Chapter 1959 — Kinship and Interests
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
The final conclusion was this: the technique worked only on members of the Sun family. No one else could ** it. And so the technique ceased to matter — there was nothing secret about it anymore. What everyone coveted now was the Sun family's own sons and daughters!
"It's nothing, I just want to study it a little," Wei Zhao said.
"All right, then wait a moment. I'll send it to you by text message." With that, Sun Jingyan took out her phone, found a file, and sent it straight to Wei Zhao.
Wei Zhao's phone immediately chimed with an email notification. He was speechless — to his mind, these inner-energy techniques were supposed to be written on bamboo slips or parchment scrolls, or at the very least bound in thread-stitched volumes. Trust Sun Jingyan to have hers as an e-book!
Still, it was a product of the times, and on reflection Wei Zhao decided that he was the one who had fallen behind.
At first, Wei Zhao had wanted to help Sun Jingyan raise her strength a notch or two. But then he wondered: if his true qi entered Sun Jingyan's body, might it alter hers? If her true qi were somehow transformed into the same kind as his own, Wei Zhao would be in real trouble.
"Much obliged!" Wei Zhao saved the technique's mnemonic verses on his phone and said sincerely, "By the way, Jingyi, what are your plans from here on?"
Wei Zhao knew that Sun Jingyan had already sold her company and was presently at loose ends.
"I'm not really sure. I don't want to go back to the Sun family, and I don't want to strike out alone and start another business from scratch..." Here Sun Jingyan gave a self-mocking smile. "You've seen it yourself — a girl with no backing, with no powerful man to look out for her, always gets bullied in business. Like that last time..."
"Ha, isn't Wu Chengtian helping you now? Who'd dare bully you? That kid would flatten them with one palm strike," Wei Zhao said with a laugh.
"The main thing is, running a company all by myself is exhausting, and besides, I don't have anything left to prove now," Sun Jingyan said. "In the past, I started a business to show the Sun family — to make Grandfather and the others feel that I wasn't just a sacrificial pawn in the family, that I could stand on my own. But now I've realized that line of thinking was a mistake. No matter what, working alone, I can never build anything truly big. All these years, and it's still just a small company, a little operation playing at the big leagues."
Wei Zhao knew of Sun Jingyan's pitiable origins, so he nodded rather silently. "But you can't just... stay like this forever, can you?"
"I don't know either. But at this Grand Gathering of the Great Families, I did come to understand one thing," Sun Jingyan said. "That the strong are revered. In the eyes of the heads of the great families and the hidden families, only the strength of the ** is what counts for everything... To think that I once foolishly wanted to prove my worth through business..."
"That much is true. The very foundation that a great family or a hidden family passes down is the strength of its ** and how many of them there are," Wei Zhao said. "What, are you thinking of ** too?"
"Haven't I been ** all along?" Sun Jingyan said with a bitter smile. "Think back to Grandfather's attitude at the Grand Gathering. Before, he wanted me to marry Wu Chengtian; but when he saw how formidable you were, how ruthlessly you wiped out the Yu family, he had me turn around and curry favor with you instead... Then, when word came that you'd offended the hidden families and they'd sent three Earth-rank experts after you, Grandfather froze my bank card and told me to keep my distance from you... When all is said and done, in their eyes, I'm still just a piece of merchandise... I once thought Grandfather was different toward me. But although he treats me well enough, when it comes to the family's interests, blood ties simply don't weigh as much as profit..."