Chapter 4389 — Most Peculiar
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
Ever since those mundane goods from the mortal world had begun appearing one after another, Wei Zhao had suspected that the Zhongshu Merchants' Guild was bound to the mortal realm by a thousand invisible threads. He had not expected his suspicion to prove so accurate—and now, all at once, here was this talk of human experimentation. The evidence was mounting: the Zhongshu Merchants' Guild had almost certainly risen out of the mortal world.
Still, when the top powers of the mortal realm had gathered together, mustering all that manpower and effort merely to barely activate a teleportation array and send his group to Cloud Terrace Island—whose power, then, stood behind this Zhongshu Merchants' Guild?
Not only had they succeeded in extending their tentacles to Cloud Terrace Island, but they had swept across all Five Cloud Terrace Islands with effortless ease. Their momentum was ferocious, their advance an unstoppable, frenzied tide—and the crux of it was that they even had Xuan Ascension experts holding the fort, and from the look of things, not merely one or two of them!
A power of this order—even Wei Zhao dared not ponder it too deeply. It was simply too appalling to contemplate.
"That's right, human experimentation. Anyway, not one of those people taken out has ever come back. Whether they're dead or what, who knows—but I figure it can't be anything good. And with my mid-Nascent Soul strength, there's not a soul in here stronger than me, so every time they call for people, I let the others take the fall. I don't go!" Sun Hengbiao said, a touch smugly.
He might lack any real discernment, but a man who could make himself pirate chief in the Demon Cold Sea could hardly be a fool. Even if the words "human experimentation" meant nothing to him, he could still roughly tell good from bad.
To foreknow fortune and disaster—that sounded mystical enough. Many experts who had reached a certain level of strength in fact possessed this ability; only the accuracy varied from one to another.
"Let the others go? You're the one who calls the shots in this dungeon—so the guards outside, those Xuan Ascension experts, they take orders from you too?" Wei Zhao sneered. "Before a Xuan Ascension expert, you're nothing but a fart."
The others, hearing this, chimed in with mockery and cold laughter. Sun Hengbiao's old face flushed crimson on the spot—it was his habitual swagger. Whether there was cause or not, he always wanted to gild his own face, and even though it had cost him plenty, he could never cure himself of the habit.
With his mid-Nascent Soul strength, Sun Hengbiao could throw his weight around before the rabble in this dungeon, but to the Xuan Ascension experts outside he was nothing but an ant to be crushed underfoot with a single step. If they truly meant to haul people out for human experimentation, would they even bother to consult Sun Hengbiao?
If Sun Hengbiao really commanded such respect, would he be locked up in this sunless dungeon? What nonsense.
"Well, that..." Sun Hengbiao glared at the crowd, yet before Wei Zhao he dared not show the slightest temper. He scratched his head awkwardly and said sheepishly, "At first they really couldn't be bothered with me. But after a while I noticed they don't seem interested in Nascent Soul experts at all. They led the others away one by one, but me they left alone, never a word. Look—there's another Nascent Soul in here, and he's been here quite a while too, and they haven't taken him either."
Following the direction of Sun Hengbiao's finger, Wei Zhao saw, in the corner of the dungeon wall, a most ordinary-looking man in blue robes sitting in meditation, wholly detached from the goings-on around him.
"That's right, it's just as he says." The blue-robed man, seeing Wei Zhao's gaze sweep toward him, nodded hastily.