Chapter Five: The Summit of Ten Thousand Feet

  "No way, it's so high!"

  Braving the strong wind, he looked around and what he saw made Zhao extremely shocked and pale. A suppressed cry of surprise escaped his lips.

  After crawling out of the passage that couldn't be called a passage, Zhao Ji came to a platform. The platform was only about ten feet square, just enough for him to stand on. Luckily, he hadn't been blown away by the wind; otherwise, he would have fallen off the platform.

  Falling off the platform is not a big deal, but if the platform is halfway up a mountain, thousands of feet above the ground, it would be terrible. If you fall down, you will definitely die and have no place to bury your body.

  Standing on the platform, in front of a vast expanse, blue sky and white clouds, as if within reach, surrounded by those white clouds, Zhao felt like he was in heaven.

  Qian Zhang is an extremely high altitude, Zhao Ji looked down and the scenery on the ground below was a blur, just like when you're on a plane taking off, looking down from above, people become ant-sized.

  In Zhao Ji's field of vision, there are many other mountain peaks, but none can rival this one. Even those that reach halfway up the mountain are invisible, making it truly stand out as a solitary peak, overlooking all others.

  It occurred to Zhao Ji that his previous estimate might have been wrong, and this halfway up the mountain position was not just a thousand zhang high, but perhaps several thousand zhang, or even tens of thousands of zhang.

  "This mountain is really too high."

  At the halfway point up the mountain, he could already see how high it was. Zhao Ji turned around, looked up and gazed at the summit that pierced into the clouds, its peak invisible, and couldn't help but mutter to himself in his heart.

  While being shocked by the height of this mountain, Zhao Ji's face suddenly turned ugly and he said with great regret: "Unbelievable! I've crossed over, but why did it have to be in a place like this? Halfway up the mountain would have been okay, but it's so high. How am I supposed to get down?"

  According to Zhao's visual measurement, this mountain is steep and towering, unmatched in its grandeur. Wanting to climb down from the middle of the mountain is extremely difficult, not just a little challenging. Although it also trains climbing ability, this degree of ascent and descent has already exceeded Zhao Ji's capabilities.

  Standing on a platform of about ten square meters, he looked around in all directions with his eyes wide open, wanting to get down the mountain, but it seemed impossible, so Zhao gave up.

  Looking at the sky getting late, feeling a bit hungry in his stomach, Zhao Ji crawled back to the tunnel and returned to the valley, preparing to go back to the temple to tidy up and get something to eat. As for going down the mountain, he would think about it slowly later.

  On his way back, when he passed by the pine forest, Zhao Ji glanced into the forest subconsciously and saw a shocking scene: a group of squirrels, led by that purple squirrel, were confronting an old tiger.

  "Squirrels actually dare to touch a tiger's whiskers, this is too strange, I have never seen it before."

  Zhao Ji looked at the scene of confrontation in the pine forest with a look of surprise, and at the same time, he was secretly worried about the purple squirrel.

  After a standoff for a while, the purple squirrel seemed to be impatient. It chirped twice and a group of squirrels threw out pine cones together, hitting the tiger.

  That tiger was not like an ordinary tiger, but a gigantic black tiger, bigger than any tiger Zhao Ji had ever seen.

  The squirrel threw out dozens of pine cones, scattering them like rain, hitting the black giant tiger, but to the black giant tiger, it was like scratching an itch, not causing any disturbance at all.

  "Roar!"

  Although unharmed, the black giant tiger felt its dignity had been provoked. With a single leap, it arrived at the bottom of the purple squirrel's tree and let out a fierce roar upwards.

  The tiger, as the king of beasts, is majestic and powerful. For most flying birds and running animals, it has a strong deterrent effect. With one roar, the effect was extraordinary. A group of squirrels were terrified, all fleeing in disarray, leaving only the purple squirrel behind. Although startled, not only did it not run away, but instead jumped up and down, chattering angrily.

  Two pine cones held between the front paws were thrown out one by one by the purple squirrel, hitting the black giant tiger in succession. Although it didn't cause much damage, it expressed the purple squirrel's anger.

  The purple squirrel's behavior was seen as a repeated provocation by the black giant tiger, who let out another mighty roar and leapt towards the tree.

  With a leap of over two meters, its four limbs grasped the tree trunk, and the black giant tiger's front and hind legs coordinated together, climbing up the pine tree in just three or two movements.

  "Tigers can climb trees, isn't it too strange? Or, is this not a tiger?"

  The black giant tiger's agile tree-climbing skills made Zhao Ji's eyes nearly pop out, and for the first time, he began to suspect that the black giant tiger might not be a tiger after all.

  Tigers can climb trees. The purple squirrel was in a desperate situation, being chased by the black giant tiger, and several times it almost got hurt under the tiger's claws.

  In a burst of chattering, the purple squirrel frantically jumped about in the forest, crazily fleeing but unable to escape the pursuit of the black giant tiger. Finally, it came bounding towards Zhao Ji.

  From the top of a pine tree, with a jump, he landed behind Zhao Ji, using him as cover. The purple squirrel poked out half its head and, still defiant, threw another pine nut at the black tiger.

  A fierce tiger comes down from the mountain, its momentum unmatched. An ordinary person, if facing a ferocious tiger head-on, would be courting death. Wu Song, one of the 108 heroes of Water Margin, had to exert great effort to kill a tiger, let alone this black giant tiger that can climb trees and is many times more formidable than an ordinary tiger.

  When the black giant tiger brought up a burst of foul wind and pounced over, Zhao Ji's expression became solemn to the extreme, and his heart "thumped, thumped" with intense palpitations. A kind of emotion called tension that had not been produced for a long time was born.

  In the midst of tense emotions, there was a thread of excitement. Facing the black giant tiger, Zhao Ji did not think of avoiding it, but bravely confronted it head-on.

  A black giant tiger pounced, killing head-on, Zhao Ji's body turned, drawing a semicircle on the spot, and in the instant when there was no time to breathe, he dodged the black giant tiger's pounce.

  Almost at the same time as dodging, Zhao Ji's body shape rushed forward, and the "Tie Shan Kao" in Bajiquan was performed smoothly.

  Familiar with the Bajiquan, although not a master of the first generation, for several practical styles in Bajiquan, has also been practiced to the point of being proficient and can be performed at will, with sufficient power.

  A palm stuck to the mountain, right in the middle of a black giant tiger's body. Zhao Ji's entire strength was unleashed through this move, sending the giant tiger stumbling and falling out several feet away.

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