Chapter 3644 — The Road of the Gentry
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
"All right, Meng Zhou, enough gloating. One piece each—and the same for everyone else!" Meng Jueming had not the faintest inkling of Li Zhengming's inner turmoil, nor did he care in the least. But Meng Zhou's foolish, gleeful carrying-on rather grated on him. He frowned and ordered, "Tomorrow the two of you can go tell the others that the probing was a success. That fool Wei Zhao has noticed nothing to this day, and it is unlikely he ever will. Arrange for the rest of them to go to Wei Zhao one by one and trade for spirit jade. Since they have already placed themselves under my banner, naturally I must give them a little benefit. I want every last one of those fifteen fine jades in Wei Zhao's hands squeezed back out of him!"
"You got it!" Meng Zhou answered eagerly. To watch Wei Zhao get fleeced over and over—what could be more gratifying?
Li Zhengming echoed him from the side. Since Wei Zhao was a hopeless case who could not be propped up even against a wall, blind to hints so obvious, then let things take their course. He could hardly risk Meng Jueming's suspicion over some irrelevant fool—no fool was he!
Over the following days, Wei Zhao went to Mine Zone Ten to dig ore by day and returned to his cave dwelling to cultivate by night, just as before. The one difference was that each evening when he came back, someone would be waiting at his door.
They were all Azure Cloud Pavilion's own newcomers, and their purpose in lying in wait for Wei Zhao was naturally the same as Li Zhengming's before: to trade spirit jade with him.
Wei Zhao was glad to oblige. If someone came to trade spirit jade, he traded—and following Li Zhengming's precedent, the exchange rate was uniformly three to one. Within a scant few days, counting the two he had given Li Zhengming, Wei Zhao had traded out a full fifteen spirit jades, clearing a net profit of thirty.
After that, however, though Wei Zhao's "fool's halo" grew ever more famous as the newcomers passed the tale from mouth to mouth—until even newcomers of the other two pavilions had caught wind of it—not a single newcomer came to trade spirit jade with him anymore.
It was not that their consciences had stirred. Everyone simply knew that Wei Zhao had no fine jade left on hand. Any further trade, no matter how airtight the excuse, could only get them a pile of scrap jade in return. These "clever folk" were naturally not about to do anything so foolish.
Looking over the thirty spirit jades that had appeared in his jade pendant's space, Wei Zhao felt gratified, yet could not help secretly lamenting: to get those "clever folk" to keep playing their old trick and sending him scrap jade, he would first have to let them know he had fine jade on hand.
But that would require a legitimate pretext—just as this time Meng Jueming had openly put out fifteen fine jades. Otherwise, even if Wei Zhao produced fine jade himself, he could not reasonably explain where it came from. Such opportunities did not come easily, and he would have to wait patiently.
By his count, Wei Zhao now had more than eighty spirit jades in hand. Plenty for an ordinary man, perhaps, but for one bent on gathering a thousand spirit jades before next month's Inner Street Opening Day, it was still a drop in the bucket.
Fortunately, Miserable Wretch had some three or four hundred scrap jades on his side; added to what Wei Zhao now held, that came to at least four hundred spirit jades, patching over nearly half the shortfall. And there was still time enough to spare—otherwise Wei Zhao truly would have had to risk some desperate, dangerous venture.
While tallying the spirit jades, Wei Zhao could not help wondering what use the Star Ink Stone, priced at a thousand spirit jades, could possibly have. The thing had no looks worth speaking of, yet even the eerie thing inside his jade pendant's space had been stirred by it—proof enough that this was no ordinary object, and there had to be something strange about it!