Chapter 4540 — Shocking News

When you get right down to it, the better part of a year he had spent in the Southern Isle had been nothing short of spectacularly eventful.

Things he ought to have gone through and things he never should have, Wei Zhao had gone through them all, and his cultivation had been dragged kicking and screaming from the early Golden Core stage straight up to its present peak at mid Golden Core. He had stirred up more than a few grudges of life and death, and along the way made a friend in Qi Wenmo. All in all, it could be counted a job well done, and he was just in time to withdraw with a whole skin.

"That's so. With that old devil from the Western Hills' former sect holding Weihu City these days, it's a chancy place for you, Brother Ling, and going back to the Northern Isle will let you lie low for a while." Qi Mingyuan mulled it over for a moment, then nodded.

"Er—Brother Ling, are you sure you can settle your accounts going back empty-handed like this?" Qi Wenmo asked, a little worried. "Normally, a bounty like this—you'd have to bring back a head before it counts for anything, wouldn't you?"

A head to settle the account; that was the unwritten rule for countless sect missions. After all, bare words proved nothing. If Wei Zhao went back with his hands empty and said he had killed Wu Baoliang, what if nobody believed him?

Qi Mingyuan could not help knitting his brows at that. Wu Baoliang had indeed died at Wei Zhao's hands, but his head had not been cut off.

"That part's easy enough. If I'd quietly done away with Wu Baoliang in private, it would be hard to explain, true. But this time he was killed in full view, on the arena at the Southern Isle Escort Bureau's grand gathering, and everyone knows it was I, Ling Yi, who struck him down. Once I'm back, one small inquiry on their part and the whole thing comes out." Wei Zhao waved it off carelessly.

With his present standing in the Northern Isle's Sandie Pavilion, a figure whom Shangguan Tianxia, Pavilion Master of the Chongtian Pavilion, had publicly singled out for praise, and whom Yu Zhenyang, Pavilion Master of the Qingyun Pavilion, regarded with particular favor—unless someone had eaten bear's gall as a heart, who would dare make things difficult for Wei Zhao over a matter like this?

"That would be best of all." Qi Mingyuan and Qi Wenmo nodded together.

"I can't appear openly this time, nor can I take my leave of everyone face to face. I'll have to trouble the Chief Escort and Brother Qi to apologize on my behalf after I've gone," Wei Zhao said, entrusting it to them.

"Easily done, easily done. Everyone will understand—circumstances being what they are." Qi Mingyuan agreed.

"Oh, and one more thing I need to trouble Brother Qi with. Over at the Hong Merchant Guild there are too many people and too many eyes. It isn't convenient for me to go and take my leave of Steward Chai, so I mean to write a letter and have Brother Qi deliver it for me." Wei Zhao turned to another matter.

"No problem at all. It just so happens Steward Chai is invited along to tomorrow's dinner. A small favor, nothing more—leave it to me." Qi Wenmo was already thumping his chest and nodding, and at the same time setting out brush, ink, paper, and inkstone for Wei Zhao.

"Good." Wei Zhao took up the brush at once and bent over the desk, writing fast. No superfluous courtesies—only a few brief words of counsel and reassurance. It was enough that Chai Laoshi should know that Hong Zhong and himself were always watching over him.

He finished it in one breath, and had Qi Wenmo put the letter away. He meant to leave right then, but something else suddenly came to mind, and he turned solemn, addressing Qi Mingyuan and Qi Wenmo: "While I was on the Southern Isle this time I happened to learn something. Barring the unexpected, it will bear on the whole situation of the Southern Isle's seas, and I think the two of you had better be prepared for it in advance."

"By all means, Young Hero Ling." It was rare to see Wei Zhao so grave. Qi Mingyuan and Qi Wenmo straightened at once, secretly wondering what news could possibly bear on the whole of the Southern Isle's seas.

"Word from inside the spirit beast clan. They are already preparing to levy a tax on every human cultivator in the Southern Isle's seas. When exactly it will begin is not yet known, but it's surely only a matter of time. So you had best lose no time in working out how to respond, or you'll end up as nothing but cannon fodder when the day comes." Wei Zhao warned them in dead earnest.

The news was truly too startling, and Wei Zhao did not mean to let it slip out carelessly. But neither could he simply stand by and watch the Qingtian Escort Bureau fare nothing. Even if he could not help much, a warning was always in his power.

"What? The spirit beast clan is going to levy a tax?" Qi Mingyuan and Qi Wenmo were instantly shocked. Astonishment was written plain on both faces, and they could not even keep a look of dread from showing. "How can that be? In a thousand years there has never been any precedent for such a thing!"

"There truly has been no precedent before this. But the spirit beast clan's seats of power underwent a great upheaval not long ago, and this tax proposal was put forward by the new thing that holds power, publicly, at the Spirit Beast Assembly. It cannot be a matter of idle promises—they must mean to go through with it in earnest." Wei Zhao explained.

"This news… it's simply too shocking…" Qi Mingyuan and Qi Wenmo sank at once into their broad armchairs, and it was a long while before they digested the shock and alarm Wei Zhao's words had brought. In truth, had the words not come from Wei Zhao's mouth, they would sooner have been beaten to death than believe the spirit beast clan could ever dream of levying a tax. Why, that was to provoke open war between man and beast!

To be sure, the human cultivators native to the Southern Isle's seas alone could never hope to stand against the mighty, overweening spirit beast clan in open confrontation. But that did not stop them from sending to human sects on other Cloud-Tier Isles for help.

The Southern Isle's seas were rich in resources, and above all they lay right next to a place of such natural endowment as the Southern Isle. So practically every great and famous sect on every Cloud-Tier Isle kept a branch or a stronghold here. The moment the spirit beast clan truly moved against their interests and thereby earned the anger of the many, then no matter how many or how strong the spirit beast clan's experts might be, they could forget about gaining the slightest advantage.

The human powers that suffered losses, added together, would be enough on their own to give the spirit beast clan a hard time of it, and given the balance of strength between the two sides, if the day of war truly came, it was hard to say at all whose head would fall.

Suddenly Qi Mingyuan rose to his feet and bowed to Wei Zhao from the waist, thanking him from the bottom of his heart: "Young Hero Ling, this is a message that saves lives. Without your warning, our Qingtian Escort Bureau might well have been the first unlucky wretch to be carved up. On behalf of the whole Bureau, Qi thanks you for saving us."

This was no idle scaremongering. Unlike before, the Qingtian Escort Bureau was now the flagship and overlord among the escort bureaus of the Southern Isle's seas, expanding its business at a furious pace. Almost every day some new stretch of sea was drawn into its domain, and in barely more than a month, the Bureau's escort ships were already making frequent appearances across every famous stretch of the Southern Isle's waters.