Chapter 4757 — Absolutely Hilarious

Huo Yudie sat dumbly in her room, her mind a complete blank. She knew she could not afford to hesitate over such a matter—whatever happened, she had to sort out her thoughts at once and make her decision quickly—yet her head simply would not obey her, and she could think of nothing at all, only sit there staring blankly, over and over.

She did not sleep a wink all night. Only when the first light of dawn filtered through the window and fell across her face, and the twittering of birds came in from outside, did Huo Yudie start awake. She forced herself to steady her nerves, then rose in a daze and walked out of the room.

Once out the door, Huo Yudie went straight to find Wei Zhao and the others—not to ask Wei Zhao for help, but because of what they had agreed upon the day before. They had all planned to go swimming at the nearby beach.

By the time Huo Yudie arrived, Wei Zhao and the rest were already fully prepared. Ning Xuefei and the other girls were all dressed in mortal-realm attire, each one young and radiant, and they had even readied swimsuits and swim caps well in advance, all of it sorted out from Wei Zhao's jade pendant space.

"Sister Huo! Hurry, hurry! Let's get going!" Shangguan Lan'er waved from afar. She could hardly wait to get to the seaside and change into this trendy new swimsuit. Ning Xuefei and Han Jingyi were waving too, and by the looks of them, they were just as impatient.

"Coming!" Huo Yudie forced a smile and quickened her pace toward them.

"Sister Huo, take a look—this is the swimsuit we picked out for you. Do you like it?" Before Huo Yudie could even get close, Ning Xuefei and the others solemnly produced a bikini.

Wei Zhao, standing to one side, felt his eyelid twitch. Instinctively he stole a glance at Huo Yudie's shapely figure and could not help swallowing hard. With a body like that, plus such a sexy, fiery bikini—today he really was going to spurt nosebleeds.

"What is this?" Huo Yudie took it and looked it up and down, over and over. In her eyes this bikini was nothing but two tiny scraps of cloth that could not cover anything at all—and once she noticed Wei Zhao's reaction, her face flushed crimson. "Is this even clothing?"

"Of course it's clothing! This is the most popular style in the mortal realm. Sister Huo, why don't you change into it right now and try it on? Heehee!" Han Jingyi winked mischievously.

"Ah?!" Huo Yudie was startled. However intrigued she might be by the mortal realm, at heart she was still a thoroughly conservative girl of Cloud Terrace Island. How could she dare put on something like this all at once? She shook her head again and again. "I... I can't..."

"Why can't you? How will you know unless you try? I'm sure you'll look wonderful in it, Sister Huo!" Ning Xuefei said with a laugh.

"Exactly, exactly! There's no one else around today anyway, and sooner or later our little junior brother is going to see it—so why not today rather than another day!" Shangguan Lan'er giggled, snatching up the bikini and holding it up against Huo Yudie.

Had this been a few days earlier, egged on like this, Huo Yudie might really have thrown caution to the wind and tried it on. But today she simply was not in the mood, and could only shake her head again and again with a bitter smile.

"Sister Huo, why do I feel like you're a little down? Has something happened?" Ning Xuefei was the first to sense that something was off. She exchanged a glance with the others, then asked at once.

"That's right—we're your best friends, your sisters! If something's troubling you, Sister Huo, you can't keep it from us!" Han Jingyi chimed in. The day before, when they had been talking about swimsuits, she had been raring to go; now Huo Yudie had suddenly wilted, and she had a vague suspicion that something was definitely wrong.

"If something's on your mind, just say it. Don't carry it all by yourself—you've still got us," Wei Zhao said. He too could tell something was wrong with Huo Yudie; the girl had never been good at hiding what she felt, and besides, she had not slept all night, and there were bloodshot veins in her eyes.

"I..." Huo Yudie looked at them all, hesitating, until her gaze met Wei Zhao's—and then, for no reason at all, a wave of grievance welled up in her heart. Her eyes reddened in an instant, and under the repeated urgings of Wei Zhao and the others, she finally poured out the whole story of the previous night.

After hearing Huo Yudie's account, Wei Zhao was somewhat at a loss for words. He himself was an alchemist who defied all common sense, and ordinarily this would have been exactly the sort of situation where he could be of use—but the Lightning Mystic Pill was a seventh-grade pill, and every one of his previous attempts to refine various seventh-grade pills had ended in failure, without a single exception.

To this day Wei Zhao had still not worked out the reason. At first he had assumed his true qi was not strong enough to refine seventh-grade pills, but on second thought, if that were really the cause, then alchemy would be impossible altogether—yet his failures each time had taken wildly different forms, and at the very least he had always been able to enter the normal procedure.

For anything else, Wei Zhao reckoned that with his own strength and his various connections, he could still afford to talk big—but when it came to refining the Lightning Mystic Pill, he truly had no way.

"Yudie, I can refine pills too, but perhaps because my level isn't high enough, for now I still can't refine seventh-grade pills... Still, I promise you, one day I'll find a way to break through..." Seeing the tears welling in Huo Yudie's eyes, Wei Zhao could only toughen his scalp and try to console her.

Huo Yudie could not help feeling a little disappointed at this. Though she knew such a thing was unlikely—for a top-tier genius like Wei Zhao, blessed with such extraordinary talent, it was already surprising enough that he had the leisure to be an alchemist at all; if he could really refine even seventh-grade pills, then he would have to be the heavens' own bastard son.

Even a top-tier genius had to have limits. Who on earth was proficient in absolutely everything? Did that leave any room for anyone else to live?

"Hahahaha!" While Wei Zhao and Huo Yudie sat there steeped in gloom, Ning Xuefei, for some reason, suddenly burst out laughing—laughing so hard she could barely catch her breath, doubled over for a long while before she could straighten up.

"Feifei, what are you doing? Sister Huo is pouring out her troubles, and you're laughing your head off—honestly, so heartless!" Shangguan Lan'er pouted. Wei Zhao and Huo Yudie also looked at her sidelong, unable to fathom why she had suddenly started laughing.

"Wait, let me catch my breath first—this really is too funny!" Ning Xuefei ignored their baffled expressions and kept rubbing her stomach. After a moment's rest she answered, "The truth is, refining seventh-grade pills has nothing to do with Wei Zhao's level being insufficient—it's that your medicine cauldron simply cannot refine seventh-grade pills by its very nature!"

"What? The Shennong Cauldron has that limitation too?" Wei Zhao was startled. (To be continued)