Chapter 4263 — Obtaining the Infant Ginseng

With this single stalk of infant ginseng now in hand, even if they accomplished nothing else on this journey to the Southern Isle, it would already count as a bumper harvest with coffers overflowing. Life truly was a matter of unpredictable fortune—coming to the Lu Feng Forest this time had indeed been a wise move.

"Wonderful!" After digesting it for quite a while, Huang Xiaotao finally accepted the reality that this thing really was infant ginseng, and only then did she brighten with joy. Yet as she recalled what had just happened, her expression dimmed once more. "It's just a pity about Chu Bubai and Guo Dengtao and the others…"

Though only a scant few days had passed since they first met, and they had exchanged no great deal of words, in Huang Xiaotao's eyes these people could after all be counted as her teammates—all of them had ventured in together for the sake of the infant ginseng. And now the infant ginseng had fallen into their hands by accident, while the people were gone and everything had changed.

Chu Bubai had died miserably right before their eyes, just like that. As for Guo Dengtao, Wang Feng, and Feng Hongyu, though she had not witnessed it herself, even the strongest among them, Chu Bubai, had met such an end—no guessing was needed to know that they too must have met with disaster.

Over the years, Huang Xiaotao had long since grown accustomed to the rhythm of trial missions, and she had weathered no small number of blows from teammates dying horribly. Anyone else might well have grown numb to it long ago, but as a girl soft on the outside and firm within, she likely would never manage to turn a blind eye.

Even for these people she had known only briefly, with whom she had no real bond at all and who had come together purely for the sake of profit, Huang Xiaotao still regarded them from the bottom of her heart as teammates, and grieved from the bottom of her heart at their wretched deaths—rather than secretly rejoicing over the ebbing of rivals in the contest for gain.

"Guo Dengtao and Wang Feng and the others—truly a great pity…" Wei Zhao patted Huang Xiaotao's shoulder in consolation, then shifted his tone. "But as for Chu Bubai, he deserved his death a hundred times over."

"Huh? Why do you say that?" Huang Xiaotao could not help but start. Like the others, all along the way she had thought Chu Bubai was actually a rather steady and dependable sort.

"Xiaotao, have you forgotten what he said right before he died?" Wei Zhao shook his head.

"What he said before he died?" Huang Xiaotao thought it over, utterly baffled. "Something about sacrificing five Golden Core experts, I think…"

"Exactly. Guo Dengtao and the rest knowing him beforehand is one thing, but you and I were complete strangers to him. When it comes to a secret as weighty as the infant ginseng, any normal person would never bring it out to share, would they?" Wei Zhao gave a cold laugh. "Yet not only did he do so, he even invited us to join him. Doesn't that strike you as fishy, Xiaotao? There's no such thing as a free lunch in this world. In the world of cultivation, such good fortune is even less likely."

"Now that you mention it, it really is strange." Only then did Huang Xiaotao catch on, belatedly. She had left everything to Wei Zhao's judgment and had not thought so much of it before, but now that he brought it up, she was suddenly enlightened.

"So the five Golden Core experts he spoke of sacrificing before he died—it's quite clear which five he meant." Wei Zhao's voice was grave. "Apart from Chu Bubai himself: you, me, Guo Dengtao, Wang Feng, and Feng Hongyu. That makes exactly five Golden Core experts. According to what he said, once the five of us were sacrificed, the infant ginseng would lose its attacking power. Then he alone would reap the spoils. His heart was fit to be cut out."

"That's utterly vicious! So Guo Dengtao and the others were all done in by him!" Huang Xiaotao was startled. Thinking it over carefully, it really was exactly so, and cold sweat broke out on her at once. Inwardly she rejoiced that Wei Zhao's judgment had been sound—had he not pulled her back in time, she would by now have become a stepping stone for the other man.

With Chu Bubai's cunning and depth, had Wei Zhao been anyone else, he would likely have been fooled as well. Then the five Golden Core experts would have become his pawns and tools, quietly and unassumingly tricked into the sacrifice for the infant ginseng.

Given the attacking power the infant ginseng had displayed before, an ordinary Golden Core expert going up against it had nothing to do but deliver himself to death. Once the five Golden Core experts were dead, no one would remain to compete with Chu Bubai, and at the same time the infant ginseng would lose its aggressiveness and become a truly ready-to-hand treasure of heaven and earth. That was a scheme to bag two birds with one stone, to gain two ends at one stroke!

Chu Bubai was a man who calculated every angle; from first to last he had laid a great trap, using the infant ginseng as bait, just waiting for the others to crawl inside. It was only a pity that for all his scheming, he had never reckoned that Wei Zhao would be so wary of him—that he and Huang Xiaotao would not charge forward at all, and that in the end he would be devoured and slain by the infant ginseng's backlash.

All that scheming, and in the end he had only benefited Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao. Had Chu Bubai known of it, he would surely have died with his eyes open in outrage.

"From the very start I could see there was something off about Chu Bubai, but I never imagined the man could be so venomous as to spend the lives of the five of us to clear his road for the infant ginseng. That heart of his is truly ruthless to a remarkable degree." Wei Zhao shook his head and sighed with emotion.

"But… Feng Hongyu was his Dao companion! How could he be so heartless?" Even in the aftermath of her fright, Huang Xiaotao still found it hard to believe.

"Before the infant ginseng, even a father and son or blood brothers will kill each other, let alone a mere Dao companion. Men of Chu Bubai's ambition think differently from the likes of us." Wei Zhao paused, then said with some regret, "It's only a pity about Guo Dengtao and Wang Feng. I didn't know them well, but one could see they were no sneaking villains—they simply ran into a teammate like Chu Bubai and were done to death for nothing."

At these words Huang Xiaotao too lowered her head in silent sorrow. She had survived because of Wei Zhao, but Guo Dengtao and Wang Feng and the others had had no one to save them.

Such was the cruelty of the world of cultivation. Wei Zhao could not possibly concern himself with the life and death of everyone; all he could do was look after those close to him. As for the rest, they could only fend for themselves and pray for good fortune.

"Still, that it takes the sacrifice of five Golden Core experts to strip it of its attacking power—this infant ginseng well deserves its name as the supreme of all spirit medicines." Seeing Huang Xiaotao's heavy mood, Wei Zhao changed the subject, weighing the infant ginseng in his hand.

"Indeed. No wonder one never even hears of infant ginseng on the market. It's already so rare and hard to find, and on top of that it costs the lives of five Golden Core experts—the difficulty is truly beyond imagining. If gathering it were always this hard, how many people would have to die!" Huang Xiaotao's attention was indeed diverted, and she covered her small mouth in astonishment.

"It needn't necessarily require sacrificing five Golden Core experts, though. That should be a rather unconventional method. Killing it outright as we did just now is probably the mainstream approach." Wei Zhao mused. (To be continued…)