Chapter 163 — Wei Zhao's Ace
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
Only after watching Qing Bo and Gu Mengyao leave the bar did Wei Zhao rise and walk in the direction the refined man had gone. Passing through the bar counter, he saw the refined man and a rather ordinary-looking man already standing there, waiting.
"Mr. Lin, I am Su Jiaonang, the manager of this bar. About what happened earlier, I am extremely sorry..." the ordinary-looking man said when he saw Wei Zhao approach.
"Cut the crap. Where is Li Cihua?" Wei Zhao cut him off directly. This sort of nonsense he had no desire to hear at all.
Cut off by Wei Zhao, Su Jiaonang's face flushed slightly with a trace of anger, but he quickly recovered his composure. "Mr. Lin, please follow me."
The man before him was someone the boss had invited, and he had just heard from Li Yao — that is, the refined man — that Wei Zhao's strength was likely no less than his own. So Su Jiaonang did not dare act rashly.
Wei Zhao followed Su Jiaonang and Li Yao to the door of an office. Su Jiaonang knocked, and from inside came the voice Wei Zhao had heard on the phone earlier: "Come in."
Su Jiaonang opened the door and gestured him through. "After you, Mr. Lin. The boss is waiting inside."
Wei Zhao walked straight in. In the room sat a pot-bellied man, and behind him stood a gaunt, skeletal figure with entirely unremarkable features — the sort no one would look at twice, the sort who, set down in a crowd, would vanish from sight at once.
But Wei Zhao's expression tightened. The energy rippling off this skeleton man faintly exceeded his own... By the look of it, the fellow must be at the peak of the late Yellow Rank.
"Elder Jiao, I can sense the energy coming off them. Can they sense mine?" A rather important question had just occurred to Wei Zhao: was this kind of perception mutual?
"I shouldn't think so," Elder Jiao said mildly. "The way his body takes in energy is different from yours. Theirs is called zhenqi. Every cultivation method produces its own kind of zhenqi, usable only by the practitioner and transferable to no one else. The energy in your body, now, is universal..."
"I see. So the energy in my body can also be converted into the zhenqi he needs — is that it?" Wei Zhao asked.
"In theory, yes." Elder Jiao adopted the tone of a teacher with a promising pupil. "And that is precisely why you can sense his, while he cannot sense yours."
Wei Zhao was delighted to have his answer. It seemed that from now on he could play the pig to eat the tiger and put on whatever airs he liked: he could see through others' strength while they could not see through his... Why, this was a top-grade cheat indeed. If the other party proved too strong, if he could not win, then he need only run for his life.
Wei Zhao's gaze rested on the skeleton man for only an instant. The skeleton man gave him a faint smile. In his eyes, Wei Zhao was merely at the peak of the early Yellow Rank; and in the ordinary course of things, since he had already concealed his own aura, it should have been impossible for Wei Zhao to see through his strength.
So the skeleton man paid it no mind, assuming Wei Zhao had simply been glancing about at random.