Chapter 3817 — Three Sets of Materials!

Meng Jueming was well aware that even though he had already latched onto Xu Lingchong, the big tree, if he wanted to gain real importance in the days to come, he would still need sufficiently formidable strength. And that strength referred not only to himself, but even more to the fresh underlings beneath him, for these people were the very foundation on which his future rise to glory rested!

So by both sentiment and reason, Meng Jueming could not simply refuse Li Zhengming outright. Even if he had no Foundation Establishment Pill on hand, he at least owed the man a plausible answer.

After hesitating for a long while, Meng Jueming finally spoke in a slow, halting rumble: "Zhengming, that you have such a heart is a great comfort to your senior brother. It is only a pity that I have no Foundation Establishment Pill on hand at present. Otherwise, why would I have waited for you to speak? I would have given it to you long ago, no?"

At these words, Li Zhengming's heart sank at once. Though in secret he had long since become Wei Zhao's inside man, the wish to break through to Foundation Establishment that he had voiced to Meng Jueming was not false in the slightest.

As one of the Azure Cloud Pavilion's top five newcomers, he alone remained struggling at the Heaven Tier great consummation while the other four had all become early-stage Foundation Establishment hands. And he could see no hope of it coming soon. To him, this feeling was nothing short of torment.

He bore a blood feud on his shoulders and had devoted himself to keeping a low profile, but even a low profile had its limits. If he watched people whose innate talent and foundation were inferior to his own succeed at Foundation Establishment one after another while he, Li Zhengming, stayed bottled up at the Heaven Tier great consummation without moving an inch, that would no longer be discretion. That would be sheer stupidity.

So Li Zhengming was, at this moment, truly desperate to make an attempt at Foundation Establishment. And what he asked was really not much at all. Just a single Foundation Establishment Pill.

By rights, Li Zhengming was now Wei Zhao's inside man, and he could simply have raised this matter with Wei Zhao. But after all, he had not been in Wei Zhao's camp for very long, and apart from sending over a few pieces of intelligence, he felt he had done nothing for Wei Zhao, nor had any achievement worth boasting of.

Strictly speaking, his submission to Wei Zhao back then had been a forced move to save his life after a failed ambush, not a voluntary one. That Wei Zhao had spared his miserable life was already an enormous kindness. So now he truly had no face to open his mouth to Wei Zhao about this.

By contrast, the present situation was one where Wei Zhao's faction held absolute dominance, and Meng Jueming likewise needed someone to step forward and share the pressure for him. So Li Zhengming thought to seize this opportunity to ask Meng Jueming, reasoning that in light of his past merits and the current grim circumstances, Meng Jueming ought, by both sentiment and reason, to find some way to get him a Foundation Establishment Pill.

Little did he expect that Meng Jueming had no such intention at all!

His claim of having no Foundation Establishment Pill on hand was very likely the truth, but if he did not have one, could he not think of some way to get one?

Everyone knew that on Meng Zhou, another underling beneath this same managing senior brother, vast quantities of precious elixirs had been lavished one after another. Not to mention Foundation Establishment Pills and Foundation Establishment Liquid, there had even been the fourth-grade Great Returning Pill, hailed as a life-saving divine elixir. And two of them at that!

On Meng Zhou, that mud that would not stick to any wall, he was willing to sink such heavy stakes. Yet for one who was just as loyal, or at least had been loyal until now, he could not bear to part with even a single Foundation Establishment Pill. To play favorites to such a degree was simply too chilling to the heart!

Thank goodness he had been wise enough to secretly throw in his lot with Wei Zhao as an inside man. Had he truly set his heart on following a lousy patron like Meng Jueming and toiling like an ox or a horse for him, then he, Li Zhengming, would indeed have been blind as a bat, driving himself down a dead-end road!

Seeing Li Zhengming's utterly disappointed expression, Meng Jueming knew that doing this was somewhat indefensible. After thinking it over, he added: "But though I have no Foundation Establishment Pill on hand, I did specially prepare three sets of spirit-herb materials for refining Foundation Establishment Pills for you, Zhengming. I can give them to you once we get back. Just find a pill refiner to help you, and never mind one Foundation Establishment Pill—even three would be no problem at all, guaranteed to be enough for your Foundation Establishment attempt!"

Li Zhengming was stunned. At first he thought Meng Jueming had, for once, had a twinge of conscience, but by the end of it—hell, the man was actually giving him materials to take to a pill refiner himself! What kind of con was this supposed to be!

Foundation Establishment Pills were indeed exceedingly hard-to-come-by elixirs for a Heaven Tier great consummation expert like him, but strictly speaking, they could hardly be called rare or uncommon at all. The spirit-herb materials needed to refine a Foundation Establishment Pill were, by and large, common goods.

Even measured by market selling prices, one set of Foundation Establishment Pill materials was worth at most three or four spirit jades. Three sets together would, at the absolute most, fetch a price of ten spirit jades.

In other words, Meng Jueming was willing to spend at most ten spirit jades on him, Li Zhengming. If he wanted him to invest a single coin more than that—not a chance in the world!

Meng Jueming would not even be willing to fork out those ten spirit jades. His words sounded very fine—specially prepared for Li Zhengming—but common goods like Foundation Establishment Pill materials needed no special preparation whatsoever. Any cultivator with even a shred of foundation, through the unconscious accumulation of the past, could probably rummage several sets of such spirit-herb materials out of his personal store at random!

When all was said and done, these spirit-herb materials were utterly dispensable goods to Meng Jueming, junk tossed in a corner that he normally could not even be bothered to glance at. And now he had made a smooth virtue of necessity and called them spirit-herb materials specially prepared for Li Zhengming!

Had he not borne a blood feud for so many years and cultivated such extraordinary powers of forbearance, Li Zhengming would have nearly cursed aloud on the spot. Meng Jueming, you bastard—do you have to be this rotten to your own people!

Had he simply shaken his head and refused, then even if that was mean and ungrateful, it would at least have been aboveboard and honorable. But this fellow Meng Jueming did not want to give a Foundation Establishment Pill, yet still fretted over his reputation, and so insisted on fobbing him off with materials he himself would not even look twice at, all the while making it seem as though he were magnanimous and considerate of his underlings!

What did it mean to play the whore and set up a chastity arch at the same time? This was it!

Before Li Zhengming could speak, Meng Zhou beside him jumped up with a great cry of astonishment: "My heavens, three sets of Foundation Establishment Pill materials! That is three Foundation Establishment Pills! Cousin Nine, you are far too partial—you have never given me that much!"