Chapter 3816 — Li Zhengming's Request

The challenge tournament had ended, and the new disciples dispersed to their own affairs. Li Zhengming, however, fresh off a victory that had earned him a substantial pile of points, looked anything but pleased. Rather than returning to his cave dwelling like the others, he went straight to Meng Jueming, the senior steward disciple, the man who was in truth his real patron behind the scenes.

"Senior Brother Meng, I have a few thoughts regarding Wei Zhao and his lot. I wonder if I might report them to you, Senior Brother?" Li Zhengming forced a smile and stepped up beside Meng Jueming.

"Oh? Zhengming, what thoughts do you have? Let's hear them." The moment he heard Wei Zhao's name, Meng Jueming's interest was instantly piqued.

But Meng Zhou, who stood at his side, curled his lip in disdain. "What ideas could a mere Heaven-rank great perfection cultivator possibly have? At best it's armchair strategizing; a waste of time."

Though Meng Zhou's injuries had yet to heal, the earlier events had left his spirits utterly transformed. He was wholly immersed in the delight of soon becoming a peak early-stage Foundation Establishment expert, and a mere Heaven-rank great perfection cultivator like Li Zhengming no longer even registered in his eyes.

Hearing this, Li Zhengming came within a hair of cursing aloud. Damn you, Meng Zhou! If you hadn't mooched that Foundation Establishment Liquid off Xu Lingchong and taken it together with a Foundation Establishment Pill, do you think a specimen like you could have succeeded in establishing your foundation?

And come to think of it, back during the mountain trial, if I hadn't sacrificed my own spirit medicine and yielded to you at every turn to cooperate, you probably wouldn't even have gotten your hands on that Foundation Establishment Pill. And now you have the gall to mock me for being weak? The shamelessness of this man is truly beyond words!

Still, Li Zhengming forcibly held back his anger and ignored Meng Zhou's needling. He addressed Meng Jueming instead: "Senior Brother Meng, you've seen it yourself. Wei Zhao's group now has three early-stage Foundation Establishment cultivators, while on our side only Meng Zhou leads. If this continues, things will surely go awry, and the overall gap will only widen! So I believe the pressing task before us is to find someone to lead alongside Meng Zhou and share the burden, so that we can hold off Wei Zhao's faction and eventually have a chance to seize back the initiative."

Meng Jueming fell silent at once. They were all clever men; though Li Zhengming had not said so outright, his meaning was plain enough. He wanted to stand forward against Wei Zhao's faction, just as Meng Zhou had.

Had it been merely this hot-blooded notion, Meng Jueming would have had no difficulty with it. The crux was that Li Zhengming was no brainless sort like Meng Zhou. With his current strength at Heaven-rank great perfection, to stand up and challenge three early-stage Foundation Establishment cultivators was sheer fantasy, and he would never do any such thing.

The key to Li Zhengming's words lay in his wish to be the one who shared Meng Zhou's burden, and the precondition for that was naturally that he possess the strength for it. At the very least, he would have to be an early-stage Foundation Establishment expert himself!

And if he were to break through to Foundation Establishment in the short term, then pill support would be indispensable. Never mind matching Meng Zhou's Foundation Establishment Pill plus Foundation Establishment Liquid; at the very least, a single Foundation Establishment Pill was the bare minimum.

This was precisely where Meng Jueming found himself in a bind. In terms of strength and loyalty, he actually judged Li Zhengming fully qualified; ordinarily, giving him a Foundation Establishment Pill would be no great matter. The problem was that he had no Foundation Establishment Pill on hand!

To a young master like Xu Lingchong, a mere Foundation Establishment Pill was nothing worth a second glance. Even Foundation Establishment Liquid, which could not be bought in the market, could be obtained with a casual word. But for Meng Jueming, this matter was nowhere near so simple.

Though he was the senior steward disciple of the Qingyun Pavilion's new disciples, overseeing the distribution of all manner of benefits, and appeared to wield no small authority, the resources at his disposal had never included superior-grade resources like Foundation Establishment Pills.

One had to understand that in earlier years, owing to a scarcity of resources, the Welcome Pavilion did not provide Foundation Establishment Pills to new disciples at all. The greatest support a new disciple had in striving for Foundation Establishment was the cultivation cave dwelling allotted to them and a paltry few spirit jade.

Foundation Establishment Pills, by contrast, were a benefit that had appeared only in recent years, and in extremely limited quantity. As a rule they were held back until the final juncture and given to the handful of new disciples who had performed most outstandingly.

It was only this year, thanks to the special patronage of Zhang Lifeng, the Divine Physician and Sage of Pills, far away on the Middle Island, that the number of Foundation Establishment Pills the Sandie Pavilion allotted to the Welcome Pavilion had multiplied. Only then did the phenomenon arise of a Foundation Establishment Pill being awarded at the very first month's mountain trial, something utterly inconceivable in years past.

Yet even so, given Meng Jueming's position, he still could not involve himself in the distribution of these Foundation Establishment Pills. The reason was simple: he was merely a steward disciple, far from qualified.

Across the whole of the Welcome Pavilion, only two people had any say in the distribution of these Foundation Establishment Pills. One was Pavilion Master Hu Yunfeng; the other was Vice Pavilion Master Feng Song. By the rules, the Third Pavilion Master ought also to have some voice, but Lu Bianren had long since become a thoroughly marginal figure and was about to be kicked out anyway, so naturally he was not to be considered.

Had Meng Jueming already replaced Lu Bianren as Third Pavilion Master, then out of regard for the great young master Xu behind him, he might have been able to get a hand in the Foundation Establishment Pill distribution. Unfortunately, he was not that yet.

The distribution of Foundation Establishment Pills had never had anything to do with him from start to finish. And as an expert on the verge of breaking through to the mid-stage Foundation Establishment, he simply would not keep a stock of pills like Foundation Establishment Pills that were of no use to himself. What was he supposed to do?

Yet if Meng Jueming were to refuse Li Zhengming's request outright and claim there was nothing he could do, that would be rather hard to justify. Not out of any stirring of conscience, but out of various deeper considerations.

To begin with, doing so would cost him face before his underlings. More to the point, if word of this got out, it would deal a heavy blow to the authority of this senior steward disciple!

After all, Li Zhengming was the first new disciple under him, apart from Meng Zhou, to come forward and pledge allegiance of his own accord. His strength was plainly a cut above the other new disciples, and he could be counted as one who bore hardship without complaint. Even without any great merit, he had at least shed sweat and blood.

As the senior steward disciple, as the undisputed faction leader in the eyes of all the Qingyun Pavilion's new disciples, if Meng Jueming could not even satisfy so small a request from Li Zhengming, what face would he have left to command the other new disciples?

(.)RU