Chapter 3602 — Truly Cannot Help!

"Well, well, if it isn't Pavilion Master Lu! It has been far too long!" Dai Wuchang rose to his feet at once to greet Lu Bianren with a smile, while the put-upon senior brother trailing behind was simply ignored outright.

Awkward as Lu Bianren's position at the Welcome Pavilion might be, he was still at least a vice-pavilion-master of some stripe—within the Spirit Jade Hall, that made him genuine upper management, hardly comparable to a mere steward-in-charge like Dai Wuchang. What was more, back in the days at Azure Cloud Pavilion, Lu Bianren had shown him no small kindness, so the two had always gotten on fairly well.

"Ha, and from the look of you, Brother Dai, I would say you are riding high!" Lu Bianren answered with a smile. Dai Wuchang handled matters of contract; if one wanted to move Wei Zhao to another mining zone, this was the best place to force a crack, for the Spirit Jade Hall had its rules—once a contract was signed, under ordinary circumstances it could not lightly be altered.

"Brother Lu, you are a rare guest indeed—come to inspect your Welcome Pavilion's newcomers down in the mining zones, have you?" Dai Wuchang asked cheerfully. At Lu Bianren's level, no matter how ill-favored one's lot, one would never descend to mine, so a visit here invariably meant inspecting the newcomers.

"I will not hide it from you, Brother Dai—I came this time looking for you specifically, to beg a favor," Lu Bianren said, coming straight to the point. "Owing to a bit of misunderstanding, a newcomer brother of our Azure Cloud Pavilion has been assigned to Number Ten, the dead mining zone. As old hands of the Azure Cloud Pavilion, we cannot simply leave him to it and let him waste all his best years for nothing."

"The newcomer Brother Lu speaks of—could it be Wei Zhao?" Dai Wuchang's expression changed at once.

"The same. Wei Zhao it is. Might Brother Dai do us this kindness?" Lu Bianren nodded.

"That..." Dai Wuchang could not help but look troubled.

To him, Wei Zhao was a nobody of no consequence; since Lu Bianren had spoken up on the boy's behalf to his face, granting the favor would have been a trifling lift of the hand, and there was no cause to offend anyone over so small a thing. Only—this Wei Zhao was a stubborn thorn that Meng Jueming had gone out of his way to warn him about!

On one side stood Lu Bianren, on the other Meng Jueming—and so Dai Wuchang found himself caught squarely in the middle.

One had to understand that independent departments such as the Spirit Jade Hall and the Welcome Pavilion, though in name standing apart from the Threefold Pavilion, in practice had every post from top to bottom appointed uniformly by the Threefold Pavilion; their people were all selected from within the Threefold Pavilion's own ranks, and the right to conscript them back was retained at all times.

That is to say, whether it was a vice-pavilion-master of the Welcome Pavilion like Lu Bianren or a steward of the Spirit Jade Hall like Dai Wuchang, however splendidly they might flourish out in the wider world, at bottom they remained people of the Azure Cloud Pavilion. The moment the final time limit came due, they would be conscripted back.

And this Lu Bianren, however far he had fallen, was after all still a vice-pavilion-master of the Welcome Pavilion; if he were recalled to the Azure Cloud Pavilion in days to come, he would surely be a figure holding real power. For Dai Wuchang, if only for his own future, it could never be a bad thing to do the man a cheap favor now. The trouble was that this matter also dragged in Meng Jueming!

Though Meng Jueming was at present but a petty steward of the Welcome Pavilion, his standing nothing beside Lu Bianren's, and though by title he remained Lu Bianren's subordinate, so that the choice looked not so very hard—yet the crux of it was this: what Lu Bianren offered Dai Wuchang was only some distant future favor, whereas Meng Jueming touched his immediate vital interests!

It was no exaggeration to say that eight parts in ten of the spirit jades Dai Wuchang had scraped together were obtained through Meng Jueming—by ways that must never see the light of day, of course. Given how strictly the Spirit Jade Hall supervised its spirit jades, without a smooth operator like Meng Jueming, Dai Wuchang on his own would never have had the slightest chance; even with the conveniences of his post as steward-in-charge, it would have been utterly impossible for him to skim off the least little drop.

To offend Meng Jueming and cut off his fattest source of gain merely to do Lu Bianren a favor—by any reckoning, that did not look like a wise choice! Yet Lu Bianren too was no insignificant nobody like that wretched fellow, and was not someone to be lightly offended!

"What? Is there some difficulty with this?" Seeing Dai Wuchang give no answer for so long, Lu Bianren could not help but frown. To his mind this should have been a trifling matter, easily done—after all, he could never have imagined that Dai Wuchang and Meng Jueming were so deeply entangled.

Dai Wuchang mused a while, then at last made up his mind and said with a bitter smile, "Pavilion Master Lu, by rights, once you have spoken, your junior brother ought to have no second word to say. Only, to be plain with you, the Spirit Jade Hall has been examining such matters very strictly of late. This is not an easy thing to arrange."

"Examining them very strictly?" Lu Bianren was taken aback. Another man might well have been fooled by Dai Wuchang, but he had already heard the wretched senior brother describe how matters had stood, and now, looking at Dai Wuchang's rather unnatural expression, he understood at once.

Lu Bianren thought for a moment, then said, "Brother Dai, this concerns a newcomer's prospects. It is not only I who ask you this—it is for the good of our whole Azure Cloud Pavilion. I must beg you to do this favor! I shall hold today's kindness in my heart, and when I return to the Azure Cloud Pavilion, I will surely repay it!"

"Ah, Pavilion Master Lu, you put your junior brother in a hard spot. I would dearly like to help, but I truly dare not defy the rules of the Spirit Jade Hall!" Dai Wuchang had already made up his mind and would not budge for any persuasion. "Besides, he has already signed the contract. To alter it, without an introduction letter from the grand pavilion master of your Welcome Pavilion, there is no way I could manage it—nor answer for it above! You know how it is: at times, only the pavilion master himself has the authority to arrange such things..."

"So you truly cannot help?" Lu Bianren's face went cold. This should never have been any troublesome matter, and he had, after all, shown Dai Wuchang no small kindness back in the day; now that words had come to this pass and the man still hemmed and hawed so, even a clay figure would have some temper in him.

And now the fellow must drag in the pavilion master proper—meaning, was it, that a vice-pavilion-master's authority was not enough to serve?

"Truly cannot help." Seeing the other's face change, Dai Wuchang simply dropped the pretense and refused him outright.

He had thought it through: this Lu Bianren was nothing but a third pavilion master of the Welcome Pavilion whose power had been hollowed out from beneath him—he had no real authority at all, and even if he were recalled to the Azure Cloud Pavilion in days to come, there was no saying he would ever have power over Dai Wuchang. To offend Meng Jueming, who fed him spirit jades, just to curry favor with the likes of this? Was his brain diseased? Who in his right mind would turn his back on spirit jades!