Chapter 1772 — The Little Wooden Box
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
"Did you get it?" A faint smile crossed Old Man Wei's face, and the heart that had been hanging so taut was set down at last.
"It's all here!" Wei Zhao shook the wooden box in his hand, a thousand feelings surging in his heart.
Elated as he was, Wei Zhao could not help feeling a little disappointed too. Ten years of expectation, and all it had bought in the end was a tiny square box; in the whole of that stone chamber there was nothing else. And yet this one thing was beyond price: within it there had to be the heart-method formulas for the second layer of the Xuanyuan Yulong Art.
"Heh, I suppose I should be getting some rest too." Old Man Wei rose, yawning, and tottered unsteadily off toward his room.
Watching the old man's retreating back, Wei Zhao sighed to himself. Old Man Wei would sometimes go out of his way to make things hard for him, yet he truly cared for him; he simply never let it show. In that respect he was a little like the eldest young miss — though the two of them could not have been more different in temperament.
At that thought, a deep and warm sense of kinship welled up in Wei Zhao's heart. All this time he had called Old Man Wei "old man" to his face, and it might have seemed less than respectful; but in his heart Wei Zhao had come to regard him as something very like a grandfather.
He seemed indifferent to Wei Zhao, yet in many matters he had thought things through with the greatest care.
Only after Old Man Wei had gone into his own room did Wei Zhao make his way back to his.
Setting the little wooden box on the table, Wei Zhao drew a deep breath. Earlier he had been all but unable to wait; now, back in his room, he felt strangely calm instead.
"Young Lin, are you happy? Excited?" Elder Jiao's voice rose slowly at Wei Zhao's ear.
"Elder Jiao, don't tease me. Of course I'm happy and excited!" Wei Zhao said with a bitter smile. "This has been my dream for ten years, and it's finally come true!"
"Haha, so what do you think of it all?" Elder Jiao asked, amused.
"If you want my honest thoughts, it falls a bit short of what I'd imagined!" Wei Zhao answered truthfully. "I assumed there would be more to be gained behind the second stone gate, and it turns out all I got was another little box! If time weren't so short, I really wouldn't be able to let it go — I'd want to turn that stone chamber upside down and sift through every last corner!"
"Hmph! It's a good thing I warned you, or once that stone gate shut, there's no telling when you'd see the light of day again!" Elder Jiao was rather scornful of Wei Zhao's greed. "Besides, what was in that stone chamber was plain at a glance. As far as my restored memory tells me, inside the second stone gate there was only this one little box!"
"That's a relief!" Wei Zhao let out a breath at once. "I hope I can cultivate the second layer's heart method as quickly as possible and go open the third stone gate! Right now I'm full of anticipation for it... Hm? No, wait. If the third stone gate can be opened at any time, doesn't that make the five-year pact pointless? Even if the gate shuts, I can still leave whenever I like, can't I?"
"You make it sound so simple. What is the condition for opening the third stone gate?" Elder Jiao countered.
"The great completion of the second layer..." Wei Zhao paused, then suddenly understood. "You mean I can only open the gate again once I've reached the great completion of the second layer?"
"Naturally. It is written plain as day on the stone tablet!" said Elder Jiao.
"Doesn't that mean the first stone gate also served to test one's strength?" Wei Zhao said in surprise.
"What do you think?" Elder Jiao blinked and threw the question back at him. In truth, he did not know who had designed these ingenious mechanisms, or how; his memory had not been restored — he was no more than a phantom image — and for anything beyond the scope of his second-layer memories, he had no answer to give.