Chapter 3802 — The Only Way
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
Wei Zhao alone had already been enough to make their scalps prickle, and now they found the situation taking a sudden turn for the worse: Meng Zhou could not only no longer beat Wei Zhao, he might not even be able to beat any random underling of Wei Zhao's. How was this game supposed to be played?
Meng Jueming had no shortage of new recruits, but among those twelve, Meng Zhou was the only one at the early Foundation Establishment stage. Wei Zhao's crew, by contrast, numbered only three, yet every one of them had already succeeded in Foundation Establishment. Who was strong and who was weak could not have been clearer.
Faced with such a vast gulf in strength, no amount of scheming on Meng Jueming's part could avail him now. Before absolute power, all those so-called plots and machinations were nothing but passing clouds.
And so it was that Meng Jueming, that deep-buried schemer who never let joy or anger show on his face, could not help but feel a sudden stirring of panic.
For he had realized that, at this rate, even if he rode Young Master Xu's backing smoothly into the seat of Third Pavilion Master of the Greeting Pavilion, the day might still come when he could do nothing about Wei Zhao's crew.
The performance of Wei Zhao's three had been far too dazzling. Once it drew the attention of the Azure Cloud Pavilion's upper echelons, any further attempt on his part to make trouble from within would become far harder—one misstep and he would only invite a heap of trouble onto himself; it was not even out of the question that he might capsize in the gutter.
Meng Jueming turned it over and over in his mind, and at last arrived at the only effective solution: he must find a way, as quickly as possible, to raise Meng Zhou another stage, restoring to him an overwhelming superiority over Xiao Che and Qiao Hongcai—and indeed over Wei Zhao himself—so that the situation could be brought back under his control.
However disrespectful Wei Zhao's three might be, they were still new recruits of the Azure Cloud Pavilion, shielded by layer upon layer of protection. If he did not wish to take the risk of borrowing outsiders, the only way to deal with them was to cultivate a still more powerful Azure Cloud Pavilion recruit to crush them.
And that candidate could only be Meng Zhou.
Other recruits like Li Zhengming were, after all, still only at the peak of the Heaven Rank; to build one of them up to the height where he could crush Wei Zhao's people was plainly unrealistic, and in terms of loyalty they were hardly as dependable as Meng Zhou.
But Meng Zhou had only just recently advanced to the early Foundation Establishment stage, and he had managed it by taking Foundation Establishment Pills and Foundation Establishment Fluid. To push him up another level in so short a time—the difficulty of that went without saying.
The normal route was certainly out of the question. The only way was through elixirs—and not ordinary elixirs meant to aid cultivation, but rare elixirs capable of forcibly raising one's stage and settling the matter once and for all. Anything less, even a Foundation Establishment Barrier-Breaking Pill, the sort of treasure Foundation Establishment cultivators flocked to, would be of no use.
Unfortunately, if Meng Jueming had possessed such an elixir, he would have taken it himself long ago. How could he possibly have kept it until today?
But the fact that Meng Jueming did not have one himself did not mean he could not obtain one. After all, behind him now stood that towering patron, Xu Lingchong. With the unfathomable background and influence of Young Master Xu, if he truly set his mind to procuring an elixir of that kind, it should not be difficult.