Chapter 4772 — The Poisoning Incident

"Exactly, exactly—do unto others as they have done unto us. We'll make him swallow his own bitterness without being able to say a word!" Sun Baolu chimed in.

"Do unto others as they have done unto us? And how exactly do we do that? You two, come up with a plan for me." Ren Zhongyuan shot the pair an irritated glance and frowned. "This can't be dragged out. What if, once we reach the Eastern Continent, that brat and Ning Xuefei end up at some academy we can't predict—by then it'll be too late to deal with him. We have to strike before he gets off this ship!"

"Uh…" Li Yuzhou and Sun Baolu exchanged a glance, momentarily at a loss. It was easy enough to talk about such a thing, but actually coming up with a reasonable, workable scheme was not something that could be done on the spur of the moment.

"Isn't it just a matter of slandering him with empty words? The way I see it, it's actually not that hard. Brother Ren, have you forgotten? All the Eastern Continent disciples have to take turns on work duty aboard this ship—even the likes of us are no exception. That brat may carry the title of Western Island consort, but surely he can't be exempt either. After all, he's on his way to study at an Eastern Continent academy, so naturally he has to follow our Eastern Continent rules!" Yi Xiaotian said, stroking his chin.

"Right! As long as he's on work duty, we'll have our chance to frame him and let him taste what it's like to be unable to defend himself!" Ren Zhongyuan clapped his hands together in excitement.

"So that means you've already worked out what to do, Brother Ren?" Yi Xiaotian asked with keen interest.

"Naturally. Just sit back and enjoy the show. This time I'm going to drive this Western Island consort into a corner—heh heh!" A flash of murderous intent passed through Ren Zhongyuan's eyes. Though he dared not act openly on account of Liu Ziqi's intimidating presence, so long as he left Wei Zhao unable to defend himself, even Liu Ziqi would not be able to protect him!

The next day, just as Ren Zhongyuan and the others had anticipated, all the Eastern Continent disciples—Wei Zhao and Ning Xuefei included—were assigned to work rotations. Ning Xuefei's task was to scrub the decks alongside Huo Yudie and the others, while Wei Zhao was assigned to the mess hall, where his sole duty was to place the various dishes and delicacies into the immortal-stone jade pools.

The task was pure errand-running. There was no particular requirement for how the food was arranged, so long as people could reach it; it was neither strenuous nor difficult. Working alone, Wei Zhao finished the job easily in no time at all and called it a day.

At lunchtime, the Eastern Continent disciples came to the mess hall in twos and threes. Wei Zhao naturally went with Huo Yudie, Ning Xuefei, and the others, and on the way he passed Ren Zhongyuan and his group. To his considerable surprise, though, the fellow merely gave him a cold glance and did not come over to pick a fight. Had Liu Ziqi's words really frightened him off?

But what was the meaning of that faint, sinister smile at the corner of his mouth? Wei Zhao shook his head in puzzlement, a vague sense that something was off nagging at him—though for the moment he could not put his finger on what.

It was not until two hours later that Wei Zhao's foreboding finally became reality: every last Eastern Continent disciple had been poisoned!

The symptoms were exceedingly strange. There was only a faint, barely perceptible poison qi wandering through the meridians of their bodies, and beyond that, nothing unusual showed at all. At first glance everyone appeared perfectly normal; even circulating their true qi met with no obstruction. There was just one thing—by no method could this poison qi be expelled from the body.

If that were all, it might still be bearable. The problem was that this poison qi might at any moment suddenly invade the heart meridian, and once the heart meridian was breached by the poison, death would not be far behind.

All the Eastern Continent disciples were gathered together, exchanging worried glances. In the space of those two hours, three disciples had already suffered damage to their heart meridians; only through Liu Ziqi's efforts had they barely clung to their last breath. Now their lives hung by a thread, and at any moment they might stop breathing altogether.

If a way was not found quickly to purge the poison qi from their bodies, the rest would inevitably meet the same fate. It was even possible that every Eastern Continent disciple aboard this ship was doomed.

Among them all, only Wei Zhao was unaffected. His constitution was impervious to a hundred poisons, and ordinary toxins had little effect on him. But no one else knew this, and they all assumed he had been poisoned as well. After all, even a titan of the academy like Liu Ziqi had not been spared—which showed just how formidable this poison was.

In an instant, the atmosphere aboard the ship grew tense in the extreme. Everyone looked warily at everyone else. For such a large-scale poisoning to erupt so suddenly, there was absolutely no way no one was pulling strings behind the scenes!

"Vice Principal Liu, I am certain there is a mastermind behind this affair. Only by finding him quickly can we hope to obtain the antidote!" Ren Zhongyuan immediately stepped forward and declared.

The others nodded one after another, each loudly clamoring for the culprit to be seized. With their own lives at stake, there was no room for the slightest hesitation or delay.

"You have a lead?" Liu Ziqi glanced at him with a slight frown. This whole business was strange from beginning to end, baffling beyond reason.

If someone truly had poisoned them on purpose, then how had they done it, and to what end?

If the goal was genuinely to kill, they could have chosen a far more virulent poison rather than give everyone time to react as they had now. Even if no one could cure the poison, that interval was more than enough to ferret out the culprit—was that not simply inviting trouble for oneself?

Thinking it over carefully, every link in this chain was steeped in an inexplicable oddity. But the crowd was now in a fever pitch of agitation; delay any longer and the situation could easily spiral out of control, and then it would truly be impossible to contain.

Liu Ziqi had no choice but to declare first that the mastermind behind the poisoning would be uncovered, if only to soothe the people's hearts.

"I do!" Ren Zhongyuan's categorical answer instantly lifted everyone's spirits. Then, with a show of doubt, he swept his gaze across every face in the crowd one by one before saying slowly, "I just noticed that only we Eastern Continent disciples have been poisoned, while every member of the crew is perfectly fine. Don't you all think that is the most obvious clue of all?"

"What do you mean?" Those whose minds worked a little slower had not yet caught on, but beside him Yi Xiaotian slapped his own head and said, "Brother Ren means the culprit put the poison in our food?"

"Exactly, that's precisely it!" Ren Zhongyuan now wore the wise and penetrating expression of one who saw through all things. Under everyone's gaze he drew out the moment to the fullest before explaining, "You should all know that although the crew and we Eastern Continent disciples share the same living quarters, there is one difference—they have their own separate mess hall. If the culprit had poisoned the water or used something like poisoned incense, the crew could not possibly have been spared. So the answer is obvious: the culprit put the poison in our food!" (To be continued.)