Chapter 3561 — The Welcoming Assembly
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
"I know, I know. Don't worry, Ninth Cousin—I won't let you down." Meng Zhou chuckled, his face fairly glowing with smugness. And by addressing Meng Jueming as he did, he had used the kinship term current in their own village, flaunting that connection before everyone.
He had been, to begin with, one of the rarest talents among this crowd—a Heaven-Tier expert at the Great Perfection—and now with a backer like Meng Jueming at his side, the days ahead needed no spelling out. Becoming the big brother of all the newcomers present was, quite naturally, a foregone conclusion.
Might made right, and the circumstances bent others to their will. At first the newcomers of Azure Cloud Pavilion had each kept to themselves, but after Meng Jueming's words, those two little circles that had formed earlier—not all of them, perhaps, but the great majority—immediately crowded around Meng Zhou. If they wanted an easier life hereafter, now was plainly the moment to pick a side; otherwise, once someone took to tripping them up in petty ways, their days would be misery.
Of course, ties formed under such circumstances were anything but solid. These people were reeds that bent with every wind, currying favor with Meng Zhou for what they could get—small wonder that Azure Cloud Pavilion was such a mess and its atmosphere so rotten.
And so Wei Zhao and Xiao Che found themselves thoroughly shut out from the company of the newcomers. Standing there beside the Miserable Senior Brother, they had become complete and utter loners.
"Brother Lin, it looks as though our prospects from here on are none too bright," Xiao Che said with a bitter smile.
Humans are herd creatures; wherever one is excluded from the group, the outcome is generally none too good—especially now, when they had only just arrived and their strength was hardly outstanding.
Wei Zhao, however, only shook his head with an easy expression. "No need to worry. Haven't we still got the Miserable Senior Brother? We won't come off too badly."
In the mortal world, Wei Zhao had always been a lone cultivator. Even when he finally stood at the very pinnacle of the cultivation world, it was by his own strength, not by any backer!
Otherwise, had he known his own background from the start, Wei Zhao could have shouted at the sight of injustice: Lin Dongfang is my grandfather, Yang Zhao is my master—and would he not then have been invincible under heaven?
To compete over backers is itself the mark of one's own weakness.
"Hey, Junior Brother Wei Zhao, don't set your hopes on me too high. I may be one of the two stewards, but the real authority lies with Senior Brother Meng. Our Azure Cloud Pavilion trusts him more, and on many matters I have no say at all." The Miserable Senior Brother shook his head with a bitter smile. He too had had a backer once—an elder of Azure Cloud Pavilion—but that backer had gone to East Island on a mission and thereafter vanished without a trace, and so he had become miserable.
Still, so that Wei Zhao and Xiao Che would not worry overmuch, he consoled them: "But rest assured, both of you, Junior Brothers—anything within my authority that I can do for you, I will."
Xiao Che gave a hollow laugh. Even the Miserable Senior Brother himself sounded so utterly lacking in confidence; the days ahead, it seemed, would truly be hard.
Wei Zhao, by contrast, was not much troubled. With a trump card like the jade pendant's space, he had no worries about cultivation; his main task now was to learn his way around, to ferret out news of the Pill God Zhang Lifeng as quickly as possible, and only then decide his next step.
As the several of them spoke, they saw the master of the Welcome Pavilion, Hu Yunfeng, and the vice master, Feng Song, come one after the other onto the raised platform at the center of the great hall, instantly drawing the eyes of every newcomer.