“You don’t look all that broken up about it,” Shao said as he peered over at the wounded corpse of Gao Tan Linyu.
“It is what it is,” Gao Min Long said with a shrug. “I’d tell you about my experience with my cousin, but it’s improper to speak ill of the recently deceased.”
Shao could see that he and Gao Long were kindred spirits. Gao Linyu caused problems for those he barely knew; Shao could only imagine how unfortunate it would be to have him as a cousin.
“The Gao Tan family is influential within the Gao Clan, I take it?”
With surprising straightforwardness, Gao Long said, “Outside of the main family, the Gao Tan family holds the most power within the clan. The Gao Sun family used to be more influential, but they have been on the decline ever since the death of Gao Sun Ping.”
Shao was grateful that the clan politics of Bluecrest Village was much easier to deal with. Yang Guanyu was the Patriarch, and the next wealthiest man in town would become the Clan Patriarch after his death. Wealth was an imperfect system for defining power within a hierarchy, but at least succession wasn’t determined by ritualistic death matches.
That was enough beating around the bush, Shao thought. “Will you help us fight Wei Fenhua?”
“I have no choice,” Gao Long said as he regarded the Cloud Ship with a tired smile. Hidden within the expression, there was a small tinge of excitement. “The Cloud Ship is in no shape to fly right now, so I can’t alter course to the eastern path without jumping down a five-hundred-cun chasm. My only option is the Southern Gate, and, well, I’d rather not get murdered by a woman.”
Shao laughed audibly at Gao Long’s statement, but the nine-star Lianqi only gave him a confused look. In an attempt to move on from the miscommunication, Shao said, “Let’s hope that Xiahou Bian Ren comes up with a good plan so that doesn’t happen.”
Leaving Gao Min Long with the angry inner disciple, Shao walked up to the fallen corpse of the black wolf. Compared to the white wolf, the black wolf’s body was relatively undamaged. The only indication that the black wolf had been killed by physical means was the unnatural angle at which its neck rested on the ground. Since there were no visible cut marks on the black wolf, Shao figured that Gao Long rather than the inner disciple must have snapped its neck.
Shao recalled the difficulty he had just holding the white wolf down and marveled at the strength that must have been required to kill the creature without the help of another upper-realm Lianqi. Even though Gao Long was just two steps ahead of him, Shao could tell that the man was significantly stronger.
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Using his fingers like the point of a spear, Shao stabbed his hand into the black wolf’s flesh just under its rib cage. He gripped one side of the ribs with that hand and, with the other, cracked the black wolf’s sternum with two rapid strikes. Shao placed his foot on the other side of the wolf’s rib cage and used all of his strength to pry the massive creature’s chest apart.
With the sound of shattering bone and squelching flesh, the black wolf’s thoracic cavity was ripped open. Since the wolf had only been killed minutes before, the internal pressure of its body caused Shao to become drenched with blood and viscera. Not paying any heed to the gore covering his body, Shao continued to dig into the black wolf’s corpse and soon found his prize. Squeezed between two gargantuan lungs was the black wolf’s heart.
As he had done twice before, Shao reached in and tore out the divine beast’s heart. The creature’s intact heart was far larger than Shao’s palm. He bit into the side of the organ and swallowed a mouthful of dense tissue before dropping the rest of the heart on the ground. A mouthful of flesh was enough for Carnivore to work.
A new technique was instantaneously ingrained into Shao’s mind. He recalled that deafening howl and knew that he could do something similar and temporarily empower his body. This technique would be called the Howl of the Black Wolf.
The compulsion to use the two techniques pressed too heavily upon Shao’s mind, and he had no choice but to try them out. He sucked air through his mouth, inflating his lungs and pushing his chest out. He straightened his back and tilted his chin up slightly.
Shao unleashed the compressed air in his lungs in a loud scream. Once he started screaming, he couldn’t stop for several seconds until all the air in his lungs had been expended. The other cultivators still standing on that plateau winced as Shao’s scream echoed through the trees and caused a nearby flock of birds to take flight.
Once his lungs were empty and the compulsion to scream was gone, Shao felt far stronger than he had ever felt before. Wanting to test this burst of energy, he leapt into the air, and his arc of flight reached more than twenty cun high. To put a rough estimate on this increase in strength, Shao figured that the Howl of the Black Wolf increased his power by 20%, but the scream would leave him vulnerable for a few seconds. When he used the technique, it was the only thing he could focus on. If someone attacked him while he was screaming, he would be completely defenseless.
As he skidded to a halt on the grass below, Shao decided he would test out the white wolf’s technique. He crouched down like a sprinter at the starting line and unleashed the Leap of the White Wolf. In an instant, Shao traveled more than thirty cun in a straight line. The speed was way beyond his control, but the raw momentum of the technique more than made up for that.
Shao had no idea how fast an inner disciple was, but the speed of the Leap of the White Wolf gave him the confidence that he could pass Wei Fenhua with little difficulty. Certainly, not even a Zhouji could react to his technique’s speed.