Chapter 3821 — Admiration and Esteem

Seeing that there was no one about, Li Zhengming quietly slipped the grey cloth bundle into his sleeve, then turned and hurried back to his own cave dwelling.

Once the door was shut and the cave's restrictive barrier sealed, Li Zhengming drew a deep breath, forced down the excitement surging in his chest, and slowly opened the bundle with trembling hands. Then his eyes flew wide.

"This… this is unbelievably fast!" Staring at the two pills lying quietly within the cloth, even though Li Zhengming had mentally prepared himself for this possibility, he still could not help but draw a sharp breath.

These two pills were, of course, the Foundation Establishment Pills Wei Zhao had refined for him. It had been mentioned only last night, yet here they were, delivered before dawn this very morning. Such speed, such efficiency—even for someone born into one of Cloud Terrace Island's established great families like Li Zhengming, it left him gaping in astonishment.

In that instant, Li Zhengming felt a profound, solemn respect well up for his leader, Wei Zhao.

That Wei Zhao kept his word to a subordinate was only one part of it. Measured against him, a backer like Meng Jueming had already been left ten streets behind; in Li Zhengming's heart, the two no longer even bore comparison.

The other part was that Li Zhengming was simply stunned by Wei Zhao's mastery of alchemy.

From the time he had finished explaining matters to Wei Zhao last night until now, a mere four shichen had passed in total. Any other alchemist would likely not even have finished their preparations, yet his leader Wei Zhao had already produced the Foundation Establishment Pills outright—and what set Li Zhengming's heart surging was that there were two of them at once!

He had given Wei Zhao only three sets of ingredients in all. Not only had Wei Zhao gone straight to the furnace with no preparation whatsoever, he had successfully refined two pills—a success rate of nearly seventy percent. It was simply inconceivable!

In this, however, Li Zhengming was mistaken. In truth, when Wei Zhao had refined the Foundation Establishment Pills last night, the furnace had not yielded merely the two given to him, but five in total. He had held back the other three only so as not to shock people too greatly; otherwise, Li Zhengming's jaw would surely have dropped even further.

Born into one of Cloud Terrace Island's established great families, steeped in such matters since childhood, Li Zhengming's breadth of vision far exceeded that of ordinary grassroots cultivators. Yet even by his standards, he was now utterly dumbfounded by Wei Zhao's alchemical mastery.

Originally, Li Zhengming had assumed that for a formidable newcomer like Wei Zhao, alchemy would be a mere sideline, and his mastery could not possibly run deep.

After all, the notion of alchemists who possessed rank but no real strength had long since become common knowledge, deeply ingrained in everyone's minds. And judging by Wei Zhao's earlier domineering, high-handed displays, his strength was not remotely connected to the word "weak"; even among experts of the same tier, Wei Zhao ranked absolutely among the very strongest.

And for such a man to be an alchemist at all already overturned everyone's understanding. Yet now Li Zhengming had discovered that his leader Wei Zhao's alchemical mastery even far surpassed that of ordinary alchemists. Beyond having his jaw drop, he could find no other words to describe his feelings at this moment.

Holding the two Foundation Establishment Pills, Li Zhengming stood dazed for a long while before he finally murmured in speechless admiration, "Leader Wei Zhao is truly a remarkable man!"

Never mind that his personal strength was so formidable as to be unbelievable—the key was that he treated his subordinates with exceptional generosity. Even grassroots newcomers as unremarkable as Xiao Che and Qiao Hongcai were now far ahead of the other newcomers of Azure Cloud Pavilion, and even of the newcomers of Soaring Heavens Pavilion and the Mystic Mechanism Pavilion. Such a thing would have been utterly unimaginable before.

Now, on top of all that, he had discovered that this man was in fact a profoundly accomplished alchemist. Even with a will as resilient as Li Zhengming's, he had no fight left in him at all before his leader Wei Zhao.

If, before this, Li Zhengming had thought Wei Zhao was merely a bit luckier than himself, and that given time he might still have a chance to overtake him, then now he had abandoned that notion entirely.

Without exaggeration, Li Zhengming was now thoroughly and utterly convinced by his leader Wei Zhao. A freak like this was simply not something an ordinary man like himself could ever compare to; perhaps only legendary figures like the Alchemy God and Medical Sage Zhang Lifeng could be mentioned in the same breath as him!

Though the thought of catching up to Wei Zhao had been extinguished in his heart, Li Zhengming's yearning to break through to the Foundation Establishment realm had not diminished in the least—rather, it had grown even more intense.

They were all subordinates beneath Wei Zhao's banner, yet Xiao Che and Qiao Hongcai had already taken the lead and succeeded in Foundation Establishment ahead of him. If he dragged on like this, he would only fall further and further behind—a situation Li Zhengming absolutely refused to see.

For the stronger and more unfathomable Wei Zhao became, the more it meant that the subordinates who followed him would have ever greater prospects and ever firmer resolve. As a result, the competition among those subordinates would inevitably grow fiercer as well.

Though Li Zhengming admired his leader Wei Zhao to the point of prostrating himself, that did not mean he was equally convinced by the likes of Xiao Che and Qiao Hongcai, still less that he was content to remain a head shorter than them for good. Those people had merely been fortunate enough to win their leader's favor from the very start, and that was the only reason they had beaten him to Foundation Establishment.

Now Li Zhengming himself likewise held two Foundation Establishment Pills in his grasp, with Foundation Establishment within sight in the near future—which meant that the contest for the number one spot beneath Wei Zhao had only just begun.

Still, the Foundation Establishment Pill had no absolute effect on breaking through to the Foundation Establishment realm. In truth, its function was merely to reshape the meridians within a person's body to be more suited to cultivation, and at most it could provide a certain degree of auxiliary support when charging that threshold. It did not follow that any Heaven-Tier consummate expert who consumed a Foundation Establishment Pill would necessarily succeed in Foundation Establishment.

Foundation Establishment was the single most critical process in any cultivator's life. Whether the foundation laid at this stage was solid directly determined how far one could walk in the future, and so this process could never be replaced by any pill alone.

To charge the Foundation Establishment realm, the most essential and fundamental condition was still sufficient personal depth. Only when one had genuinely touched, through one's own strength, that barrier standing between Heaven-Tier consummation and the early Foundation Establishment stage could external aids like the Foundation Establishment Pill possibly exert their stimulating, charging effect.

To forge iron, one must oneself be strong; otherwise, no matter how many Foundation Establishment Pills one swallowed, it would all be for nothing. Especially if one failed repeatedly, and one's body instinctively developed a resistance to the medicine, then hoping to rely on the Foundation Establishment Pill to break through would become a fool's dream—one might as well give up on succeeding in this lifetime. (To be continued…)