Chapter 4995 — Who Can Prove It
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
Of course, Wei Zhao's argument was a bit of a stretch when applied to a shop. A shop was, after all, open for business, quite unlike the purely private domain of a sect; forcibly imposing a sect's ways upon a shop was alarmist talk. Still, the underlying principle was much the same.
Yet Oda Zhou spoke again at once: "But from what I know, Vice Island Lord Wu did not stir up trouble without cause as you claim. The reason he brought men to seal your Tian Dan Pavilion is that your pavilion has been smuggling and selling seventh-grade pills from the Eastern Continent. Under the agreement between the Eastern Continent and the Central Island, that is a grave crime."
At this, Wei Zhao laughed outright. "Heh. This is nothing but a fabricated accusation. May I ask, Island Lord Ao, do you have any evidence?"
"My surname is Oda." Oda Zhou frowned and corrected him, then turned to look at Wu Che. "Vice Island Lord Wu, since you are the one who exposed this matter, do you have evidence?"
Oda? Wei Zhao was taken aback. This was the first time he had ever heard the surname. Yet he had found something odd from the very first moment he heard the name Oda Zhou, and now that he learned the surname itself was uncommon, another person came at once to mind. Such a rare surname—even across the Five Great Cloud Step Islands, there could be only one household bearing it, no second. Could it be...
"Of course I have evidence!" Wu Che leaped out with a cold sneer, holding the five seventh-grade Great Return Pills confiscated from the Tian Dan Pavilion. He handed them to Oda Zhou. "Island Lord Oda, these are the pills the Tian Dan Pavilion brazenly put up for sale. Seventh-grade pills, and of the very finest quality at that. If they were not smuggled from the Eastern Continent, then where did they come from?"
"Quite so. To refine seventh-grade Great Return Pills of such quality, one would have to be either a Mystic-rank alchemist or among the very best of seventh-grade alchemists. By rights, such an alchemist would be hard to find anywhere outside the Eastern Continent." Oda Zhou nodded. The sight of these pills had already convinced him seven or eight parts out of ten of Wu Che's words, for this was simply the most logical inference.
Even so, Oda Zhou did not rashly jump to a conclusion. Logic was logic, but in his experience he had seen no small number of things that defied logic—and this Wei Zhao before him, who could wound Wu Che, a peak late Profound Ascension cultivator, while only at the early Profound Ascension stage, was himself a man who defied logic.
"Island Lord Oda speaks truly. But there are exceptions to everything. Such an alchemist may be hard to find outside the Eastern Continent, but that does not mean none exists. Indeed, to put it plainly, Master Zhang Lifeng is not of the Eastern Continent—are you saying even he could not refine such pills?" Wei Zhao countered.
"Master Zhang Lifeng is an acknowledged Pill God, so naturally he is a case apart. Are you trying to tell me all these pills came from Master Zhang Lifeng's hands?" Wu Che's face was full of mockery. He sneered, "Setting aside whether you even have the means to obtain Master Zhang Lifeng's pills, from what I know, Master Zhang Lifeng has not opened his furnace to refine pills on the Central Island for a long time. Even if you truly had the ability, why do these pills bear no divine sense imprint of his?"
All high-ranking alchemists possessed a divine sense imprint—and a Pill God like Zhang Lifeng could hardly lack one. His imprint was widely known; even laymen like Oda Zhou and Wu Che, no alchemists themselves, could identify it.
Of course, in the present matter they had no need to identify anything, for there was simply no divine sense imprint on the pills at all.