Chapter 4094 — Meeting Xueli Again
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
Wei Zhao's steps faltered for just an instant, his mind churning over what on earth Sima Qian was playing at. No matter how he looked at it, this whole business today was far too strange, far too sinister.
Either Sima Qian had some shady task she wanted him to perform, and was therefore giving her maidservant to him first as a taste of sweetness to come.
Or else there was something uncanny inside this bedchamber, or the so-called maidservant was in truth some kind of monster, and he was merely being used as a sacrifice—otherwise there would have been no need at all to make him drink that potion.
Guarding himself inwardly, Wei Zhao showed no hesitation on the surface; under the guards' watchful eyes, he pushed open the door and stepped straight inside.
Yet the moment he entered, the scene before him was the very opposite of the terrifying, perilous vision he had expected. Within that secluded bedchamber there was no danger at all—rather, seated upright at its very center was a woman of stunning beauty, dressed all in white.
One glance was all it took for Wei Zhao to freeze in place. This woman in white—he actually knew her!
"Xueli?" Wei Zhao was dazed for a moment before he finally spoke, his voice thick with disbelief.
Back in the mundane world, strictly speaking, there had been little contact between Wei Zhao and Xueli, and their relationship had never clearly developed. But on the road to Cloud Terrace Island, by a strange twist of fate, the two of them had indeed become bound to one another.
Even if their bond at the time had not been as intimate as those he shared with his other women, now, after more than half a year, meeting her so suddenly again, Wei Zhao could not help but feel as though a lifetime had passed between them—just as he had felt upon seeing Tianchan on the Far North Island. In his heart now rippled the rare, tender warmth of reunion after long parting.
Yet at this moment Xueli had not noticed Wei Zhao's call at all. She merely tilted her head back, her eyes hollow, staring blankly at the ceiling, alone and lost in her own desolate thoughts.
Back then, she had come to Cloud Terrace Island full of hope, believing this place would be a paradise on earth, a cultivator's heaven. She had never imagined that the law of the jungle here was even crueler and more heartless than in the mundane world. And worse still, she—a consummate Heaven-Rank master who could walk the mundane world with impunity—had upon arriving here become the very weakest of beings.
After being teleported to the Middle Island, she looked around and saw that practically everyone was far stronger than she was, while the few she counted as acquaintances—Tianchan, the Patriarch Xuanchen, and the others—were taken away one after another by different parties.
In the end, she was received at a place called the Snowsword Sect. She had thought she would become a disciple there and start over from the bottom, step by step; she had steeled herself for that. But reality proved crueler still—she was not even the equal of the lowliest ordinary disciple. Instead, she was taken as a maidservant by the granddaughter of one of the Snowsword Sect's elders!
The illustrious Valley Lord of Snow Valley, once a figure of such lofty station in the mundane world, had now become a maidservant whose sole purpose was to wait upon another. Forced each day to perform the meanest, coarsest chores—the caprice of fate was truly enough to make one laugh in speechless mockery.
But faced with such brutal reality, Xueli had no means of resistance, nor the strength to resist. That elder's granddaughter had even then already been a lofty master at the peak of the late Foundation Establishment stage. For someone as utterly insignificant as her—a mere Heaven-Rank consummate, beneath notice—to dream of escaping that person's shadow was nothing but a fool's fantasy.