Chapter 3615 — A Man of Suspicion
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 3
Arriving at Number Seven, Wei Zhao looked around him and then picked an empty mining spot to begin work. He had no intention of secretly stashing spirit jade today; his main purpose was to scout out and familiarize himself with the place. After all, counting the twenty-five pieces Meng Jueming had given him yesterday, Wei Zhao now had a full thirty-one pieces of spirit jade in hand—enough to buy himself several sets of pill-refining ingredients. In short, he had no pressing need for spirit jade for the time being, and could well afford to take things steady and slow.
Digging all the while and keeping a constant eye on his surroundings, Wei Zhao soon gathered several useful pieces of information.
First, the surveillance in Number Seven was far stricter than in the Number Ten dead zone. Though the two zones were in fact much the same in area, Number Ten had only two guards in all, whereas here in Number Seven there were a full ten—not only fixed sentry posts but dedicated patrols as well. With watchfulness that dense, an ordinary Heaven-rank expert could not so much as make a small move; to harbor any such crooked notion here was simply to court death.
Second, Number Seven really was crowded. A zone as vast as this was scattered with dozens of mining spots, and apart from a very few that no one bothered with, every other spot had at least one or two people digging at it; some of the popular spots even had four or five gathered round—this was hardly jade mining at all, but jade snatching.
Third, the yield of jade in Number Seven really was far higher than in Number Ten. In barely half an hour's time, Wei Zhao had already dug out six pieces of spirit jade. Two were plainly worthless jade, which, following the practice of those around him, he tossed onto the open ground behind him, where dedicated guards would collect them. Three were worthless jade with a fair exterior but thin spiritual essence. The last one, however, was genuine good jade, brimming with spiritual essence. At this rate of yield, there was simply no comparing it with the previous two days in Number Ten.
Wei Zhao nodded to himself. People die of envy when compared with people, and goods are fit only to be thrown away when compared with goods; clearly the Spirit Jade Hall had good reason for dividing the mining zones as it did.
Just as he was looking about, a tremendous crash suddenly came from somewhere nearby. Wei Zhao turned his head at once, and to his surprise caught sight of a familiar face.
Since the rest of the Azure Cloud newcomers of his batch had all been assigned by Meng Jueming to Number Eight, and since Meng Jueming and Meng Zhou had yet to put in an appearance, Wei Zhao knew practically no one among the dozens of people in the vast Number Seven zone. This one man was the exception: Li Zhengming.
From the first day to now, this Li Zhengming had done nothing out of the ordinary beyond clinging to Meng Jueming's coattails; he seemed to be nothing more than a hanger-on of Meng Jueming and Meng Zhou, with not a single distinguished quality to his name. Yet the impression the man had left on Wei Zhao was nowhere near as transparent and marginal as that.
On the contrary, the man was deep and calculating—if it came down to it, far harder to deal with than an empty-headed fellow like Meng Zhou. Still, Li Zhengming had from first to last done nothing but cater to Meng Jueming and Meng Zhou, and had never gone out of his way to make trouble for Wei Zhao. So long as each kept to his own side of the well, Wei Zhao could not be bothered to waste his energy watching him too closely.
That crash just now had come from Li Zhengming's spot, and the others around him—guards and diggers alike—paid it no heed whatsoever, as though they had long since grown used to it.