Chapter 3615 — A Man of Suspicion

"That much is true. We racked our brains to set this trap for him, so if the boy caught on this quickly, it would be a poor return for all of Cousin Jiu's pains." Meng Zhou nodded in agreement.

"Hey, odds are the boy will stay muddle-headed like this for days yet, thinking he's sitting on twenty-five pieces of spirit jade and has become a regular man of means, only to find out in the end that the whole pile is worthless. The higher the hopes, the harder the fall—and his face when he finds out is bound to be a sight to remember!" Meng Jueming said, rather pleased with himself.

From the very first day the new recruits reported in, he had never once gained any real advantage over Wei Zhao, whether in direct clashes or indirect ones. On the contrary, it was he, the managing senior brother, who had been made to look foolish time and again. Even the most recent affair, when he had kicked Wei Zhao all the way down to the Number Ten dead mining zone, had ended with the fellow not only landing on his feet but thriving, leaving him utterly humiliated.

This time, though, Wei Zhao had well and truly been taken in. Not only had he been swapped to another mining zone, but more importantly, he had handed over a piece of good jade into the bargain—he had been fleeced but good! For a managing senior brother like Meng Jueming, playing a thorn-in-the-side newcomer like Wei Zhao in the palm of his hand was far more satisfying than dealing with those weathervane newcomers who bent with the wind. This was the scene he had been waiting for all this time!

If the two of them ever learned that their clever scheme had not only failed to trap Wei Zhao but had actually handed him a lavish gift, who could say what expressions would come over their faces. Of course, as long as Wei Zhao kept his mouth shut, these two little benefactors would never learn the truth for as long as they lived—and would likely go on preening over it forever!

Following the Number Seven mining tunnel onward, though it wound and twisted just the same as any other and the surroundings looked much the same, Wei Zhao could still plainly sense the difference between this place and the Number Ten tunnel. Number Ten was not only more remote and out of the way than Number Seven; more obviously, Number Seven simply did not have this many people in it.

Compared with Number Ten, where not a living soul could be seen from one end of the tunnel to the other, Number Seven was positively bustling—here and there, at every turn, one met with fellow diggers. In fact, a mid-to-lower-ranked mining zone like Number Seven was naturally one of the zones with the largest workforce of them all.

After all, the people who came in to mine were, apart from pure newcomers like Wei Zhao, mainly those new recruits from earlier batches who had failed to build their foundation smoothly at the Welcome Pavilion. By the rules, they could not join the Threefold Pavilion directly, but could only labor as hired muscle in places like the spirit jade mines while seeking a breakthrough.

Compared with the well-connected Soaring Heaven Pavilion and the formidable Mystic Mechanism Pavilion, the rootless, scattered cultivators of the Azure Cloud Pavilion were plainly more likely to fail at building their foundation, and so, naturally, more of them were parceled out to the mines as laborers. As for the higher-ranked mining zones, though their yield of jade was greater, those were allotted to Soaring Heaven and Mystic Mechanism, and so their numbers were naturally smaller than those of Number Seven, which had been assigned to Azure Cloud.

Arriving at Number Seven, Wei Zhao looked around him and then picked an empty mining spot to begin work. He had no intention of secretly stashing spirit jade today; his main purpose was to scout out and familiarize himself with the place. After all, counting the twenty-five pieces Meng Jueming had given him yesterday, Wei Zhao now had a full thirty-one pieces of spirit jade in hand—enough to buy himself several sets of pill-refining ingredients. In short, he had no pressing need for spirit jade for the time being, and could well afford to take things steady and slow.

Digging all the while and keeping a constant eye on his surroundings, Wei Zhao soon gathered several useful pieces of information.

First, the surveillance in Number Seven was far stricter than in the Number Ten dead zone. Though the two zones were in fact much the same in area, Number Ten had only two guards in all, whereas here in Number Seven there were a full ten—not only fixed sentry posts but dedicated patrols as well. With watchfulness that dense, an ordinary Heaven-rank expert could not so much as make a small move; to harbor any such crooked notion here was simply to court death.

Second, Number Seven really was crowded. A zone as vast as this was scattered with dozens of mining spots, and apart from a very few that no one bothered with, every other spot had at least one or two people digging at it; some of the popular spots even had four or five gathered round—this was hardly jade mining at all, but jade snatching.

Third, the yield of jade in Number Seven really was far higher than in Number Ten. In barely half an hour's time, Wei Zhao had already dug out six pieces of spirit jade. Two were plainly worthless jade, which, following the practice of those around him, he tossed onto the open ground behind him, where dedicated guards would collect them. Three were worthless jade with a fair exterior but thin spiritual essence. The last one, however, was genuine good jade, brimming with spiritual essence. At this rate of yield, there was simply no comparing it with the previous two days in Number Ten.

Wei Zhao nodded to himself. People die of envy when compared with people, and goods are fit only to be thrown away when compared with goods; clearly the Spirit Jade Hall had good reason for dividing the mining zones as it did.

Just as he was looking about, a tremendous crash suddenly came from somewhere nearby. Wei Zhao turned his head at once, and to his surprise caught sight of a familiar face.

Since the rest of the Azure Cloud newcomers of his batch had all been assigned by Meng Jueming to Number Eight, and since Meng Jueming and Meng Zhou had yet to put in an appearance, Wei Zhao knew practically no one among the dozens of people in the vast Number Seven zone. This one man was the exception: Li Zhengming.

From the first day to now, this Li Zhengming had done nothing out of the ordinary beyond clinging to Meng Jueming's coattails; he seemed to be nothing more than a hanger-on of Meng Jueming and Meng Zhou, with not a single distinguished quality to his name. Yet the impression the man had left on Wei Zhao was nowhere near as transparent and marginal as that.

On the contrary, the man was deep and calculating—if it came down to it, far harder to deal with than an empty-headed fellow like Meng Zhou. Still, Li Zhengming had from first to last done nothing but cater to Meng Jueming and Meng Zhou, and had never gone out of his way to make trouble for Wei Zhao. So long as each kept to his own side of the well, Wei Zhao could not be bothered to waste his energy watching him too closely.

That crash just now had come from Li Zhengming's spot, and the others around him—guards and diggers alike—paid it no heed whatsoever, as though they had long since grown used to it.

Only Wei Zhao, a newcomer freshly arrived, was left baffled. It was only jade mining, after all—where did such a din come from? Was his mining spot about to cave in? By all rights, every zone of the spirit jade mine had been reinforced with formations, so there should be no chance of a collapse.