Chapter 4051 — Reunion

Meng Zhou's feud with Wei Zhao ran no less deep than their own, which made him a natural ally whose reliability was beyond doubt.

To their surprise, Meng Zhou—whose bearing had grown ever more bizarre and uncanny—merely listened to their account in full, then cursed them coldly with two words: "You idiots!"

Such undisguised contempt instantly wiped the color from Murong Zhen's and Kang Jingming's faces. They had always regarded themselves as far above Meng Zhou, and now to be looked down upon by this former underling of theirs—this was more than flesh and blood could bear!

Yet the moment their expressions changed, a savage, ferocious aura came bearing down upon them from above, crushing them until they could scarcely draw breath.

"You... you've already reached the mid-stage of Foundation Establishment?" Kang Jingming and Murong Zhen blurted out in unison, their faces stricken with shock. Never had they imagined that in so short a time this Meng Zhou could be reborn entirely, having broken through to the mid-stage of Foundation Establishment!

Back when Murong Zhen had first arrived at the Welcome Pavilion, her strength at the peak of the early Foundation Establishment stage had made her peerless, and a mere Meng Zhou had been beneath her notice. Now, after only a few short months, the man had become a mid-stage Foundation Establishment expert whom she could only look up to.

Strength decided who held the right to speak. Had Meng Zhou still been at the peak of the early Foundation Establishment stage, then for that one scornful remark alone Murong Zhen and Kang Jingming would have fallen out with him on the spot. But now he was a mid-stage Foundation Establishment expert whose strength completely overawed the two of them, and that changed everything.

However much it galled them, Murong Zhen and Kang Jingming could only swallow it for the time being.

Meng Zhou paid their shock no mind and went on with his contempt: "With the paltry strength you two have, you dared to kidnap Shangguan Lan'er and then try to pin the blame on Wei Zhao? That you're still alive and unharmed is nothing short of a miracle. And you still have the nerve to wonder how they found you? Even Shangguan Tianxia has taken the field in person—a figure of such vast power and reach, is it really so strange that he could track you down?"

Under that relentless tide of scorn and scolding, Murong Zhen and Kang Jingming were left red-faced and speechless. On reflection, this kidnapping of Shangguan Lan'er had been sheer possession by evil spirits, and their survival to this day was truly a stroke of great fortune.

"The idea of kidnapping Shangguan Lan'er was Miss Murong's from the very start—it had nothing to do with me..." Kang Jingming said, distancing himself. From first to last, all he had ever wanted was to deal with Wei Zhao; unlike Murong Zhen, he had no personal grudge against Shangguan Lan'er.

Murong Zhen was so mortified she could not speak for a long while. At last she set her face and said, "We've already come this far—what's the use of dragging all that up now? Rather than waste our breath blaming each other, we'd do better to think about how to deal with Wei Zhao next. That's what matters!"

"Hmph! Xu Lingchong's gone now, Meng Jueming's gone, and every backer we had has fallen. What the hell are we supposed to do?" Meng Zhou snorted in contempt.

Had this been the old Meng Zhou, now that his strength had surged to the mid-stage of Foundation Establishment he would long since have leapt out to challenge Wei Zhao, too impatient even to bother with schemes and plots—he would simply have wanted to crush Wei Zhao head-on and bask in the glory. But his nature had changed utterly; the foolish, simple-minded stupidity of the old days was gone, and in its place he had learned the two words: bide one's time.

"Even so, we can't just let Wei Zhao off so easily. If we put our minds to it, we're bound to find his weakness!" Murong Zhen said, unwilling to let it go.

"Kang Jingming, you and Wei Zhao were old rivals back in the secular world—you should know his weaknesses better than anyone," Meng Zhou said, turning to him. His own grudge against Wei Zhao was real enough, and no matter how much his nature had changed, if there was a chance to do Wei Zhao in, he would never let it pass.

Kang Jingming thought it over, pondering for a moment, then said, "Hmm. The man's a romantic, and he loves to put on airs—beyond that, there doesn't seem to be much... Wait, I've got it!"

Meng Zhou and Murong Zhen perked up at once. "Out with it!"

"Wei Zhao is also a sworn enemy of Dongfang Badao of the Xuanji Pavilion—their feud goes back to the secular world as well. I hear the old bastard's doing rather well for himself these days. I'll go fetch him and we can put our heads together," Kang Jingming proposed.

He had no particular friendship with Dongfang Badao, but the enemy of one's enemy is a friend, and since they all existed to deal with Wei Zhao, the more the merrier.

Meng Zhou nodded. "That works. And while you're at it, bring Zhong Yongliang of your Chongtian Pavilion along too. We can't lose touch with these people just because Xu Lingchong's gone—I rather rate Zhong Yongliang, as it happens."

"Yes, yes, of course—how did I forget him in this kidnapping business? If he'd been with us back then, why would we have needed to drag in a fence-sitter like Zha Wu!" Kang Jingming nodded again and again.

Truth be told, it was not so much that he had forgotten. During this whole stretch Kang Jingming had been keeping close company with Murong Zhen, and he had left Zhong Yongliang out back then purely out of a man's possessive instinct—he simply did not want Zhong Yongliang getting too close to a seductress like Murong Zhen on the pretext of business.

But now there was no time for such trifles; dealing with Wei Zhao was what mattered.

Kang Jingming set off at once to find Dongfang Badao. He had the standing of a new-arrival steward, and even with his great patron Xu Lingchong gone, within the little patch of ground that was the Welcome Pavilion he still carried considerable weight—everyone had to show him a measure of deference.

More than half a year had passed, and among all the new arrivals of the Welcome Pavilion's three pavilions, if one were to name the most famous and most illustrious, Wei Zhao was without question first, Kang Jingming second on the strength of his steward's post, and this third place belonged to Dongfang Badao of the Xuanji Pavilion.

Most people on Cloud Terrace Island might look down their noses at cultivators who had come up from the secular world, but the facts proved otherwise: every batch sent up from the secular world might begin in sorry straits, ostracized and threadbare, yet in the end they almost always became elites of their generation, standing above the vast majority of Cloud Terrace Island's native cultivators.

Nor was this any wonder. Everyone who had the chance to come up to Cloud Terrace Island was a top-tier elite, one in a hundred million chosen from the secular world. Even if they could not match the very finest of Cloud Terrace Island's natives, in competition with ordinary cultivators they had strength and cunning to spare—and given a stroke of fortune besides, they could rise above the crowd with the greatest of ease.

In this cycle of the Welcome Pavilion, the new-arrival king of the Qingyun Pavilion was Wei Zhao, from the secular world; the new-arrival king of the Chongtian Pavilion was Kang Jingming, likewise from the secular world; and the new-arrival king of the Xuanji Pavilion was Dongfang Badao, still from the secular world. R1152