Chapter 3803 — Li Zhengming the Mole; Even a Decent Man Has a Temper, and Now That the Strong and Weak Have Changed Places, How Could Xiao Che Let Meng Zhou Off So Easily?
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
So even if it meant waiting one more round, he would not begrudge the delay.
Wei Zhao chuckled. "Fine by me. I was rather hoping to see whether our Senior Brother Meng can scrape together another fourth-grade Great Return Pill for Meng Zhou—and then you, Xiao Che, go and beat him into a cripple. That would be a sight worth seeing."
With Li Zhengming planted as their mole, there was no hiding Meng Zhou's use of the fourth-grade Great Return Pill from Wei Zhao's eyes and ears.
Meng Zhou had already burned through one fourth-grade Great Return Pill during the endurance test last time, and now he had spent another to make his move on Qiao Hongcai. If a third were to follow—and still fail to produce results—Meng Jueming would likely be shedding tears.
After all, a fourth-grade Great Return Pill was a lifesaving elixir of the rarest kind, and every last one of them cost spirit jade! Given Meng Jueming's own resources, securing a single pill had already been the limit of his means; even that first one had been subsidized by that great young master, Xu Lingchong.
Two pills in a row sunk into Meng Zhou, with not a shred of result to show for either—that alone had already left Meng Jueming weeping without tears. If a third were sunk in as well, and still yielded nothing, he would probably be angered to death outright.
Three fourth-grade Great Return Pills—many cultivators would never see so many miracle healing elixirs in their entire lives. Of course, whether Meng Jueming could even procure a third for Meng Zhou remained an open question; with two such lessons already behind him, the odds were hardly high.
After the headline clash between Qiao Hongcai and Meng Zhou, those two formidable early-stage Foundation Establishment experts, the challenge tournament returned to its normal course. And this round differed slightly from the last: at long last it was the turn of another of the Greeting Pavilion's new top five to take the stage—Li Zhengming.
After three full rounds of standing around like a spare part, he had finally earned a chance to be challenged, and Li Zhengming could not help but sigh with a thousand emotions.
What truly set him sighing, however, was not that his cave dwelling rank was too high, nor that he had lacked the chance to step into the ring and harvest challenge points from other newcomers—it was watching Xiao Che and Qiao Hongcai both break through to Foundation Establishment before his eyes.
Look across the so-called top five of the Greeting Pavilion: the other four had all succeeded in breaking through to Foundation Establishment, and Wei Zhao was even a hidden peak early-stage Foundation Establishment expert. Only he, Li Zhengming, was left still struggling bitterly at the peak of the Heaven Rank, Foundation Establishment a distant prospect—an awkward predicament that made a man's guts ache.
Reckoning up how the other four had broken through: Wei Zhao needed no explanation; Meng Zhou had taken a Foundation Establishment Pill plus Foundation Establishment Liquid; and Xiao Che and Qiao Hongcai had each taken a Foundation Establishment Pill. But he, Li Zhengming, had not even managed to get his hands on the most basic Foundation Establishment Pill.
Otherwise, had he but obtained a single Foundation Establishment Pill, with his talent and foundation he would have been confident enough to break through just as Xiao Che and Qiao Hongcai had. Unfortunately, he had nothing.
At bottom, the root of the problem was that he had latched onto the wrong patron in Meng Jueming. Though he had changed his allegiance partway through and secretly gone over to Wei Zhao's side as a mole, he still had to pay for his earlier mistake.