Four flame-wreathed tornadoes crashed thunderously toward the white Feather Serpent.
The Feather Serpent showed no fear whatsoever. Its cicada-wing-thin wings spread.
Another Dao art descended.
A sheet of freezing rain condensed out of thin air above its head, pattering down in a fine drizzle.
The four flaming tornadoes were layered in ice the instant they made contact with the freezing rain, then melted away completely in the blink of an eye.
Wang Yunxi recognized it at a glance. This was a Grade-A Dao Art.
Only a Grade-A Dao Art could possess such an atmosphere and power.
This Feather Serpent was anything but ordinary. Its earlier ice wall had already revealed as much.
Fourth Heavenly Ladder cultivators normally possessed only three Dao arts.
It had already used two.
Yet what drew the most attention now was still the White Phoenix transformed from the little bird on Cai Yingzhao's shoulder.
That, too, was an exotic beast, and one of the phoenix lineage—an elite spiritual breed even among exotic beasts.
No one had expected that Cai Yingzhao, still so young and not deeply cultivated, already had an exotic beast willing to follow him.
For spiritual breeds of exotic beasts with such formidable origins, recognizing a master and following them was in truth an enormous sacrifice.
Once they became another's pet beast, they could never take human form for the rest of their lives, forever unable to shed their beastly bodies.
This was fundamentally a colossal gamble.
When an exotic beast recognized someone as master and became a pet, it was equivalent to entrusting its entire fortune and life to that person. It was also gambling that this master would one day ascend to the realm of a Grand True Person.
Yet among the vast sea of cultivators, how many could truly reach that