our fate."

Some tens of li from Wildwood Reef, within a mass of white cloud, another group was likewise watching the distant reef.

"Heh heh, now this should be worth seeing. Who do you think will win?" the sallow-faced man said with a smile.

Beside him stood a black-robed cultivator, gaunt as kindling, his gaze sinister and cold—none other than Gui Feng, who had appeared at the Sword Trial Gathering. On his other side was Chang Heng, his expression indifferent, his hair standing straight as iron wire, a bronze ring about his collarbone.

The other cultivators regarded the three with awe, instinctively keeping their distance.

Gui Feng's eyes were a dark, glimmering green, and his cultivation was plainly far deeper than before. His voice was hoarse: "He hasn't condensed his meridians." The implication was plain. As for the sallow-faced man's origins, he still had not the faintest clue—profoundly mysterious. He knew only that the man called himself Fu Feng.

He cultivated the *Little Ghost Sword*, an exceedingly obscure sword art. His talent was good, but the *Little Ghost Sword* was itself incomplete, and advancing further was doubly hard. Just then Fu Feng had offered him a mental cultivation method to recruit him. The *Nine Ghost Nail Curse*—a method whose name he had never even heard—and he had joined without a moment's hesitation.

But when he saw Chang Heng, he could not help feeling a stir of alarm. He guessed Chang Heng's circumstances were much like his own; he simply did not know what method Fu Feng had given Chang Heng.

As for the rest of these Foundation Establishment cultivators, he did not take them seriously at all. In truth he thought them quite unnecessary: with him and Chang Heng present, these thirty-six Foundation Establishment cultivators served no purpose whatsoever. Whatever the three of them could not handle, the thirty-six would not handle either; they would only slow them down.

But these thirty-six Foundation Establishment cultivators had all been recruited by Fu Feng, and Gui Feng was not about to invite trouble by raising the matter.

"What do you think?" Fu Feng turned and asked Chang Heng.

Chang Heng said flatly: "Zuo Yan wins."

"Oh? You're certainly full of confidence in him," Fu Feng said with some surprise, smiling. Fu Feng was unremarkable in appearance, as ordinary as could be, yet his bearing carried an awe-inspiring authority.

At this, Gui Feng was rather scornful in his heart. This was no Sword Trial Gathering; Zhang Hao and his Crow-Wind Bandits were the most vicious and desperate of men, and this was a battle to the death. For a Foundation Establishment cultivator, never mind winning—to hold out a few hours would be enough to boast of.

But he said nothing. Chang Heng was someone he still held in considerable fear, and it was not worth breeding ill feeling over such a trifling question. His own strength had risen greatly of late, and Chang Heng's had surely risen no less.

Fu Feng did not press the point either. He glanced at the two facing sides in the distance and said in a calm voice: "Win or lose, we still need to get the exact location of the secret realm from Zhang Hao and his men."

The unquestionable note in his words made everyone's heart turn cold.