Chapter 4885 — Better Safe Than Sorry

In the shadows, Su Kesheng lowered his voice and laid out his plan.

"Not bad, not bad at all—your mind works tight, kid. Without that, we'd have left a loose end this time for sure!" Bao Zuoliang's eyes lit up as he gave a furtive thumbs-up, then turned to the anxious man before him and said, "All right, seeing as your attitude is sincere enough, I'll grant you a lightning tribulation node."

The man's face flickered between hope and doubt.

"What? Truly? Thank you, brother! Thank you!" Overjoyed, the man hurried to step into the node—only to be blocked again by Bao Zuoliang.

Bao Zuoliang did not move aside.

"Hey now, isn't that a bit thick of you? You really think lightning tribulation nodes come free? Oughtn't you show some appreciation? If not, I'll hand it to someone else—a node this fine, others would kill for the chance!" Bao Zuoliang wore the look of a merchant holding out for a better price.

The crowd in the distance stirred at these words.

They had all seen the benefits of such a node; Bao Zuoliang and Su Kesheng had drawn down tribulation almost the moment they stepped in. Clearly these nodes were lively indeed—worth paying a price for.

"This…" The man hesitated.

At last he gritted his teeth and produced something—a small piece of infant ginseng.

Bao Zuoliang's gaze sharpened.

"That's more like it!" Bao Zuoliang's eyes gleamed. Nascent-condensing golden elixirs and the like were useless to him now, but infant ginseng was another matter—priceless, fit for refining all manner of fine things, not merely elixirs.

The other node was soon ceded to the onlookers as well—at no small cost, of course.

With the remaining node swiftly surrendered to the watching crowd—for a price, naturally.

Bao Zuoliang and Su Kesheng exchanged a glance.

When no one was looking, the two slipped quietly behind a great boulder, grinning darkly, making ready to deal with Wei Zhao.

Behind the rock, they waited.

By now Wei Zhao had spent a full day in preparation, and his condition had peaked; all was ready, and he need only await the tribulation. Yet unlike Bao Zuoliang and the others, he had no lightning-summoning banner. When tribulation came was a matter of luck. Though the clouds gathered thick above his head, ill fortune might well mean a wait of ten days or more—quite ordinary, that.

The waiting stretched on.

The waiting felt endless, yet Wei Zhao showed not the slightest inclination to let his attention wander. He had in fact sensed it earlier when Bao Zuoliang and Su Kesheng drew down their tribulation, but he had not troubled to look. At such a moment the lightning might fall at any instant; a single lapse could bring unthinkable consequences.

Then it came.

There! Wei Zhao's eyes flashed. In an instant he was wholly on guard, braced to withstand the tribulation—but he waited a full long while, and still there was no stir overhead at all.

Wei Zhao found it passing strange.

Endowed with a lightning-attribute spiritual root, he was exquisitely sensitive to the power of thunder and lightning. Just now he had distinctly felt a mighty bolt gathering to completion above his head, on the very verge of falling—so why, after waiting all this while, had it been forcefully choked back down?

He could make neither head nor tail of it.

To use an indelicate comparison, it was like being halfway through relieving oneself—the thing already out—only to have it abruptly and damnably forced back in. What devilry was this? Was the Thunder Lord holding it in for sport?

Of course it was no doing of any Thunder Lord.

If such a deity existed, he would doubtless be suffering greatly at this moment—this was hardly a withdrawal of his own willing. Someone was plainly shoving it back in by force!

And the hidden hands behind it all were, without question, Bao Zuoliang and Su Kesheng.

The lightning-summoning banner could not fully command the thunder, still less conjure it from nothing—but it could guide it along the current. To delay, just slightly, the tribulation Wei Zhao had worked so hard to call forth was plainly a small matter indeed.

"That was close."

"A hair's breadth—we nearly let that fellow surnamed Lin slip through!" Bao Zuoliang and Su Kesheng exchanged a look of lingering dread. Had the tribulation truly fallen just now, they would have had no time to play their trick—and a mere ordinary tribulation would clearly do Wei Zhao no harm at all; a single thunder mystery elixir would settle it.

A close call indeed.

Fortunately Su Kesheng had called out in time, and Bao Zuoliang had managed at the last instant to drag it to a halt—otherwise all would have been lost.

The moment passed.

"There! Over there!" Su Kesheng suddenly pointed. On the other side, someone had at last drawn down tribulation—a disciple of the Morning Star Academy, no less, whose lightning could be diverted without the slightest scruple.

Perfect.

"Haha, good!" Bao Zuoliang grinned and hastily waved the lightning-summoning banner to marshal the tribulation. These past months he had made a particular study of the banner's use; though his handling was still clumsy, he could just manage to redirect the lightning without fumbling into some panicked blunder.

One sought out targets, the other marshaled the thunder.

Swiftly and without a sound, the two gathered the tribulations of four people—every one of them a disciple of the Morning Star Academy or the Soaring Cloud Academy.

Four in all.

Whether Wei Zhao lived or died aside, those four had certainly swallowed a bitter loss. The tribulation they had worked so hard to summon was suddenly cut off at the root. If they could draw it down again soon, well and good; if not, their trial ended here—no thought of the Xuan Sheng stage, none at all. They would have to come again next time.

A fine harvest.

"Tsk, tsk—four men's tribulation here, plus the fellow's own, that makes five men's worth of lightning. Blast the bastard to death!" Bao Zuoliang could scarcely wait to set to work. By his earlier reckoning, two extra men's tribulation would have been enough to kill Wei Zhao; this time he had been patient indeed.

Yet patience had its limits.

"I say we gather a bit more, just in case—what if it doesn't kill him?" Su Kesheng still thought it unsafe.

"How could it possibly not kill him? One thunder mystery elixir at most offsets a single man's tribulation—four more crashing down on his head and he lives? You think tribulation is his family's livestock?" Bao Zuoliang snorted, then added, "And even if it somehow doesn't kill him, we're both early Xuan Sheng cultivators now—two against one, and we can't finish him?"

He was sure of it.

"Absolutely not! Young Master Bao, you saw it yourself just now—that fellow surnamed Lin is no ordinary foe. At the great circle of the Nascent Soul he already matched a mid-stage Xuan Sheng. If we wait for him to emerge as an early Xuan Sheng cultivator, how are the two of us to handle him?" Su Kesheng shook his head again and again.

The objection stood.

"Er…" Cold sweat broke out on Bao Zuoliang at once. It was because he had just broken through that he had been so elated and carried away—but Su Kesheng's reminder brought him sharply back to reality.

Reality, indeed.

True enough—by their present strength they likely could not even handle Wei Zhao at the great circle of the Nascent Soul, let alone after he charged the Xuan Sheng stage!

That settled it.

"So it's safer to gather a few more tribulations after all. We lose nothing by it—just a bit more time," Su Kesheng urged.

"So better to gather a few more lightning tribulations, just to be safe. We lose nothing by it—only a bit of time," Su Kesheng pressed. (To be continued.)