Chapter 3973 — Waiting Here
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
"A nine-tailed cloud-piercing leopard? Every last scrap of that creature is a treasure—who in their right mind would toss something like that out with the trash? Wait a moment—did you say nine-tailed cloud-piercing leopard?" Scrap King muttered to himself without thinking, but then he took a closer look at Wei Zhao, and his whole body seized as though struck by lightning. Fumbling over his words in his excitement, he blurted, "You... you're that fellow—that Brother Lin Er?"
"Heh, so you do recognize me after all. I was beginning to think that after all this time, Brother Wang here was fixing to pretend he'd never laid eyes on me," Wei Zhao said with a faint smile.
"Not at all, not at all! I've been counting the stars and watching for the moon—these past few months I've done nothing but wait for you to come. How could I possibly turn my back on you?" Scrap King said, overjoyed. For a man like him, who treated artifact-forging as his very life, it was a rare stroke of fortune that Wei Zhao had agreed to let him handle a high-grade material like the nine-tailed cloud-piercing leopard. This was the thing he had dreamed of for years on end, and every day the mere thought of it set his heart racing so that he could hardly keep still.
For the past several months, Scrap King had been making every kind of preparation for this very purpose—and the reason he had gone out of his way to scrape together so many spirit beast materials was precisely out of consideration for this.
Scrap King had at times wondered whether Wei Zhao had already put the matter out of his mind. After all, though he styled himself an artifact-forger, he had never once succeeded in forging anything worthy of the name of a divine weapon or legendary blade, and he knew well enough that he had nothing to show for himself. Were it otherwise, he never would have earned the sorry reputation of "Scrap King." For a man like that to be forgotten was only to be expected.
Had Wei Zhao not brought up the nine-tailed cloud-piercing leopard himself, Scrap King would never have connected the man before him with Wei Zhao at first. He had assumed this was just another like the three from a moment ago, come to make trouble for him.
Seeing that look of wild joy on Scrap King's face, Wei Zhao could not help but feel a pang of emotion. Life had truly not been kind to Scrap King. Setting all else aside, the man had sunk to such a wretched, bedraggled state, and yet he was still wholly devoted to the way of artifact-forging. That alone proved that his passion for the craft was matchless. For that reason alone, Wei Zhao felt he had not chosen the wrong man. Be it living thing or dead, so long as one poured one's heart into it, all things under heaven possessed a spirit of their own. And a man like Scrap King, one truly capable of focusing wholeheartedly upon the way of artifact-forging—Wei Zhao believed that whatever came from his hands, no matter how low its grade, would never be ordinary.
"Brother Wang, it looks like you've been tangled up in some trouble lately?" Wei Zhao gestured toward the ruins around them and asked with a smile.
Scrap King's expression stiffened at once. He scratched the back of his head awkwardly and gave a sheepish laugh. "Brother Lin, you must think me a laughingstock. I only picked a little something out of the junk they'd thrown away, and somehow it brought all this trouble down on my head. It was their own refuse, things they'd cast off—yet the moment I pick it up, they insist I stole it. Tell me, Brother Lin, isn't that just plain unreasonable of them?"