Chapter 2409 — The Mysterious Elder Appears Again

"Don't call him just yet..." Shen Yushu suddenly stopped Gu Mengyao, then said, "The car's at home, which means Arrow Brand Bro is somewhere nearby. Since he's not at home, he must be at Han Jingyi's place. Maybe they're refining pills—don't disturb him."

Gu Mengyao nodded, a little surprised, and couldn't help admiring how sharp Xiaoshu's reasoning was: from the smallest details, she could work out where Wei Zhao had gone.

"I'm going to buy some food." A flicker of anxiety passed through Shen Yushu's eyes, though it was gone in an instant.

"Then let me come with you?" Gu Mengyao had already come out of the villa, so going out with Shen Yushu as well hardly made much difference.

"Don't—" Shen Yushu gave a start and blurted out instinctively.

"?" Gu Mengyao looked at her, puzzled.

"Ah... I mean, it'd be better if you waited at home for Arrow Brand Bro, Yaoyao. Otherwise, when he gets back and sees we've both vanished—and his car gone too—he'll think we've been kidnapped..." Shen Yushu hurriedly explained.

"Oh, that's true. Then I'll wait here at home for Wei Zhao." Gu Mengyao nodded.

Shen Yushu breathed a sigh of relief, quickly got into the car, and drove off in Wei Zhao's Grand Cherokee, vanishing from Gu Mengyao's sight...

Gu Mengyao watched the car leave and stood for a long while at the villa gate, brows slightly knitted, lost in some thought or other... After quite some time, she shook her head and went back inside.

In a small teahouse near the university town, a young girl sat quietly across from a mysterious old man. Though she tried hard to stay composed, a faint nervousness still showed in her eyes...

"What's going on? Why isn't he dead yet?" The old man frowned. "Didn't I tell you to poison him? How is he still perfectly fine, still able to talk to the people sheltering the Zhao family?"

"Well..." The girl hesitated a moment, then said, "He's a doctor, and a pill refiner at that. Besides, he's the one who solved that poisoning incident at First High School back then—he even tasted the poison himself..."

"So you're saying the poison has no effect on him, or he's already cured himself?" The old man's expression eased a little at this, and he nodded. "Does he suspect you?"

"I don't think so... If he suspected anything, he'd probably blame the tea leaves—maybe thinking they weren't washed properly and still had pesticide on them?" the girl said cautiously.

"I see." The old man nodded noncommittally, then said, "I anticipated this situation. It was only a test. Poisoning someone is fairly simple; the other methods are somewhat more troublesome."

"Oh... then... maybe we just don't kill him? He's pretty hard to kill. And if we botch it and get exposed, that would ruin the fun. Right?" the girl suggested.

"What? Can't bear to?" A keen light flashed in the old man's eyes as he looked at the girl before him.

"H-how could I..." The girl shook her head innocently. "I'm just afraid we won't be able to kill him and will get exposed... You know how formidable he is..."

"Hmph. Don't forget who you are!" The old man gave a cold snort and threatened, "Your life and death are in my hands too. You know well enough what happens without the antidote—a dead end!"

"I... know..." The girl nodded silently.

"Forget it. Since he's so formidable, we'll use another approach!" the old man said. "This is a bottle of sleeping pills mixed with restful grass, along with one antidote. Put it in his tea or food and it will send him into a deep sleep. Colorless and tasteless—he shouldn't be able to detect it! Take the antidote yourself and you'll be fine; otherwise, you'll fall asleep along with him."

"Ah... what use is that..." the girl asked, puzzled.

"Of course it's useful. Once he's asleep, you stab him to death with a knife." The old man spoke calmly. "He's an internal-energy cultivator. While asleep, he has no true qi protecting his body—one stab and he's dead!"

"Ah..." The girl hadn't expected the old man to come up with such a method.

"Any problem?" The old man didn't give her time to answer, asking directly.

"N-no..." The girl gave a bitter smile and took the restful-grass sleeping pills he handed her, carefully tucking them into her pocket.

"Good. I'll be waiting for good news." The old man rose and left the teahouse first. The girl, meanwhile, let out a sigh heavy with complicated feelings, then beckoned to the waiter: "Waiter..."

Wei Zhao and Han Jingyi finally finished refining the pills. The whole process could be called a great success—at least, it looked like a great success for now, because Han Jingyi had followed her pill-refining formula strictly throughout, and the cauldron had shown no strange phenomena. Later on, bursts of fragrance drifted from the cauldron, meaning the ingredients inside were close to forming into pills...

"Phew..." Han Jingyi let out a breath. "All done—though Jingjing's a little nervous... I wonder how many Meridian-Unblocking Pills we managed to refine?"

"Heh, as long as we get three or more, that's a victory." Wei Zhao was relatively calm. After all, for Han Jingyi to produce more pills than the number of ingredient portions was already a success—far better than most other refiners.

"Mm-hm, Brother Wei Zhao always comforts Jingjing." Han Jingyi carefully opened the cauldron and instinctively counted the pills inside: "One, two, three... seven? There are actually more than the previous first-grade pills?"

Han Jingyi couldn't help blurting out in astonishment. Her best record had been doubling the output, yet this time she had refined more than double—and second-grade pills at that. How could she not be astonished?

"Heh, congratulations, Jingjing. Looks like you've won your first battle and are getting more and more skilled." Wei Zhao didn't show much excitement, but he was actually very happy—Han Jingyi's prowess in pill refining was, in a sense, his own prowess too.

"It's not that Jingjing's getting skilled—it's that Brother Wei Zhao was here helping. Otherwise Jingjing definitely couldn't have done it. Not only would the refining have failed, but there's no way three portions of ingredients would have produced seven pills," Han Jingyi said.

"True. Let's find some time and refine the Minor Qi-Gathering Pills too. Hopefully these five portions of ingredients can work another miracle and produce twelve pills," Wei Zhao said.

"Sure." Han Jingyi nodded.

"Let's recover our true qi and stamina now. Then I need to head back—the pill refining took a lot of time, and I haven't told Yaoyao and the others yet. They shouldn't think I've gone missing," Wei Zhao said.

"Mm-hm." Han Jingyi simply did whatever Wei Zhao said, as if she had no opinions of her own at all.