Chapter 3821 — Admiration and Esteem
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
Seeing that there was no one about, Li Zhengming quietly slipped the grey cloth bundle into his sleeve, then turned and hurried back to his own cave dwelling.
Once the door was shut and the cave's restrictive barrier sealed, Li Zhengming drew a deep breath, forced down the excitement surging in his chest, and slowly opened the bundle with trembling hands. Then his eyes flew wide.
"This… this is unbelievably fast!" Staring at the two pills lying quietly within the cloth, even though Li Zhengming had mentally prepared himself for this possibility, he still could not help but draw a sharp breath.
These two pills were, of course, the Foundation Establishment Pills Wei Zhao had refined for him. It had been mentioned only last night, yet here they were, delivered before dawn this very morning. Such speed, such efficiency—even for someone born into one of Cloud Terrace Island's established great families like Li Zhengming, it left him gaping in astonishment.
In that instant, Li Zhengming felt a profound, solemn respect well up for his leader, Wei Zhao.
That Wei Zhao kept his word to a subordinate was only one part of it. Measured against him, a backer like Meng Jueming had already been left ten streets behind; in Li Zhengming's heart, the two no longer even bore comparison.
The other part was that Li Zhengming was simply stunned by Wei Zhao's mastery of alchemy.
From the time he had finished explaining matters to Wei Zhao last night until now, a mere four shichen had passed in total. Any other alchemist would likely not even have finished their preparations, yet his leader Wei Zhao had already produced the Foundation Establishment Pills outright—and what set Li Zhengming's heart surging was that there were two of them at once!
He had given Wei Zhao only three sets of ingredients in all. Not only had Wei Zhao gone straight to the furnace with no preparation whatsoever, he had successfully refined two pills—a success rate of nearly seventy percent. It was simply inconceivable!
In this, however, Li Zhengming was mistaken. In truth, when Wei Zhao had refined the Foundation Establishment Pills last night, the furnace had not yielded merely the two given to him, but five in total. He had held back the other three only so as not to shock people too greatly; otherwise, Li Zhengming's jaw would surely have dropped even further.
Born into one of Cloud Terrace Island's established great families, steeped in such matters since childhood, Li Zhengming's breadth of vision far exceeded that of ordinary grassroots cultivators. Yet even by his standards, he was now utterly dumbfounded by Wei Zhao's alchemical mastery.
Originally, Li Zhengming had assumed that for a formidable newcomer like Wei Zhao, alchemy would be a mere sideline, and his mastery could not possibly run deep.
After all, the notion of alchemists who possessed rank but no real strength had long since become common knowledge, deeply ingrained in everyone's minds. And judging by Wei Zhao's earlier domineering, high-handed displays, his strength was not remotely connected to the word "weak"; even among experts of the same tier, Wei Zhao ranked absolutely among the very strongest.
And for such a man to be an alchemist at all already overturned everyone's understanding. Yet now Li Zhengming had discovered that his leader Wei Zhao's alchemical mastery even far surpassed that of ordinary alchemists. Beyond having his jaw drop, he could find no other words to describe his feelings at this moment.
Holding the two Foundation Establishment Pills, Li Zhengming stood dazed for a long while before he finally murmured in speechless admiration, "Leader Wei Zhao is truly a remarkable man!"