Chapter 4409 — The Grand Gathering Opens
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
In less than three minutes, Wu Chengtian had been beaten black and blue. In the chaos, someone had torn his clothes to shreds—no one could say who—his hair was a tangled mess, and he looked so pitiful, so utterly wretched, like a man who had been savaged within an inch of his life, that the whole crowd doubled over laughing, nearly splitting their sides.
"Brothers, sisters, go easy on me, will you? Keep it up and I'll call the cops!" Wu Chengtian protested, the picture of injury. Fortunately, he was an external-path cultivator and couldn't actually be beaten to death, and of course none of them were truly trying to do him in—but he looked so utterly humiliating that if someone snapped a photo and posted it, he'd never be able to show his face in public again...
"You deserved it! Who told you to sit on military intelligence? Holding back news this important until now—completely unreliable!" They all cursed and scolded him in turn; not a single one pitied him.
It had been nearly a full day since the package arrived. Any normal person would have spoken up about it immediately, but not Wu Chengtian—he'd bottled it up until this very moment. If that didn't earn him a beating, what would?
"I only mentioned it a little late. It's not like I actually forgot. What's everyone so worked up about?" Wu Chengtian scratched his head, speechless. Ever since the package arrived, his attention had been fixed entirely on Central Express, his mind consumed with what tricks might lie behind it. In fact, if not for that sudden flash of inspiration just now, he really might have forgotten all about it...
"A full twenty-some hours—and you call that 'a little late'?" The others snorted in contempt, then paid him no more mind and gathered in a circle, barely able to contain their excitement. "Come on, come on. Let's hurry up and figure out how we're going to write our reply to Wei Zhao and the others."
"Simple enough. Everyone writes their own letter, we put them all together, and send the lot. Done," Fatty Lai suggested.
"Yes, yes—one letter each, as long as you like, write as much as you want. It's decided: I'm starting with fifty thousand words!" Ying Ziyu declared with great ambition.
"Fifty thousand words? Ziyu, sweetheart, you think you're writing a novel?" The crowd burst out laughing.
"Exactly. Fifty thousand is way too many—that's a huge stack of paper. Central Express might not even agree to deliver it. I say thirty thousand is about right," Xu Shilan said, dead serious.
Everyone nearly fainted. Thirty thousand words was still a hefty stack—how was that any better than Ying Ziyu's fifty thousand?
And there were so many people present! If every single one of them wrote thirty thousand, that would add up to several hundred thousand words altogether. How thick would that be on paper? Central Express would probably lose their minds.
"Thirty thousand is still too much. Let's be realistic, everyone. If we really churn out hundreds of thousands of words, never mind whether Central Express will even agree to ship it—even if Wei Zhao receives it, he'd have to go into seclusion for days just to get through the letters..." Qiu Lingshan couldn't help laughing.
"Exactly. Sister-in-law Lingshan is the one talking sense." Everyone nodded in convinced agreement, then asked, "So what do you think the upper limit should be?"
"Well now..." Qiu Lingshan thought it over very seriously for quite a while, and finally said slowly, "How about twenty thousand words?"
Good grief! The whole room collapsed in a heap, every face caught between laughter and tears. After all that back and forth, it turned out even she measured things in tens of thousands of words?
"I can't help it. It's been over a year since we last saw him. There's just so much I want to say..." Qiu Lingshan stuck out her tongue, embarrassed.