Chapter 4500 — Even Dead, He's Still Useful
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
A victory banquet that ended with hosts and guests alike thoroughly pleased, and once everyone had drunk their fill they drifted away one by one. Wei Zhao did notice, however, that Qi Mingyuan and Zhao Shanying had deliberately sought out a private room for a candlelit talk deep into the night—plainly to hammer out the terms of future cooperation between their two escort agencies. This was the sort of weighty business that could reshape the whole configuration of the South Continent Escort Alliance, but it had nothing to do with Wei Zhao. As he himself had said, he had no interest in meddling in agency affairs.
Thus the South Continent Escort Grand Gathering came to a close—yet the various agencies did not disperse. On the contrary, what followed was precisely the moment that set the hearts of every agency head pounding.
By the established custom, the South Continent Escort Alliance Conference would convene the next day, and this conference would draw representatives from over a hundred trading companies great and small across the South Continent's seas. The massive contracts, the truly enormous orders, would all be settled at tomorrow's conference.
It was a feast for carving up the spoils of victory. The higher an agency ranked, the greater its share of the benefits—and beyond all doubt, the Qingtian Escort Agency was bound to emerge the biggest winner of all.
But none of this had anything to do with Wei Zhao anymore. The only thing left for him now was to conserve his strength and, once matters here were finished, return to the North Island.
Of course, given Wei Zhao's temperament, he could never sit idle. Even with only a single night to spare, he would devote himself to cultivation and seek a breakthrough.
Meanwhile, in another fine inn one street away from the one where the Qingtian Escort Agency was lodged, inside an elegant upper room at that very hour, Long Kuiba sat drinking alone in his gloom, his face steeped in despondency.
How could he not be despondent? In this very room, only the night before, he had been clinking cups with Cheng Haonan and Wu Baoliang, painting rosy visions of trampling the Qingtian Escort Agency underfoot and ascending to the throne of escort-world overlords. A scant day had passed, and everything had changed beyond recognition: the demonic-cultivator identities of Cheng and Wu had both been exposed before all present—one dead, the other fled.
And now the second place his Dragon Boat Escort Agency had fought so hard to win had been revoked on the spot. Whether they could even remain in the South Continent Escort Alliance hereafter now depended on other people's goodwill. At the thought of tomorrow's "spoils-sharing" conference, Long Kuiba was so overcome with melancholy that he wanted to weep but had no tears; two cups of sorrowful wine and his mind was already swimming in a haze.
The window rattled, and a gust of cold wind blew in full in his face. The muddled Long Kuiba could not help but shiver, and instinctively rose to shut the window—but when he caught sight of the figure that had suddenly appeared beside him, he gave a violent start. Every trace of drunkenness was frightened clean out of him in an instant, and he shouted at once: "Who's there?!"
"How easily the great forget. Is Chief Escort Long so quick to fail to recognize even me?" As the words fell, Cheng Haonan's features at last resolved clearly before Long Kuiba's eyes.
"Ah! It's you—" Long Kuiba was startled afresh. As a demonic cultivator publicly denounced on the spot by Hai Wuliang, Cheng Haonan was now in Demon Cold City nothing short of a rat scurrying through the streets with every man's curse upon it. Anyone else would long since have fled under cover of night. Who would have thought he would still be here—and brazen enough to come back looking for him?