Chapter 3841 — Highly Unusual

But there is another old saying—that the lamp's own shadow is the darkest; the more dangerous a place, the safer it often proves. Such a rare chance to strike at the master-disciple pair, Nan Tianyong and Yu Jiang, was something Wei Zhao was loath to let slip by. Even in his current battered state, he could at least keep watch and wait for his opening.

So Wei Zhao doubled back midway, and from a distance he took in every move Yu Jiang made, tailing him the whole way without ever showing himself.

"Heh... trying to frame me for this? Your calculations are a shade too clever, don't you think?" Wei Zhao shook his head with a cold laugh. In his hand at that moment was unmistakably a mortal-realm mobile phone—and that phone had, unmistakably, captured the entire scene of Yu Jiang murdering his own master, start to finish!

High-tech products from the mortal realm rarely made their way to Cloudstep Island, for even if they could be brought up through a teleportation array, they were bound to be damaged by its pressure; especially something as exquisitely delicate as a mobile phone, which could never function properly.

But Wei Zhao had his jade-pendant space—his cheat of a trump card. Others might struggle to carry high-tech goods up intact, but for Wei Zhao, it was no trouble at all.

Of course, things like phones were all but useless to cultivators; in a place like Cloudstep Island, with no signal, they were good for precisely nothing. Wei Zhao had never meant to bring one along, but he had long been in the habit of stashing everything he owned in the jade-pendant space. Bringing the phone up this time had been purely incidental.

Not just the phone—even its charger was stored away in his jade-pendant space, and it was a solar-powered power bank specially procured back in the mortal realm, so that he could stay in touch with his women and his young followers at any time and place.

Ever since coming up to Cloudstep Island, the phone had lost its calling function, but out of a modern city dweller's habit—and because it held the photos of his women—Wei Zhao still charged it often and paged through those pictures. Even if he could not yet be reunited with them, even if many of them still lay unconscious, looking at those photos in idle moments let him feast his eyes on what he missed and served as a spur to sharpen his own strength.

Little did he expect that this habit would prove so tremendously useful at such a moment. To have secretly filmed Yu Jiang killing Nan Tianyong—such a windfall caught Wei Zhao by surprise.

With such a video in hand, he held Yu Jiang's fatal weakness in his grip. Even if this thing truly blew up into a major affair, Yu Jiang would never again dare stir up any trouble before Wei Zhao.

If Wei Zhao truly wished to deal with him, he would not even need to lift a finger—he need only bring out the video and show it to the right people, and Nan Tianyong's two elder brothers would surely do the work for him!

The name of the Three Heroes of the Nan Clan resounded throughout the Triple Stack Pavilion. Nan Tianyong ranked last and was the weakest of them, yet even he was a full-fledged expert at the peak of the late Foundation Establishment stage, holding such a vital post as the supervising deacon of the Soaring Heaven Pavilion. As for his two elder brothers, one could well imagine they were even more unfathomable!

With their strength and standing, if they were ever to learn that Yu Jiang, his own disciple, had slain Nan Tianyong with his own hands, then even if Yu Jiang fled to the ends of the earth, he would never escape their pursuit!

"Cultivators may be mighty, but ordinary folk of the mortal realm are not entirely without their uses! High-tech gadgets are truly not to be underestimated!" Wei Zhao chuckled. When this matter was exposed, the last thing Yu Jiang would ever dream was that he would be brought down by the high-tech of ordinary people!

Still, Wei Zhao had no intention of releasing this video so lightly. He and Yu Jiang were locked in a fight to the death, and releasing it would indeed put the man neatly in his grave—but doing so would also easily expose his own identity, and might even lay bare the secret of the jade-pendant space.

After all, a mobile phone would make anyone think immediately of the mortal realm, and the ones most deeply connected to the mortal realm could only be Wei Zhao and the handful of other newcomers transported up from there.

One had to remember that the last time newcomers were transported up from the mortal realm was a thousand years ago, and back then there had been no such thing as mobile phones. Across the entire northern island of Cloudstep Island, the only people who might carry phones on their persons were Wei Zhao and his companions.

A single cursory inquiry from any interested party would easily expose Wei Zhao's identity, and Yu Jiang would inevitably guess that he was Lin Er. Not only might the secret of the Star-Ink Stone come to light, but the fact that the phone had been brought up wholly intact would invite all manner of investigation—and by then, Wei Zhao would not be able to stop it even if he tried.

Tucking the phone back into the jade-pendant space, Wei Zhao gave a faint smile, then turned and headed back to the Welcome Pavilion. Until the proper moment came, he would let Yu Jiang caper about—the higher the man pranced, the harder he would fall.

Back at the Welcome Pavilion, the only thing Wei Zhao had left to do was to keep cultivating those two awakened Heart-Devouring Linglong Grass seeds in his jade-pendant space until they grew to full maturity, for only then could they be used to refine the Foundation Establishment Golden Core.

Once the Foundation Establishment Golden Core was successfully refined, it would mean that, for Wei Zhao, the mid-Foundation Establishment stage was not far off.

Beyond that, the newcomer challenge tournament was in full swing—a matter of life-shaping importance in the eyes of the other newcomers, deciding their future prospects, yet for Wei Zhao it was all but a sideshow. Apart from the points Cha Wu had sent his way at the very start, no one had dared challenge him since.

Among all the newcomers of the Azure Cloud Pavilion, the only one who might pose any threat to him was Meng Zhou. Though he had reasoned that Xu the Young Master and Meng Jueming and their like would never let matters rest so easily, the plain fact was that Meng Zhou had yet to make his move.

With Wei Zhao's trump card, any shift in Meng Zhou's strength, however slight, could be detected at the first instant. And in truth, Meng Zhou's strength had not changed at all—even after recovering from his injuries, he had not challenged Xiao Che and Qiao Hongcai again, but had merely trailed behind the two of them, snapping up scraps.

To be so spineless was a far cry from Meng Zhou's former conduct, and all the newcomers were abuzz with talk. Rumors had even spread that Wei Zhao's faction now stood alone above all others, that Meng Jueming, the steward and senior disciple, was at his wits' end, and that Meng Zhou, for his part, could only swallow his pride.

In times past, such murmurs would have sent not only Meng Zhou but even Meng Jueming into a fury. This time, however, things were highly unusual: from beginning to end, neither Meng Jueming nor Meng Zhou said a single word in rebuttal, keeping only silence.

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