Chapter 3973 — Waiting Here

"A nine-tailed cloud-piercing leopard? Every last scrap of that creature is a treasure—who in their right mind would toss something like that out with the trash? Wait a moment—did you say nine-tailed cloud-piercing leopard?" Scrap King muttered to himself without thinking, but then he took a closer look at Wei Zhao, and his whole body seized as though struck by lightning. Fumbling over his words in his excitement, he blurted, "You... you're that fellow—that Brother Lin Er?"

"Heh, so you do recognize me after all. I was beginning to think that after all this time, Brother Wang here was fixing to pretend he'd never laid eyes on me," Wei Zhao said with a faint smile.

"Not at all, not at all! I've been counting the stars and watching for the moon—these past few months I've done nothing but wait for you to come. How could I possibly turn my back on you?" Scrap King said, overjoyed. For a man like him, who treated artifact-forging as his very life, it was a rare stroke of fortune that Wei Zhao had agreed to let him handle a high-grade material like the nine-tailed cloud-piercing leopard. This was the thing he had dreamed of for years on end, and every day the mere thought of it set his heart racing so that he could hardly keep still.

For the past several months, Scrap King had been making every kind of preparation for this very purpose—and the reason he had gone out of his way to scrape together so many spirit beast materials was precisely out of consideration for this.

Scrap King had at times wondered whether Wei Zhao had already put the matter out of his mind. After all, though he styled himself an artifact-forger, he had never once succeeded in forging anything worthy of the name of a divine weapon or legendary blade, and he knew well enough that he had nothing to show for himself. Were it otherwise, he never would have earned the sorry reputation of "Scrap King." For a man like that to be forgotten was only to be expected.

Had Wei Zhao not brought up the nine-tailed cloud-piercing leopard himself, Scrap King would never have connected the man before him with Wei Zhao at first. He had assumed this was just another like the three from a moment ago, come to make trouble for him.

Seeing that look of wild joy on Scrap King's face, Wei Zhao could not help but feel a pang of emotion. Life had truly not been kind to Scrap King. Setting all else aside, the man had sunk to such a wretched, bedraggled state, and yet he was still wholly devoted to the way of artifact-forging. That alone proved that his passion for the craft was matchless. For that reason alone, Wei Zhao felt he had not chosen the wrong man. Be it living thing or dead, so long as one poured one's heart into it, all things under heaven possessed a spirit of their own. And a man like Scrap King, one truly capable of focusing wholeheartedly upon the way of artifact-forging—Wei Zhao believed that whatever came from his hands, no matter how low its grade, would never be ordinary.

"Brother Wang, it looks like you've been tangled up in some trouble lately?" Wei Zhao gestured toward the ruins around them and asked with a smile.

Scrap King's expression stiffened at once. He scratched the back of his head awkwardly and gave a sheepish laugh. "Brother Lin, you must think me a laughingstock. I only picked a little something out of the junk they'd thrown away, and somehow it brought all this trouble down on my head. It was their own refuse, things they'd cast off—yet the moment I pick it up, they insist I stole it. Tell me, Brother Lin, isn't that just plain unreasonable of them?"

"Heh, that's people for you. If all they'd thrown out was worthless junk nobody wanted, no one would care. But the moment they realize they misjudged and tossed out something valuable, it's as though you'd carved a piece of flesh off their bodies—of course they won't let it go." Wei Zhao shook his head, then suddenly asked, "How did they find out they'd misjudged? Brother Wang, don't tell me you picked those things up right in front of them?"

Scrap King scratched his head again, embarrassed, and gave a sheepish laugh. "Truth be told, the fault lies with me. Brother Lin, you can see for yourself—a man like me can't stand to watch good things go to waste. When I saw them throwing away fine materials as though they were garbage, I couldn't help muttering a word or two under my breath. Somehow or other it got back to their ears, and that's why they came looking for me."

Wei Zhao was torn between laughter and exasperation at this. That was Scrap King to a tee. He remembered how, back when he had first done business with Chen Heihu, this same fellow had been unable to hold his tongue and had spoken up—and that was what made Wei Zhao change his mind on the spot and hold back the nine-tailed cloud-piercing leopard's forepaws and whip-tail.

So the root of the trouble lay squarely with Scrap King himself. If those people had learned that the junk they threw away was in fact treasure, and that someone had picked it up besides, there was no way they could have taken it calmly.

Any man with even a sliver of pettiness in him would inevitably come knocking to make trouble—and Scrap King, besides, was a soft-hearted coward who let himself be carved up however others pleased. Clearly, Scrap King's emotional intelligence was truly nothing to boast of.

"From the look of things, they must have come after you more than once. Brother Wang, why haven't you packed up and left this den of trouble? Why stay here in such a sorry state?" Wei Zhao asked, puzzled.

The wooden hut here had likely been burned down several days ago, and Scrap King's current charred, bedraggled appearance was certainly not the work of Wei Zhao's Frenzied Flame Fist from a moment ago. After all, that strike had been locked entirely onto those three men; as for Scrap King, he could at most have been grazed by the faintest wisp of the fist's intent.

If he was not mistaken, Scrap King's present condition was left over from when the hut had been burned. Anyone else would surely have found a chance to leave over the past few days; even if they could not rest easy and had to come back for a look, they would at least have cleaned themselves up—not be standing about in the state he was in now.

"Heh heh, wasn't I just afraid that if Brother Lin came, he wouldn't be able to find me? So I stayed right here and waited," Scrap King said with a guileless, straightforward look on his face.

Wei Zhao was speechless for a moment, and at the same time quietly moved. Merely to honor a single promise made to a stranger, the man had braved danger and stayed right where he was. In this day and age, people as utterly sincere as Scrap King were truly hard to come by.

"Brother Wang, you've been here the whole time? Then when they burned the house last time, they didn't discover you?" Wei Zhao could not help asking out of curiosity. Scrap King might be pitifully weak in actual strength, but Wei Zhao had sensed it a moment ago—his skill at concealment seemed rather impressive.

"That's right. Last time they couldn't find me, so they burned my house to vent their spite. The truth is, I was hiding right here the whole time—I just used the Calm Heart and Stilled Breath method, so ordinary folk like them couldn't sense me," Scrap King said with a complacent chuckle.

"The Calm Heart and Stilled Breath method?" Wei Zhao was slightly taken aback.