Chapter 2607 — Drawing Out Wei Zhao

"When... when did I draw this map?" Sun Jingyan stared at the map in Little One's hand, somewhat taken aback.

"I know hypnosis." Little One was still speaking when the door sounded—Little Eleven had come in hauling Han Jingyi along. Little One frowned and shot Sun Jingyan a glare: "Why aren't you getting lost? I've got business here, no time to dawdle with you. If you want to die, I don't mind seeing you on your way."

"I... this stone..." Sun Jingyan glanced at the stone on the bed being used for cultivation, hesitant.

"Take it and get lost with it." Little One was from that place, so naturally he looked down on the cultivation stone in Sun Jingyan's hand. If it had been rich in true qi it might have been useful, but this one clearly had little true qi left—it was garbage, fit for nothing.

"Oh..." Sun Jingyan hurriedly picked up the stone, and as she raised her head she caught sight of Little Eleven entering and Han Jingyi in her grasp. Her heart lurched—so she really had brought Han Jingyi here after all. Yet her face betrayed nothing; she pretended not to know Han Jingyi and quickly walked toward the door. At this point, Sun Jingyan did believe that Little One meant to let her go and had other matters to attend to.

"Little Junior Sister, you're back?" Little One said ingratiatingly.

"Mm, it went smoothly enough. How are things on your end?" Little Junior Sister was quite pleased with how brutally Little One had treated Sun Jingyan. The more so, the more it proved he did not like Sun Jingyan.

"I got it all out of her with hypnosis, but the situation is somewhat grim—it differs from what we assumed. That so-called great treasure is nothing but a true qi energy stone, and one with hardly any true qi left in it at that. As for the great treasure, it's another teleportation array. It seems our thinking was wrong all along." Little One had been one of those who took part in wiping out Qingbo's sect back then, and although Little Eleven's strength had been insufficient at the time, she too had joined that year's operation.

Her strength was lacking, but she was a woman with a vicious heart. At a young age she had tortured the low-ranking errand disciples of Qingbo's sect to death; tormenting others was her pleasure. Little Junior Sister asked, "A teleportation array?"

"Yes, a teleportation array. But this array may no longer be usable..." Little One explained the state of the array to Little Eleven, and at the end said, "I'll go tail Sun Jingyan, then finish off the one who wounded Tagan Long. You question Han Jingyi first. She's an alchemist and a cultivator—our hypnosis won't work on her, so interrogating someone like that is your specialty."

"Heh heh, rest easy, Senior Brother. Once this little wench falls into my hands, every secret will come spilling out." A cruel smile crept to the corners of Little Junior Sister's mouth.

Little One glanced at Han Jingyi's lovely, delicate little face and thought to himself what a pity. Almost no one came out of Little Junior Sister's hands intact—pretty young women especially were basically tortured to death. Little Junior Sister was most jealous of women prettier than herself.

But in Little One's eyes these were hardly flaws. Many cultivators were cruel-hearted—take his own master, the Ancestor Xuanchen, who had not even scrupled to harm his Senior Brother. By comparison, his daughter had only learned a smattering of it.

Little One had grown up under his master's hand and had seen far crueler things, so he merely felt it a bit of a shame that a pretty girl like Han Jingyi would be tortured to death; he never once thought her pitiable.

Sun Jingyan was rather clever. After leaving the hotel she did not drive her own car but got into a taxi waiting at the hotel entrance. Though East Sea Engineering University was close enough to walk to from here, Sun Jingyan still took the car—precisely because she feared Little One would tail her.

But Sun Jingyan underestimated Little One, a formidable hand at the peak of the late Heaven Rank. Never mind a taxi—even had she boarded a plane, he could have locked onto her. Moreover, under hypnosis Sun Jingyan had already revealed the location where Wei Zhao was.

On his way to find Han Jingyi, Wei Zhao received a call from Sun Jingyan.

"Jingyi, is something the matter?" Wei Zhao was worried about Han Jingyi's safety and did not want to talk much with Sun Jingyan, so unless it was important he was prepared to end the call first.

"Wei Zhao, something's happened—the enemies we made in the Ulanhot Mountains have chased us all the way to East Sea City. They just came to my hotel and interrogated me about things from back then. They seemed to use hypnosis; I told them everything I knew..." Sun Jingyan said urgently. "And they've brought Han Jingyi here too—she's in my hotel room right now."

"What do you mean, they?" Wei Zhao was somewhat surprised; he had not expected Han Jingyi's abductors to be Tagan Long's bunch. But it made sense for them to seize Sun Jingyan—why take Han Jingyi? What did Han Jingyi have to do with them? Still, that Sun Jingyan could tip him off surprised Wei Zhao even more: "Jingyi, are you all right? They let you go?"

"Yes. Where are you? I'll come find you..." Sun Jingyan asked.

"I'm at... never mind, I'll come to you. Wait for me at the school gate; I'll be right there," Wei Zhao said.

"All right, I'll talk while you walk." Sun Jingyan nodded and recounted the earlier events to Wei Zhao in detail, while Wang Xinyan hurried along beside Wei Zhao toward the school gate...

When Wei Zhao met Sun Jingyan, he finally understood what was going on, though he still could not fathom their purpose in taking Han Jingyi. What he could be thankful for was that Sun Jingyan did not know about Qingbo and Granny Sun; had she known, there was no telling but that she would have blurted it out under hypnosis, and then Little One and the others would have gone to root them out—catching Wei Zhao completely off guard.

The only thing was, these people's strength gave Wei Zhao a headache. Though he was no longer the Wei Zhao who had been beaten helpless by the Great Protector in the Ulanhot Mountains, these newcomers could not possibly be early Heaven Rank hands like the Great Protector; they were likely formidable hands of the same caliber as Old Six, perhaps even higher.

That being so, even if Wei Zhao could trigger his martial techniques beyond his level, there was no way he could do anything to these people. The seventh stance of the Frenzied Fire Eight Trigrams Palm was only equivalent to the twelfth stance of the Frenzied Fire Fist, the thirteenth of ordinary martial techniques—utterly useless against a formidable hand at the peak of the late Heaven Rank.

If it was thus against ordinary peak late Heaven Rank hands, what of those monsters even stronger than normal cultivators? These people, perhaps, could only be subdued by the legendary Heaven Dao hands, could they not? (To be continued)

(..)