Chapter 4916 — I Never Meant to Kill Him

It was only after he had scaled the cliff and made his escape that the ghostly thing finally released the vengeful spirit's primordial spirit entirely, saying with a meaningful air, "Consider this a kindness sown. Who knows—there may come a day when it proves useful again."

"Huh?" Wei Zhao was baffled. "This place can only be entered once. There'll be no coming back later—how could it ever prove useful again?"

"Heh heh. I once heard a rather unreliable rumor from the thunder dragon's own mouth—no telling if it's true. This Thunderclap Plain Island is not nearly so simple as it looks on the surface. We'll speak of it another time. I need to enter seclusion and nurse myself back properly, so don't come bothering me unless it's important," the ghostly thing said, deliberately trailing off.

"Fine." Wei Zhao shook his head helplessly and pressed no further. He had set out full of enthusiasm and was returning thoroughly deflated—after all that trouble he had not so much as glimpsed a single nurturing mystic herb. He was rather dispirited by now, and with mind and body both exhausted, he truly had no heart for it.

With a bitter smile he took stock of his ragged, filthy clothes, treated his injuries a little, and changed into something clean before beginning to search the basin for Wang Xinyan and the other two. They ought to be somewhere nearby hunting for nurturing mystic herbs—with luck, they might already have found something.

Yet he had not gone far when something stirred in his heart and he stopped short. A moment later he spotted, some distance off, the figure of a woman he half recognized, stumbling and lurching in his direction.

Wei Zhao looked more carefully, and once he made out her shape he gave a small start. The newcomer was none other than Ni Caiyue!

Her face was veiled, but her clothes, her figure, her whole bearing made it easy enough to tell—this was Ni Caiyue beyond any doubt. Hadn't this girl already left? What was she doing back here?

Ni Caiyue came practically tumbling and crawling the whole way, so flustered and bedraggled that she looked nothing at all like one of the Three Fairies. The moment she caught sight of Wei Zhao, delight lit up her face and she cried out, "Help, young hero! Someone's robbing me!"

Wei Zhao blinked at that, and then he saw, not far behind Ni Caiyue, a figure closing in fast—a ferocious-looking man in black robes, carrying one long and one short curved saber, one in each hand. The mismatched pair gave him an oddly incongruous, grotesque appearance.

Though Ni Caiyue stumbled at every step, she was after all a fine hand at the early Mystic Ascension stage, and her flight was swift. Within a few breaths she had reached Wei Zhao's side and ducked behind him without a word.

At the same time the man in black came racing up, and without so much as a glance at Wei Zhao he fixed his savage glare on Ni Caiyue and snarled, "You ugly cow—where's Brother Chang? Why hasn't he come back? And you, of all people, haven't a scratch on you? Let me search you right now and see whether you're carrying anything you shouldn't. That's the only way to prove you're clean!"

As he spoke the man in black sheathed his curved sabers and reached out with a lecherous hand to grope at Ni Caiyue. From first to last he never gave Wei Zhao the slightest consideration, as though Wei Zhao were a puff of air not even worth a second glance or a single question.

Wei Zhao had seen plenty of geniuses who looked down on all creation, but one quite so utterly dismissive as this was genuinely rare.

"Save me, young hero! Save me!" With admirable presence of mind, Ni Caiyue dodged back and forth behind Wei Zhao. She had simply stopped fleeing altogether and made a human shield of him.

"Where'd this blind little runt come from? Get lost, before I—" the man in black finally cursed. His wrist turned, his saber flashed, and in the blink of an eye he had the short blade pressed to Wei Zhao's chest. "I'll count to three. Then you die."

Wei Zhao regarded him calmly. He had not wanted to meddle in others' affairs—after all, he had met Ni Caiyue only once, hardly enough to call friendship, and he was not about to make himself someone's shield for no reason. He was not the sort of fool who lost his legs at the first pretty face.

But now the man's curved blade was level with his own chest, and standing aside was no longer an option. Besides, when it came down to it, this girl Ni Caiyue was rather likable, and Wei Zhao was not yet the sort to stand by and watch someone die.

"Let's talk this over. What's going on here?" Wei Zhao said at once.

"Oh ho, big talk for a nobody. And just who the hell are you, that you'd speak to me like that?" The man in black stared a moment, then his vicious nature showed plain on his face. "One! Two! Three!"

As the last word fell, the man in black raised his hand without hesitation to cut Wei Zhao down—and just then Ni Caiyue burst out from behind him and threw herself in the way, crying, "Don't cut! Don't cut! This has nothing to do with him!"

Wei Zhao, who had been about to cripple the man on the spot, felt the corner of his mouth curl at that. So the girl had a bit of loyalty in her after all, silly as she was—not to have sold him out completely at a moment like this was rarer than rubies.

Seeing Ni Caiyue blocking the way, the man in black checked his blade, then looked back and forth between her and Wei Zhao with a look of astonishment. Stroking his chin, he sneered, "So that's why you ugly cow had to run this way—meeting your lover! Well then, tell me: did the two of you conspire to murder Brother Chang?"

"Ah?" Ni Caiyue was startled. She turned to glance at the bewildered Wei Zhao, then suddenly caught herself and waved both hands frantically at the man in black. "No, no, no! Not me! I never meant to kill him..."

"You what?" The man in black's gaze sharpened.

"Ah! No—I mean he probably isn't dead yet..." The more Ni Caiyue said, the more tangled it got, and she gave herself away before she had finished even two sentences.

Wei Zhao watched this spectacle speechless, his whole brow beaded with cold sweat. Only because he knew this girl's character and intellect could he keep from concluding that she had come deliberately to heap hatred on him.

Honestly, Wei Zhao had begun to feel sincere admiration for Ni Caiyue's master. Setting aside the matter of betrothing the girl to a wretch and a scoundrel like Chang Laiting, the mere fact that she had been able to train Ni Caiyue into a fine hand of the Mystic Ascension stage showed her to be a true master of her generation. Any ordinary teacher would long since have been wept into idiocy by Ni Caiyue's foolishness—there was no way they could have brought her to such a level.

In this, though, he did her an injustice. The girl was not so much stupid as simply innocent and utterly without worldly experience, which was why she seemed so muddled at crucial moments. Her actual intellect was sound enough, and as for talent in cultivation, Ni Caiyue was a genius of the first order—otherwise she could never have advanced to Mystic Ascension at such a young age.

"Hm? What do you mean, not dead yet? You ugly cow, speak plainly—did the two of you kill Brother Chang or not?" The man in black flew into a rage and made to cut her down on the spot.