護花近衛 - 第4507章 報仇機會 - 翰墨軒

"Well, the Xishan heretics were formidable enough, true—but from what I hear, the two sides never actually came to blows. All the righteous alliance knew was that Xishan lay somewhere between Xidao and the waters of Nanzhou, but the exact location was anyone's guess. On top of that, the seas out that way are hellishly treacherous, and the place seems to be ringed with all manner of esoteric formations. The alliance spent a whole month out there and never did find the heretics' lair; in the end they had no choice but to let the matter drop." Qi Wenmo explained.

Even this much he had only by hearsay, and his grasp of the affair was anything but clear. What he told Wei Zhao was simply the version that circulated most widely in the teahouses and alleys; whether any of it was true, only those who had been there could say.

"So that's how it was." Wei Zhao nodded in sudden understanding. That, at least, made a certain sense. Had the two sides truly clashed in earnest, and the righteous alliance still failed to beat back a single Xishan sect, it would have been too embarrassing for words—wouldn't it have amounted to a Yunzhai Island staging of "the Six Great Sects Besieging Light Peak"...

While the two exchanged whispers, Cheng Haonan had strutted over to the side of the Old Sect of Xishan, smugness written across his face. The old sect's next words, however, made every eyelid in the hall twitch: "Cheng Haonan is now a disciple of this sect. I have formally taken him as my apprentice. From what you were all saying just now, it sounded very much like you meant to kill him?"

"No, no, no—nothing of the sort! Senior, you misunderstand." Hai Wuliang nearly died of fright on the spot and rushed to defend himself. Then his gaze flicked to Wei Zhao, who stood nearby wearing a look of utter contempt, and at once he bellowed out a frame-up: "It's Ling Yi! Yes, Ling Yi is the one who wants to kill him!"

The crowd was struck speechless yet again. To be shameless to such a degree, Hai Wuliang truly was one of a kind. Not a moment earlier the man had plainly been using Cheng Haonan to burnish his own reputation; now that disaster loomed, he had dumped the whole thing on Ling Yi without so much as a blink.

"Ling Yi?" Following the direction of Hai Wuliang's pointing finger, the Old Sect of Xishan turned his sinister, unfriendly gaze upon Wei Zhao, and with a grating cackle said: "My former apprentice, Wu Baoliang—he died at your hands?"

"That's right." Wei Zhao nodded mildly, his expression composed. There was no denying a thing like that; and given his temperament, he would never have dreamed of denying it anyway. He was not, after all, Hai Wuliang.

"Ho—so you own up to what you've done, do you? Didn't expect a real man out of you!" The Old Sect of Xishan's already grotesque features turned more hideous still, and he barked coldly: "Do you know that he was not only this sect's personal disciple, but my own nephew?"

"I didn't know before. Now I do." Wei Zhao remained as placid as ever, though inwardly he mused: no wonder the two of them both sported a pair of triangular yin-yang eyes—so they really were uncle and nephew.

At this reply, delivered in a tone fit to annoy a man to death, the faces around them turned distinctly odd. Qi Wenmo, Qi Mingyuan, Chai Laoshi and the others in particular were breaking out in cold sweat on his behalf. Young Master Ling was still too green after all. This was no time to stand stiff-necked and play the hero—people really did die at times like this.

Sure enough, the Old Sect of Xishan went livid, his face turning a shade of iron so dark it nearly matched his eyebrows. The black mist above his head came surging out in an instant, and the whole sky went dim, a doomsday sight of black clouds bearing down upon the city.