Chapter 3816 — Li Zhengming's Request
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
The challenge tournament had ended, and the new disciples dispersed to their own affairs. Li Zhengming, however, fresh off a victory that had earned him a substantial pile of points, looked anything but pleased. Rather than returning to his cave dwelling like the others, he went straight to Meng Jueming, the senior steward disciple, the man who was in truth his real patron behind the scenes.
"Senior Brother Meng, I have a few thoughts regarding Wei Zhao and his lot. I wonder if I might report them to you, Senior Brother?" Li Zhengming forced a smile and stepped up beside Meng Jueming.
"Oh? Zhengming, what thoughts do you have? Let's hear them." The moment he heard Wei Zhao's name, Meng Jueming's interest was instantly piqued.
But Meng Zhou, who stood at his side, curled his lip in disdain. "What ideas could a mere Heaven-rank great perfection cultivator possibly have? At best it's armchair strategizing; a waste of time."
Though Meng Zhou's injuries had yet to heal, the earlier events had left his spirits utterly transformed. He was wholly immersed in the delight of soon becoming a peak early-stage Foundation Establishment expert, and a mere Heaven-rank great perfection cultivator like Li Zhengming no longer even registered in his eyes.
Hearing this, Li Zhengming came within a hair of cursing aloud. Damn you, Meng Zhou! If you hadn't mooched that Foundation Establishment Liquid off Xu Lingchong and taken it together with a Foundation Establishment Pill, do you think a specimen like you could have succeeded in establishing your foundation?
And come to think of it, back during the mountain trial, if I hadn't sacrificed my own spirit medicine and yielded to you at every turn to cooperate, you probably wouldn't even have gotten your hands on that Foundation Establishment Pill. And now you have the gall to mock me for being weak? The shamelessness of this man is truly beyond words!
Still, Li Zhengming forcibly held back his anger and ignored Meng Zhou's needling. He addressed Meng Jueming instead: "Senior Brother Meng, you've seen it yourself. Wei Zhao's group now has three early-stage Foundation Establishment cultivators, while on our side only Meng Zhou leads. If this continues, things will surely go awry, and the overall gap will only widen! So I believe the pressing task before us is to find someone to lead alongside Meng Zhou and share the burden, so that we can hold off Wei Zhao's faction and eventually have a chance to seize back the initiative."
Meng Jueming fell silent at once. They were all clever men; though Li Zhengming had not said so outright, his meaning was plain enough. He wanted to stand forward against Wei Zhao's faction, just as Meng Zhou had.
Had it been merely this hot-blooded notion, Meng Jueming would have had no difficulty with it. The crux was that Li Zhengming was no brainless sort like Meng Zhou. With his current strength at Heaven-rank great perfection, to stand up and challenge three early-stage Foundation Establishment cultivators was sheer fantasy, and he would never do any such thing.
The key to Li Zhengming's words lay in his wish to be the one who shared Meng Zhou's burden, and the precondition for that was naturally that he possess the strength for it. At the very least, he would have to be an early-stage Foundation Establishment expert himself!
And if he were to break through to Foundation Establishment in the short term, then pill support would be indispensable. Never mind matching Meng Zhou's Foundation Establishment Pill plus Foundation Establishment Liquid; at the very least, a single Foundation Establishment Pill was the bare minimum.
This was precisely where Meng Jueming found himself in a bind. In terms of strength and loyalty, he actually judged Li Zhengming fully qualified; ordinarily, giving him a Foundation Establishment Pill would be no great matter. The problem was that he had no Foundation Establishment Pill on hand!