Chapter 4217 — Missing Once More

Cannon Master and the man in black nodded, then answered the summons and went out at once; Meng Zhou, being of the lowest station, was anxious about Xu Lingchong's injuries but did not dare defy the mysterious woman's command, and could only follow them out of the room.

The three of them waited outside. No one knew what the mysterious woman meant to do, and still less did anyone know what was happening inside the room at that moment. A full hour passed before the mysterious woman pushed the door open and came out.

"How is he?" the man in black asked hurriedly. Xu Lingchong was a deputy he valued; given proper cultivation, he would one day bear great responsibility, and if he simply died like this, the loss would be no small thing.

Beside him, Cannon Master too wore a look of concern—after all, Xu Lingchong could be counted as his disciple as well; and as for Meng Zhou, all the more so.

"I have already injected him with the genes of the Fire Wolf War God. It is not perfect, but at least it guarantees he will not die—and not only that, he will become stronger than before!" the mysterious woman said flatly.

"Fire Wolf War God? What is that?" Meng Zhou blurted out in alarm at the words, but under the icy gazes of the man in black and Cannon Master he at once realized he had spoken out of turn; with his station, he had no right to know such things at all.

"Nothing much—a kind of hybrid between a spirit beast and a human cultivator!" The mysterious woman did not take offense at this, and went on: "In truth, the finest Fire Wolf War God modified body is still in the mortal world, not on Cloud Step Island; it is only that for the time being a living person cannot be teleported here, so we had to experiment on Xu Lingchong first. From the present results, it should be fairly good, though we will need to keep observing him for a while yet."

Meng Zhou did not really understand, and had that vague sense of being overawed by something he could not grasp, but so long as Xu Lingchong was all right, he was relieved.

Xu Lingchong had suddenly vanished once more—and even Meng Zhou had disappeared along with him, strangely enough—and this once again set the whole of the Triple Stack Pavilion on North Island abuzz. Many speculated that they had gone off somewhere to seek a cure, though even Xu Yuanzheng knew nothing of it at all.

While the outside world was in an uproar, Xu Yuanzheng himself was frantic with worry. Yet though Xu Lingchong had never told him the specifics during this recent period, as a grandee of the Council of Elders he was the shrewdest of the shrewd; even if Xu Lingchong said nothing, he could infer a good deal of the truth from the usual traces and signs.

He surmised that Xu Lingchong's sudden disappearance this time, Meng Zhou included, must be a trip to some mysterious place for treatment, and that their earlier surge in strength was likely connected to it as well.

So for all his worry and urgency, Xu Yuanzheng deliberately suppressed the matter and kept it from blowing up further; otherwise, if it went badly and some unspeakable secret about his grandson were uncovered, it would be too late for regret.

Since Xu Yuanzheng, the boy's own grandfather, said there was nothing wrong, the other high-ups of the Triple Stack Pavilion naturally would not make a fuss over it, and the Law Enforcement Hall likewise turned a deaf ear throughout, without the slightest stir.

The authorities deliberately smoothed things over, and the rumors in the streets were, after all, mere conjecture; with no official word to confirm them, after a time they naturally died down.

Time flew by. Wei Zhao's move into the foremost grand residence of the inner sect marked his formal status as an inner sect disciple, and several days had now passed.

With the aura of Shangguan Tianxia, master of the Soaring Heaven Pavilion, shielding him overhead—so that even Yu Zhenyang, master of the Azure Cloud Pavilion, granted whatever he asked—the rest might look on with envy and jealousy, but at most they grumbled a few words in private, and never dared come make trouble for him.

As for the faction that had originally belonged to Xu Lingchong, they dared even less to go capering about in front of Wei Zhao. Even Xu Lingchong, at the height of his power, had been struck down in a single move, left neither alive nor dead—let alone these underlings of his. Even seeking death had its limits!

And so Wei Zhao was able to cultivate in peace. Huang Xiaotao followed him and moved into the foremost residence as well, which secretly delighted this well-behaved girl for a long while; though they were not in the same room, sharing one roof was, in a sense, **, and it showed that her relationship with Wei Zhao had drawn a layer closer.

Each day, besides their own cultivation, the two would occasionally practice the Frenzied Fire Eight Trigrams Combined Palm together; after all, apart from the Dan Fire Bomb, it was the strongest move they could presently command, and a powerful trump card for facing enemies in days to come.

And besides Huang Xiaotao, Shangguan Lan'er came over every day as well. In all the Triple Stack Pavilion, Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao were the friends she was closest to; had her upbringing not been so strict, the girl would even have had a mind to move in and live with them—only Shangguan Tianxia would not agree to it.

In addition, the long-suffering senior brother, along with Xiao Che, Qiao Hongcai, and Li Zhengming, had not yet fully moved over, but came by every few days to meet. It was worth noting that Wei Zhao, taking these few days' time, had raised the strength of all of them to the realm of Foundation Establishment Great Perfection!

The reason for doing so was, of course, the matter he had discussed with Yu Zhenyang some time before: if the long-suffering senior brother's strength did not reach Foundation Establishment Great Perfection, then even with the higher-ups' approval, he could not in the end take the seat of third master of the Welcome Pavilion.

Since he had already upgraded the long-suffering senior brother, Wei Zhao naturally would not leave out Xiao Che and the others. So long as they could keep it secret, great strength would not only protect them, but would also make them handier when Wei Zhao had need of them in days to come, rather than a burden.

Beyond that, there was another important reason Wei Zhao dared to raise everyone's strength: through Huang Xiaotao's personal verification over this period, one point had become entirely clear—that raising strength here was not the same as in the mortal world.

In the mortal world, because spiritual energy was exceedingly thin, the underlings whose strength Wei Zhao had raised could no longer advance on their own afterward; no matter how hard they cultivated, it was to no effect.

But now, because spiritual energy was abundant on Cloud Step Island—and in Wei Zhao's foremost residence especially, where its concentration was a hundred or a thousand times that of the outside world—they could cultivate normally without the slightest hindrance. There were thus no side effects, and Wei Zhao could boldly raise everyone's strength without worry.

Otherwise, apart from the long-suffering senior brother, Wei Zhao would not have upgraded Xiao Che and the others—not out of any selfishness, but because they were different from the long-suffering senior brother: all three of them had talent far beyond ordinary people, and so long as cultivation resources were supplied in full, breaking through and advancing was no difficult matter.

Left to develop naturally, their foundations would be sounder and their reserves deeper; there was no need at all for Wei Zhao to pull them up by the roots to help them grow. R1152