Chapter 4872 — Fiancée!

The academy disciples queued up one by one. Morning Star Academy's luck was neither especially good nor especially bad—it landed them somewhere in the awkward middle of the pack.

The teleportation array here was not like the one for the West Island trial. Over there only one person could be sent through at a time; here dozens went through at once, so the line moved fast. In the blink of an eye it was Wei Zhao and his group's turn.

The place was guarded by dedicated sentries. The Morning Star ceremonial officer accompanying them handed over the list of disciples, and the guards checked each name aloud, one by one. The others were nothing noteworthy, but one name gave Wei Zhao a start—Qin Chan!

Nominally she was the Morning Star captain, but everyone knew that was just a title handed out on the spot. Wei Zhao had never bothered to notice who exactly was in the group—he did not know any of them anyway. But what was the story with this Qin Chan?

Back when Wei Zhao had first arrived at Morning Star Academy, still preoccupied with matters concerning Jiang Yuechuan, he had specifically asked Wang Xinyan to look into this fiancée of his. The word came back that the woman had been in secluded cultivation all this time, so he had let the matter drop.

Who would have thought Qin Chan would suddenly turn up in the ranks?

But according to Jiang Yuechuan, within ten years she ought to still be at the Golden Core stage—otherwise why would Jiang Yuechuan have gone to such lengths to obtain a Gestation Golden Core for her? So how had she now become a Nascent Soul Great Perfection expert? That was rather too great a leap, wasn't it?

Or was it possible that this Qin Chan was not the same Qin Chan?

Wei Zhao was astonished inwardly, but with so many people around and so many eyes, he could hardly ask outright. He could only press it down and see how things developed. After all, even if she truly was the same person, that Gestation Golden Core of Jiang Yuechuan's was no longer of any use.

After the teleportation, the scene before them changed abruptly. Coming out of the array, everyone's expressions were somewhat grim. To be honest, a moment ago they had still thought the middle of the pack was no big deal—so long as they were not in the last few batches, they would still be able to secure a tribulation point. Otherwise the Academy Alliance would never have sent so many people in at once.

But now everyone realized at once how naive they had been. How was this "no big deal"? Who went first and who went after was absolutely crucial!

This was a stretch of open ground that at first glance seemed vast, but like the terraced fields of the mortal world, the terrain rose and fell in irregular, scattered tiers. Even though the spot where they emerged from the array counted as high ground, one could not take in the whole at a glance.

This was not merely a matter of terrain; more critically, visibility was dreadful. Mist lay everywhere. The one thing that was not too cruel was that this mist, unlike the mist at sea, did not much impede spiritual sense.

But the problem was that these people were not freaks like Wei Zhao. Even a Nascent Soul Great Perfection expert's spiritual sense was quite limited in strength. If every step had to be taken by probing the way with spiritual sense, they might as well do nothing at all—before they were halfway there, they would likely die of spiritual essence exhaustion.

As a result, on this Road of Giants the group could rely only on memory. Cultivators all had decent memories, and as a rule, once a path had been walked, one ought to be able to retrace it without getting lost.

But out here the distance was utterly unclear—once they went far, who knew what unexpected dangers they might meet. The pressing task was to find a tribulation point and break through to the Mystic Ascension stage. Until they became Mystic Ascension experts, none of them dared wander about at will.

By now the disciples of other academies who had been teleported in earlier were already fighting tooth and nail over the tribulation points close at hand. No one wanted to take needless risks—if a tribulation point could be found nearby, naturally no one wanted to go looking far away.

Everyone understood this. Seeing it, the Morning Star disciples at once wanted to throw themselves into the fray, but Wei Zhao held them back. "Don't be hasty. There are so many people here—even if we fight for one, we won't get more than a few, and we'll only waste true essence for nothing. Better to go a little farther and have a look. If we can find a tribulation point, even if it isn't completely unclaimed, the competition won't be so savage."

In saying this he was also concealing a private motive: he wanted to look around, to see whether he might by good fortune run into Huo Yudie. Of course, on the other hand, jamming up at the entrance to fight over tribulation points was itself a foolish thing to do. There were only so many tribulation points nearby, and with so many people fighting over them, even a winner would be half dead—how then would they break through to Mystic Ascension?

In fact it was not only Wei Zhao; some other academy disciples had made the same choice and gone off early to explore ahead, avoiding the crowd.

"Right, Master Lin makes excellent sense. Only a fool would stay here fighting a pack of mad dogs for scraps—let's go look a bit farther off!" Bao Zuoliang was the first to jump up in support.

Wei Zhao could not help giving him a surprised look. Had the man taken the wrong medicine? Given the attitude and sheer pigheadedness he had displayed before, not causing trouble was already unprecedented—and now he was backing Wei Zhao instead?

What Wei Zhao did not know was that Bao Zuoliang had purely selfish motives. He wished for nothing more than for Wei Zhao to lead them far away—the more remote the better, so that when he pulled his tricks there would be less chance of anyone spotting something amiss.

"We'll follow Master Lin!" Lu Xiaozhong, though also puzzled by Bao Zuoliang's reaction, chimed in all the same.

The others had no objections either, and at once Wei Zhao led the way into the distance. The process was somewhat risky, and the group could not help feeling uneasy, but Wei Zhao himself was utterly assured.

After all, with spiritual sense far beyond the ordinary, he could sense clearly everything in the distance; there was nothing to worry about.

Wei Zhao walked at the very front, with Wang Xinyan and Huang Xiaotao close behind him, then Lu Xiaozhong, then Bao Zuoliang and Su Kesheng—those two following tightly, terrified of losing sight of Wei Zhao.

Yet as they went, Wei Zhao noticed something strange: Qin Chan, bringing up the rear, was oddly intimate with two male disciples. The three of them stuck together the whole way, and when the others ahead were not looking they would exchange occasional little gestures of unmistakable intimacy, thinking no one would notice. Little did they know that Wei Zhao's spiritual sense blanketed every direction, and not a single move of anyone escaped his perception.

This unexpected discovery left Wei Zhao both startled and suspicious. On the way he had already quietly asked Wang Xinyan and Huang Xiaotao. Morning Star Academy had few female disciples; even if the two of them did not know her personally, they had at least heard the names. There was only one female disciple named Qin Chan—meaning this person was beyond doubt Jiang Yuechuan's fiancée!

That being so, any woman bound by a marriage contract, so long as she kept even a little to the proprieties, ought not to be carrying on with other men. Yet the scene before him Wei Zhao observed with perfect clarity...

What was most speechless of all was that this woman's entanglement with one man was bad enough—she was carrying on with two at once! That was simply too bizarre.