Chapter 4028 — Breakthrough, Peak of the Mid Foundation Establishment Stage!
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
Because she had been meaning to buy top-grade pills from the Hong Clan Merchant Guild, she had come away with a fairly strong impression of both Hong Zhong and Wei Zhao—especially Wei Zhao, who had just that very day locked horns with Zheng Tianjie and goaded that fool into bidding a staggering fifty thousand spirit jades for a ten-piece forging set whose reserve price was a mere ten thousand. The sight of him bleeding from every pore after being swindled so thoroughly had nearly made Ning Xuefei laugh herself silly on the spot.
In Ning Xuefei's eyes, a spoiled rich brat like Zheng Tianjie was no good sort, whereas Wei Zhao, a clever young clerk of the Hong Clan Merchant Guild, was plainly not a bad man.
"Could it be that someone is after the Hong Clan Merchant Guild's top-grade pills and meant to force this young clerk to do the deed, and when he refused, he fought desperately and fled?" Ning Xuefei's imagination ran entirely wild. Since she herself was thinking of buying pills from the Hong Clan Merchant Guild, she assumed everyone else was of the same mind, and in the blink of an eye she had conjured up a thrilling scene of chivalrous drama all on her own.
From first to last, she never once connected any of this to the great crash she had just heard. She took it for an ordinary earthquake on the Far North Island and never imagined it might be **a commotion deliberately made.
Just as Ning Xuefei was spinning her fancies with perfect conviction, a hurried knocking suddenly came from outside, followed by the voice of the Northern Guard: "Open up, whoever's inside! We are the Northern Guard—we suspect an assassin has slipped in!"
"Hey, I'm taking a bath in here! What do you think you're doing?" Ning Xuefei wrinkled her nose and shouted in annoyance.
"Uh…" Faced with that reply, the men at the door hesitated at once, yet they seemed unwilling to give up just like that. Then another voice sounded beside them: "Forget it, Pockface. This is the west island's Miss Ning's boudoir—you dare search it? Tired of living?"
"That's right, she's a big shot from the west island. Even Steward Song greets her with a smile, and this room was prepared specially for Miss Ning—no one else is allowed to stay here. We can't afford to offend her. Besides, we can't even be sure there's an assassin in there. Maybe you were just seeing things a moment ago…" The other Northern Guards all chimed in to dissuade him.
At last, the Northern Guards abandoned the idea of searching the room. They apologized to Ning Xuefei through the door, then turned and headed off toward the scene of the disturbance.
Hearing the voices outside gradually fade into the distance, Ning Xuefei breathed a sigh of relief. She looked down at Wei Zhao, slumped in her bath basin, and shook her head in exasperation. This clerk couldn't very well drown here, could he? With him in it, how was she supposed to take her bath?
Ning Xuefei stood frozen for a moment. It was a little awkward to have her bath only half done, but Wei Zhao was a grown man after all, and she was a young woman—however thick-skinned she might be, there was no way she could calmly go on soaking in the same basin as a stranger.
She climbed out of the basin, quickly dried herself off, and threw on her clothes. Then Ning Xuefei turned back to study Wei Zhao for a while, reached out, and dragged him out of the bath basin.
After all, the water in the basin was neither especially deep nor especially shallow, and in Wei Zhao's current wretched state, if she had left him lying there, it was not at all impossible that he really would have drowned.
Having dragged Wei Zhao out, Ning Xuefei did nothing further; she simply crouched at his side, propped up her chin, and went on studying him.