Chapter 4016 — Heavenly Chan?!

Having pocketed the spirit jade, Steward Song suddenly gave a smile that was not quite a smile. "This Song has always done things with a generous hand. This time I failed to intercept the Hong Clan Merchant Guild's goods, yet I accepted your fifteen thousand spirit jade for nothing—though it was my due, in private I still feel somewhat uneasy about it. So I may as well give you a piece of information instead."

At once everyone's faces turned strange. If you truly felt uneasy, then why the hell did you pocket the spirit jade so briskly?

"What information might that be? Pray speak plainly, Steward Song," Manager Hao said, cupping his hands in salute.

Steward Song smiled faintly. "You gentlemen have been cloistered here all day deliberating great matters and paying little heed to the world outside. I daresay you have not yet heard—half an hour ago, the Hong Clan Merchant Guild joined the ranks of those exhibiting goods for auction."

"What?!" At these words every face in the company changed at once; jaws dropped, tongues stilled, and for a long while no one could utter a sound.

They had gathered today to discuss, from first to last, how to deal with the Hong Clan Merchant Guild; they had considered every level and every facet, and had even, to guard against the remotest sliver of possibility, laid out a great sum of spirit jade to bring the Northguard Garrison into play. Never once had it crossed their minds that Hong Zhong might still have the wherewithal to take part in the exhibition!

"Take part in the exhibition? How could he possibly still have goods to put up for auction at this point?" Manager Hao and the others could not help crying out in disbelief.

The two crates of goods he had brought had gone overboard into the sea, and the Hong Clan Merchant Guild's stockpiles and supply lines had been severed besides. By any reckoning, such a thing simply could not have happened.

Unless someone had sold Hong Zhong ahead of time the very goods meant for auction!

No one present was a fool, and they swiftly hit upon this possibility. Then, one after another, their faces turned savage and ugly. "To dare do such a thing behind our backs—do these people take our Anti-Hong Alliance for thin air?"

Steward Song could not help laughing. "You gentlemen are likely mistaken. What Hong Zhong has put out for exhibition this time is quite astonishing, I assure you—nothing any ordinary merchant guild could produce. Nor would anyone be fool enough to sell him strategic goods like these in bulk on the sly. Which shows that my old friend has in fact been prepared all along, and has been making fine sport of you all."

At these words the faces of Manager Hao, Wang Tong, and the rest grew uglier still. Without another word they rose and made for the door—they would go and see for themselves just what goods this old villain Hong Zhong could possibly produce!

Watching their expressions, Steward Song cursed inwardly: a pack of fools—whose spirit jade was there to fleece, if not theirs?

The whole crowd swept along in grand procession and soon arrived at the exhibition pavilion the Hong Clan Merchant Guild had reserved. Because his deputy had perished along the way, Hong Zhong, though a manager of the guild, had no choice but to take the field himself this time and bustle about in person; even Wei Zhao lent a hand at his side.

The pavilion was not especially large, and the goods the Hong Clan Merchant Guild had brought out for exhibition were not especially large either—together they barely filled a single row of display racks. Yet the articles arrayed upon that row made even these well-traveled managers of great merchant guilds stare, their eyes gone wide and fixed.

"How... how is this possible?!" Wang Tong, the least able of them all to hold his temper, was struck dumb on the spot.

"More than a hundred of them—all top-grade pills?" Even the seasoned, steady Manager Hao felt his temples throb and his heart nearly burst with fright.

At any auction, top-grade pills were the grand finale, the crowning treasures; to procure three or four was considered quite a feat. A hundred and more was simply beyond imagining—unless one kept a Pill God like Zhang Lifeng enshrined at home.

From the expected nothing at all to a conjurer's trick of a full hundred-odd top-grade pills—this sudden reversal was too astonishing, too outrageous for heaven itself!

"Well now, my fellow tradesmen, we meet again! I trust you have all been in good health these past days? I do hope the humble wares of my little shop are not beneath the notice of your distinguished eyes?" Hong Zhong, savoring their choking expressions, beamed with the benign smile of a man who would not hurt a fly.

My heavens! The crowd nearly spat blood again. A full hundred-odd top-grade pills, and he called it a little shop's wares beneath their notice—then what were their own goods, dung trodden into the street?

All that scheming, all that elaborate maneuvering over so long, and in the end they had not only failed to crush Hong Zhong and the Hong Clan Merchant Guild—they had brought about this embarrassing, astonishing spectacle instead. The faces of Manager Hao, Wang Tong, and the rest were now so dark that water seemed to drip from them.

Hong Zhong might be an honest and generous elder, but the words he chose at this moment could kill a man with vexation and not even owe him a life for it!

Wei Zhao watched from the side, secretly amused. More than a hundred top-grade pills—the shock and awe they carried was more than even the most worldly and experienced could stomach, let alone this pack of skulking nobodies who had schemed so hard to bring the Hong Clan Merchant Guild to ruin.

In truth, it was not only these men; even those great personages from Middle Island who had arrived late now came crowding over at the news to join the excitement, their faces alight with amazement, whispering to one another and praising without end.

Amid the crowd, a figure in yellow suddenly made Wei Zhao's eyes brighten. Peering closer, he felt his mind go off like a thunderclap, and before he could stop himself he breathed out softly, "Heavenly Chan?!"

Face and form, speech and bearing—every detail proved that the woman in the crowd was Heavenly Chan!

Yet at Wei Zhao's soft cry, Heavenly Chan showed no reaction at all. She merely swept him with an indifferent glance, her gaze sliding straight past him, as though she had not the least idea who Wei Zhao was.

Wei Zhao was struck dumb. The woman was plainly Heavenly Chan—there could be no mistaking it. But he wore no Thousand-Silk Mask; how could she fail to recognize him?

When Wei Zhao would have said more, Heavenly Chan had already moved off with those great personages from Middle Island, and from first to last she did not look at Wei Zhao again, not even once.

Frowning as he watched Heavenly Chan depart with the others, as though she had never known him at all, Wei Zhao was left utterly stunned!

He could not have been mistaken, and yet Heavenly Chan's expression throughout had betrayed no peculiarity, nothing out of the ordinary—she had treated him as a perfect stranger. That was beyond all understanding.

"What is going on here?" Wei Zhao drew a deep breath as he watched her retreating figure. In all his time on Cloud Terrace Island, Heavenly Chan was the first cultivator from the mortal world he had seen besides Kang Jingming, Zhong Yongliang, and the others of his own island—and a woman bound to him by ties of no small intimacy, at that.

"Young Hero Lin, what is it? Is something the matter?" Hong Zhong, sensing that something was amiss with Wei Zhao, spoke up to ask.

In less than three days, to have refined more than a hundred top-grade pills without pause—such heaven-defying ability, such an immense debt of gratitude. Hong Zhong was now utterly prostrate before Wei Zhao, and had come to regard him wholly as one of his own. R1152