Chapter 1960 — No Silver Buried Here
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
"I... have no father and no mother. If someone has to be sacrificed, of course I'd be the first..." Sun Jingyan said with a bitter smile. "Besides, among the cultivators of my generation I'm considered rather strong — I've already reached the first level of Great Perfection, which happens to meet the conditions for the other great families to form a marriage alliance with the Sun family, so..."
"Your parents... Sun Yikai told me..." Wei Zhao paused there and said no more. The subject had only come up because he was following Sun Jingyan's lead, and the moment the words left his mouth he regretted them. After all, it was a painful memory of hers, and for him to raise it was rather abrupt.
"They're both gone. It's all right, I've long since grown used to it..." Sun Jingyan smiled bitterly. "It's only that I was too young then — I never even saw what my parents looked like. All I have of them is this little jade pendant..."
As she spoke, moved by her own feelings, Sun Jingyan took the little jade pendant from her breast and rubbed it in her palm. It was plain to see how dearly she treasured it.
"Pure yellow jade!" At the sight of Sun Jingyan's pendant, Wei Zhao's gaze sharpened. He had never imagined that the pendant at her breast was pure yellow jade — one of the very materials he needed to refine his jade-pendant space!
"Pure yellow jade? You recognize it?" Sun Jingyan was startled by the flicker of excitement on Wei Zhao's face. However precious the material might be, surely it was not enough to astonish him like that?
"May I take a look?" Wei Zhao asked.
"Of course!" Sun Jingyan nodded and handed him the pendant.
"It really is pure yellow jade." Wei Zhao gazed at the pendant in his hand and drew a deep breath. He would dearly have loved to keep it for himself, but he knew it was the only thing Sun Jingyan's parents had left her. Even if he needed it, he could not bring himself to ask her for it.
Still, he could not stop turning the pendant over and over in his fingers, unable to put it down.
"You seem to like this pendant a great deal?" Sun Jingyan had caught the possessiveness in his eyes, and it surprised her. Wei Zhao was not short of money; rare as pure yellow jade was, it was no priceless treasure. In the eyes of the great families and the cultivators, it counted for nothing at all.
Perhaps the pure yellow jade could fetch a good price at auction, but to the Sun family, to Old Master Sun, it was merely a fine ornament. None of them had ever cast a covetous glance at it.
"Mm." Wei Zhao nodded, making no secret of it. "To be honest, I need pure yellow jade to refine certain things. If this piece weren't what your parents left you, I would certainly have asked you for it."
"Ah!" Sun Jingyan had not expected that Wei Zhao needed pure yellow jade. She would gladly have helped him, but the pendant was the only thing her parents had left her, and the only clue by which she might one day find them. So there was truly no way she could give it to him. "I'm sorry... I keep hoping that one day, through this pendant, I'll find word of my parents, so..."
"I understand. That's exactly why I said what I did." Wei Zhao picked up the pendant to return it to her. He felt a pang of reluctance, but he was the sort who could pick a thing up and set it down again. Yet just as he was about to hand it back, he could not help uttering a startled "Hm?"
"What is it?" Sun Jingyan could not fathom what had surprised him.
"This pendant..." Because he needed pure yellow jade so badly, Wei Zhao had examined it more closely than usual. Just as he was about to return it, he suddenly noticed a hair-fine crack in the jade.
Had his eyes not been sharp, and had the pendant not happened to be angled toward the light, he would never have found it.
"What's wrong?" Sun Jingyan asked quickly, seeing the strange look on his face.