Chapter 4271 — Another Band of Arrivals

The place was nothing short of a natural garden of spirit herbs. Spirit herbs met the eye wherever one looked, not only in great variety but of excellent quality. With this many, anyone else would have needed several days of hard work merely to have a chance at gathering them all.

But given Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao's terrifying efficiency, another stick of incense's time would probably see the whole place stripped clean—because they did not even bother to look at what kind of herb it was; they simply pulled whatever they saw, and once pulled, no protective measures of any kind were taken.

After Huang Xiaotao pulled them up, the only thing Wei Zhao had to do was stow the herbs away, planting each one into the jade pendant's space—and that was the whole job done.

The two were busily at work when Wei Zhao's brows suddenly knit slightly. From the dense forest in the distance came a rustling sound, and one could tell it was the noise of footsteps drawing nearer.

"From the sound of it, they should be people—and more than one. What do we do?" Huang Xiaotao caught Wei Zhao's expression and quickly sensed it too. In familiarity with dense forests and in perception within them, she was in no way inferior to Wei Zhao.

"Nothing to worry about. We keep at our work and pay them no mind," Wei Zhao said with a faint smile, showing not the slightest intention of avoiding them. The spirit herbs here were no rare treasures, but having them was better than not—and the jade pendant's space was vast enough, anyway.

What was more, Wei Zhao had a deeper consideration. If he and Huang Xiaotao deliberately avoided them and those people happened to notice, they might well conclude that the two had come by some great treasure and were therefore acting guilty.

Better to invite trouble that way than to simply keep pulling weeds as naturally as before. Plenty of cultivators came to Lufeng Forest to explore these days; so long as there was no conflict of interest, the other side ought not to start a fight unprovoked.

Of course, to conceal the existence of the jade pendant's space, Wei Zhao still fetched the basket from beside them and put the herbs they gathered from then on into it. It did not matter if Huang Xiaotao knew about the pendant's space, but outsiders were another matter.

The two went on pulling weeds, and sure enough, a short while later a group arrived before them. Wei Zhao glanced up at the newcomers: four men and two women, six in all—they must have been teleported in together as a team.

From the bearing and aura of these six, it was easy to judge that their leader was the middle-aged man in the blue robe walking in their center.

In build and features the man had nothing remarkable about him; at first glance he seemed altogether ordinary, his air much the same as Guo Dengtao's had been. But look closely and one would find his spirit and vitality brimming, and within those rather plain features there was in truth a certain martial gallantry. His gaze in particular was exceedingly sharp, like a keen blade—one casual glance from him was enough to set a man's heart trembling without his knowing why.

More crucially, among the six who had come, this middle-aged man in blue was the only one whose strength Wei Zhao's golden finger could not see through—which meant his cultivation was at least that of the Nascent Soul stage.

The other five were all fine hands of the Golden Core stage, the strongest at the very peak of late Golden Core, the weakest at least mid Golden Core.

Wei Zhao felt a chill of caution. The strength of this small team before him was more than a cut above that of his own team with Chu Bubai—they were not even in the same league.

But on reflection, only a team of this caliber would dare enter the depths of Lufeng Forest. Otherwise, a team like Chu Bubai's, lacking that route map, could never have reached the core region at all.

While Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao observed the newcomers, the newcomers had long since noticed them. One look at the basket laden with spirit herbs, then at what the two were doing, and as if by prior agreement they all burst into laughter.

As though they had witnessed some unbelievable farce, the newcomers doubled over laughing one after another, their faces showing undisguised mockery and contempt.

"Brother Chang, Lufeng Forest these days really has every kind of riffraff you can imagine! To think there'd even be bumpkins like these who've never seen the world—what business do they have coming here, squatting in the dirt pulling weeds? I'm dying of laughter!" A woman dressed in extremely garish, alluring fashion, half her body leaning into the arms of the blue-robed leader, covered her mouth and jeered right in front of Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao.

Wei Zhao gave her a bland glance. This alluring woman had the strength of late Golden Core, which was not bad at all, and from the look of it she was intimate with the leader, this Brother Chang—they were probably dual-cultivation partners.

"Hahaha, exactly! Brother Chang, I'd bet anything these two crawled out of some backwater cultivator tribe that's never seen the world. They see a few common-grade spirit herbs and think they've found treasure!" A man beside her laughed along, pointing at Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao with the air of one looking down from on high. "I say, even if you two fill that whole basket, you won't earn back the ten thousand spirit jade it cost to use the teleportation array. It's all wasted effort—I really don't know how your brains are wired!"

This man was at the very peak of late Golden Core, the strongest of the six after the leader, Brother Chang. His eager echo of the alluring woman showed plainly that he was Chang's underling—otherwise he would not have been so zealous in flattering the boss's woman.

"Exactly. This place isn't even the outer perimeter anymore. People risk their necks coming to a place like this chasing rare heaven-and-earth treasures, and these two are lying here pulling weeds? It truly leaves one speechless..."

"Heh heh, I'm quite curious, actually. They're both only at early Golden Core—how on earth did weaklings like that get in?"

"Need you ask? Blind luck and guesswork. With their scraps of strength, even moving about the outer perimeter of Lufeng Forest would be a strain, let alone a place like this. To have survived this long with limbs still attached is a miracle in itself!"

"Not necessarily. From the perimeter to this place, you have to cross several powerful spirit beasts' territories. On their own, no amount of luck would get them in. And at the start they must have scraped together six people just to teleport in. My guess is they're too weak, and their teammates abandoned them..."

"That's right. Early Golden Core strength in Lufeng Forest is nothing but dead weight. If I were their teammate, I wouldn't want to drag these two millstones along either—make up the numbers to teleport in, then naturally you part ways afterward!"

The group chattered on, one after another, heaping merciless ridicule on Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao right to their faces. Only the leader, Brother Chang, remained calm and silent throughout, never opening his mouth.