Chapter 4052 — Sabotage
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
Of all this, Wei Zhao was utterly unaware. His mind was now wholly bent on the forging that was about to begin. After one delay after another from the Ragamuffin King, everything was at last in readiness; success or failure would be decided in this one attempt.
Before starting, Wei Zhao made a point of returning to the Welcome Pavilion to have a word with his miserable senior brother and the others. Forging, once begun, could not be halted midway, and no one could say how long it would last.
So he had to give them advance notice, lest they think he had vanished and stir up a commotion.
This gave the scheming Kang Jingming and his comrades their opening. After Wei Zhao left, they began their pursuit through the sky—and careful as Wei Zhao was along the way, he overlooked the flying spirit beast above his head!
Even if he chanced to look up, he would not think much of it; flying spirit beasts were common mounts on Cloud Terrace Island, and one could often be seen passing overhead.
And while Kang Jingming and the others were aloft, they harbored no ill intent toward Wei Zhao, so the jade pendant gave no warning either.
"Hm? What's the boy going into the woods for? Surely he doesn't mean to forge in there—he can't be that stupid, can he?" Seeing Wei Zhao leave the Welcome Pavilion and promptly dart into the little grove, Kang Jingming was bewildered.
They were no forgers, but they knew that forging demanded a stable environment no less than pill refinement did; who knew whether forging in a grove would set the place ablaze.
"Let's wait and see," said Meng Zhou. He and the others were equally baffled; after some hesitation, they decided to hold position for the time being, having the flying spirit beast circle above as if busy with its own affairs.
A moment later, their eyes lit up as one: "He's out!"
But then Murong Zhen paused in puzzlement: "Wait—that's not Wei Zhao. Look at his face; it's completely different from Wei Zhao's."
Women were always more attentive. Though they were not very high above the ground, to keep from being detected by Wei Zhao they still flew at a considerable altitude; gazing down from above, a person was no more than a grain of rice, and identity was judged at most by build and position—seldom would anyone, like Murong Zhen, study a person's actual features.
Still, once she said it, Meng Zhou, Kang Jingming, and the rest all noticed something off as well. It was not obvious, but on close inspection the difference could be made out.
"It really isn't Wei Zhao. Damn it all—this grove is so dense there's not even a place to set foot; ordinarily no one should be here at all. Where did this fellow come from? We were nearly misled by him—one careless moment following the wrong man and all our efforts would have gone to waste!" Meng Zhou said, inwardly counting his blessings.
At that moment, Kang Jingming suddenly slapped his thigh. "Wrong, wrong! This fellow is Wei Zhao—you've all been fooled by his blinding trick!"
"What do you mean?" Meng Zhou and Murong Zhen were both taken aback.
"Have you all forgotten? Earlier, Yu Jiang and Nantian Guan and those people came to our Welcome Pavilion time and again looking for someone named Lin Er, several times suspecting it was Wei Zhao, only to let him go because the face didn't match. Now that I think back on it, this Wei Zhao fellow was their Lin Er all along—he'd merely changed his face!" Kang Jingming analyzed with smug excitement. R1152