Chapter 4795 — Fool!

Had anyone else been showing a visitor around their own academy, they would surely have done a little boasting—especially at a place like Xiangyun, with its formidable strength and abundant resources, which deserved a proper introduction. Yet Chen Xinglan mentioned none of it. Every time she opened her mouth it was to appraise the scenery and the atmosphere. A woman of taste, to be sure.

Beyond the scenery, however, she did offer a few words about the formations scattered throughout the academy. Few though they were, each struck home. One glimpse through the tube told the whole leopard: she had plainly studied formations deeply. That suited Ning Xuefei's taste rather well.

For years now the girl had been digging into a single line of inquiry—how to fuse artifact-forging with formations, and above all how she might one day complement Han Jingyi's work. It was a matter of tremendous importance. The pity was that she herself was no master of formations, only a dabbler. Now at last she had a chance to learn from a true teacher.

It is worth noting that along the way they ran into several familiar faces—none other than Ren Zhongyuan and his companions, who had returned a step ahead of them.

Seeing Wei Zhao and Ning Xuefei turn up in this place, the men visibly froze for a moment. But perhaps because Chen Xinglan was present, or perhaps because their earlier defeat still rankled, Ren Zhongyuan did not lead his men over to make trouble. He merely cast Wei Zhao a look from afar, then turned and walked off.

"Brother Ren, them showing up at our academy right now—that means they're planning to enroll here. Heh, a chance for revenge delivered right to our door!" Yi Xiaotian sneered, watching the backs of Wei Zhao and the others.

"Hmph. Enemies meet on a narrow road. They dare come to my Xiangyun Academy—do they really think I'm powerless against them?" Ren Zhongyuan gave a cold laugh, sparks fairly flying from his eyes.

Back on the warship, a single casual word from Wei Zhao had gotten him thrown into confinement by Oda Ba for a full month. The mere memory of it made Ren Zhongyuan boil with rage.

He had held the upper hand. Oda Ba should have been on his side. Instead, out of nowhere, that brat Wei Zhao had stolen the spotlight, until even Oda Ba sang his praises and turned around to help him against Ren Zhongyuan. This was beyond bearing!

Yet for all his resentment, Ren Zhongyuan could do nothing at present. He knew this had to be planned at length; another rash move might cost him even more. He was already a wreck who could not circulate his true qi—one harsher blow and he might be crippled for life!

"Brother Ren, what's your plan?" Yi Xiaotian asked.

"None for now. Don't be impatient—wait until I've recovered my strength. Since they mean to cultivate here, there will be plenty of time to finish them!" Ren Zhongyuan said with a savage look.

One thing he had to admit: he had badly underestimated Wei Zhao before, and that was why he had suffered defeat after defeat. Though he had been confined indoors this past month, Yi Xiaotian and the others had already gathered full intelligence on Wei Zhao. The lad was far from as simple as he appeared—a genuinely hard target. If you strike a snake, strike it at the seven inches.

That said, Ren Zhongyuan took his leave of Yi Xiaotian and the others and returned to his own estate—a residence of the highest order, alive with birdsong and flowers, its spiritual energy overpowering. After all, this was the home of Xiangyun Academy's chief alchemist, a station so exalted that even the vice-directors could not match it; only the director himself could claim a slight edge over him.

He had no sooner stepped through the gate than a stern rebuke cut him off: "Barging about like that—have you no sense of propriety!"

Following the voice, he saw a middle-aged man watering flowers in the garden beside him—lean of build, commanding of presence, radiating an authority that overawed without any show of anger. This was Ren Zhongyuan's father, Ren Tiansuo.

"Fa—Father!" Ren Zhongyuan hastily arranged a respectful expression on his face. For all his swagger abroad, before this father, the chief alchemist, he ordinarily dared not even breathe too loudly.

"Mm." Ren Tiansuo gave a slight nod and went on carefully watering each plant and flower around him. These were rare spirit herbs he had paid a fortune to have brought in; any single one was priceless, and so he tended them with his own hands.

Only after he had carefully seen to every last spirit herb did Ren Tiansuo turn to look at his son. One glance and his brows knit at once: "You've been poisoned?"

"Yes." Ren Zhongyuan nodded, his face grim. It was a humiliation such as he had never known—a mere mid-Nascent Soul cultivator's casual wisp of true qi, and he could not dissolve it. Were word to get out, men would laugh their teeth loose.

"Come here." Ren Tiansuo laid his hand on the acupoint at his son's wrist and mused for a moment, then tried sending in a thread of true qi to neutralize it. The next instant his expression turned ugly. "Who did you meet, and what happened? Tell me everything from the beginning, not a single detail left out!"

Ren Zhongyuan had no choice but to comply. Starting from his first encounter with Wei Zhao, he recounted the whole affair, trembling with fear, not daring to embellish, able only to tell the truth word for word.

Such was the lesson he had learned from childhood: so long as he told the truth, his father would side with him no matter what happened. But if there were the slightest concealment or lie, it could never escape his father's eyes, and the outcome would be worse than this.

"Wei Zhao? Even a realist like Oda Ba holds him in such esteem—so this is quite a remarkable young man, is he?" Ren Tiansuo narrowed his eyes.

"From what I can see, Father, his methods are indeed unfathomable and strange—but all crooked, side-door tricks. That business with the navigation was probably a fluke. What's most hateful is that the brat would even poison a man in public—utterly treacherous and cunning!" Ren Zhongyuan ground his teeth in indignation.

"Hmph. Is that your summary?" Ren Tiansuo gave him a cold look.

"I..." The temperature around them dropped in an instant, and Ren Zhongyuan sensed at once that something was wrong. Yet that was truly what he thought—if he had not been careless and underestimated his foe, he would never have come off worse against Wei Zhao. Was he wrong?

"How did I, Ren Tiansuo, ever produce a fool like you—a frog at the bottom of a well, absurd in your arrogance!" Ren Tiansuo was exasperated at his failure to meet expectations. "Oda Ba has roamed the seas for three hundred years—do you suppose his judgment is inferior to yours? And you still think, even now, that you were merely poisoned?"

"Er—wasn't I?" Ren Zhongyuan was struck dumb by the words.

"Fool! A fool beyond saving! If it really were the poison qi of a heart-piercing sea anemone, you would have died dozens of times over by now. Do you truly believe a random turtle-breath pill would have done you any good? Have all the years of pharmacology I taught you gone to the dogs!" Ren Tiansuo cursed in a fury. He had truly never imagined that the son he had raised with such care could commit an error so crude and laughable. (To be continued.)