Chapter 4028 — Breakthrough, Peak of the Mid Foundation Establishment Stage!

Because she had been meaning to buy top-grade pills from the Hong Clan Merchant Guild, she had come away with a fairly strong impression of both Hong Zhong and Wei Zhao—especially Wei Zhao, who had just that very day locked horns with Zheng Tianjie and goaded that fool into bidding a staggering fifty thousand spirit jades for a ten-piece forging set whose reserve price was a mere ten thousand. The sight of him bleeding from every pore after being swindled so thoroughly had nearly made Ning Xuefei laugh herself silly on the spot.

In Ning Xuefei's eyes, a spoiled rich brat like Zheng Tianjie was no good sort, whereas Wei Zhao, a clever young clerk of the Hong Clan Merchant Guild, was plainly not a bad man.

"Could it be that someone is after the Hong Clan Merchant Guild's top-grade pills and meant to force this young clerk to do the deed, and when he refused, he fought desperately and fled?" Ning Xuefei's imagination ran entirely wild. Since she herself was thinking of buying pills from the Hong Clan Merchant Guild, she assumed everyone else was of the same mind, and in the blink of an eye she had conjured up a thrilling scene of chivalrous drama all on her own.

From first to last, she never once connected any of this to the great crash she had just heard. She took it for an ordinary earthquake on the Far North Island and never imagined it might be **a commotion deliberately made.

Just as Ning Xuefei was spinning her fancies with perfect conviction, a hurried knocking suddenly came from outside, followed by the voice of the Northern Guard: "Open up, whoever's inside! We are the Northern Guard—we suspect an assassin has slipped in!"

"Hey, I'm taking a bath in here! What do you think you're doing?" Ning Xuefei wrinkled her nose and shouted in annoyance.

"Uh…" Faced with that reply, the men at the door hesitated at once, yet they seemed unwilling to give up just like that. Then another voice sounded beside them: "Forget it, Pockface. This is the west island's Miss Ning's boudoir—you dare search it? Tired of living?"

"That's right, she's a big shot from the west island. Even Steward Song greets her with a smile, and this room was prepared specially for Miss Ning—no one else is allowed to stay here. We can't afford to offend her. Besides, we can't even be sure there's an assassin in there. Maybe you were just seeing things a moment ago…" The other Northern Guards all chimed in to dissuade him.

At last, the Northern Guards abandoned the idea of searching the room. They apologized to Ning Xuefei through the door, then turned and headed off toward the scene of the disturbance.

Hearing the voices outside gradually fade into the distance, Ning Xuefei breathed a sigh of relief. She looked down at Wei Zhao, slumped in her bath basin, and shook her head in exasperation. This clerk couldn't very well drown here, could he? With him in it, how was she supposed to take her bath?

Ning Xuefei stood frozen for a moment. It was a little awkward to have her bath only half done, but Wei Zhao was a grown man after all, and she was a young woman—however thick-skinned she might be, there was no way she could calmly go on soaking in the same basin as a stranger.

She climbed out of the basin, quickly dried herself off, and threw on her clothes. Then Ning Xuefei turned back to study Wei Zhao for a while, reached out, and dragged him out of the bath basin.

After all, the water in the basin was neither especially deep nor especially shallow, and in Wei Zhao's current wretched state, if she had left him lying there, it was not at all impossible that he really would have drowned.

Having dragged Wei Zhao out, Ning Xuefei did nothing further; she simply crouched at his side, propped up her chin, and went on studying him.

She was, after all, a young woman—and a young miss who had never waited on anyone in her life. To expect her to dry off this strange man so he would not catch cold was simply asking far too much. That she had agreed not to hand Wei Zhao over to the Northern Guard was already an act of great mercy.

Meanwhile, outside, the Gathering Hall had fallen into utter chaos. Once it was discovered that the victim was Zheng Tianjie, the young master of the Pill Hall, the whole of the Gathering Hall was surrounded in layer upon layer by countless Northern Guards and placed under emergency lockdown.

Steward Song and the great personages of the pleasure rank from every island had all arrived on the scene, while everyone else was barred outside by the Northern Guard. With a critical figure like Zheng Tianjie involved, everything had to be strictly sealed off until Steward Song and the others reached a clear and unified conclusion—otherwise, if word leaked out and spread beyond the island, the situation would spiral utterly beyond control.

Never mind how matters stood outside; at this moment Wei Zhao, in Ning Xuefei's boudoir, had been unconscious for a full two hours. Only as the sky outside was about to brighten did he finally stir faintly back to wakefulness.

"What's your name?" Ning Xuefei, who had crouched at his side until both her legs had gone numb, brightened at the sight and hastily asked.

But Wei Zhao gave her no answer. Eyes tightly shut, deaf to all around him, he rolled over and sat up straight, crossing his legs, and began circulating his mental cultivation method.

Earlier, in the jade pendant's space, his injuries had already recovered by seven or eight parts, but his physical strength and true qi had not yet been restored!

"What's this? Not even a word for me!" Ning Xuefei pursed her lips, but said nothing more, and simply went on crouching there watching him.

A thick-skinned girl was often far more understanding than most people. Especially in an abnormal situation like this—anyone else would long since have thrown Wei Zhao to the Northern Guard. Who else would keep such a suspicious stranger in her own boudoir?

As it happened, Wei Zhao was not deliberately ignoring Ning Xuefei. He had just reached a critical juncture—not merely recovering his physical strength, but his true qi within was beginning to swell and brim over. This was the sign of an impending breakthrough!

Counting the days, it had not been long since Wei Zhao broke through to the Foundation Establishment Stage. This time he had taken no pills to aid his advancement, and he was moreover gravely wounded—never had Wei Zhao imagined he would be about to break through again so soon!

Still, though this was unexpected, on reflection it was entirely reasonable. For a cultivator, every time one exhausted one's strength and suffered grave injury, one could actually tap further into the potential within one's body; each was a rare transformation, and it was nothing strange to seize such an opportunity to break through. Wei Zhao himself had been through it many times already.

From the peak of the early Foundation Establishment Stage to the Foundation Establishment Stage was an exceedingly difficult threshold to cross, but by comparison, the step from the Foundation Establishment Stage to the peak of the Foundation Establishment Stage was far less difficult. With the profound foundation Wei Zhao had built through unremitting daily cultivation, a swift breakthrough at this stage was in truth a matter of course, as natural as water flowing into a channel.

Under Ning Xuefei's gaze, Wei Zhao drove the true qi within his body to circulate through his meridians again and again, seeking the opportune moment for a single decisive breakthrough.

After a long while, the aura around Wei Zhao suddenly surged by a great margin, startling the many little ornaments in the room into a chorus of trembling. Had Ning Xuefei not seen the danger and flung herself over to shield them, her beloved little trinkets and knickknacks would most likely all have come to grief.