Chapter 3821 — Admiration and Esteem
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 3
Never mind that his personal strength was so formidable as to be unbelievable—the key was that he treated his subordinates with exceptional generosity. Even grassroots newcomers as unremarkable as Xiao Che and Qiao Hongcai were now far ahead of the other newcomers of Azure Cloud Pavilion, and even of the newcomers of Soaring Heavens Pavilion and the Mystic Mechanism Pavilion. Such a thing would have been utterly unimaginable before.
Now, on top of all that, he had discovered that this man was in fact a profoundly accomplished alchemist. Even with a will as resilient as Li Zhengming's, he had no fight left in him at all before his leader Wei Zhao.
If, before this, Li Zhengming had thought Wei Zhao was merely a bit luckier than himself, and that given time he might still have a chance to overtake him, then now he had abandoned that notion entirely.
Without exaggeration, Li Zhengming was now thoroughly and utterly convinced by his leader Wei Zhao. A freak like this was simply not something an ordinary man like himself could ever compare to; perhaps only legendary figures like the Alchemy God and Medical Sage Zhang Lifeng could be mentioned in the same breath as him!
Though the thought of catching up to Wei Zhao had been extinguished in his heart, Li Zhengming's yearning to break through to the Foundation Establishment realm had not diminished in the least—rather, it had grown even more intense.
They were all subordinates beneath Wei Zhao's banner, yet Xiao Che and Qiao Hongcai had already taken the lead and succeeded in Foundation Establishment ahead of him. If he dragged on like this, he would only fall further and further behind—a situation Li Zhengming absolutely refused to see.
For the stronger and more unfathomable Wei Zhao became, the more it meant that the subordinates who followed him would have ever greater prospects and ever firmer resolve. As a result, the competition among those subordinates would inevitably grow fiercer as well.
Though Li Zhengming admired his leader Wei Zhao to the point of prostrating himself, that did not mean he was equally convinced by the likes of Xiao Che and Qiao Hongcai, still less that he was content to remain a head shorter than them for good. Those people had merely been fortunate enough to win their leader's favor from the very start, and that was the only reason they had beaten him to Foundation Establishment.
Now Li Zhengming himself likewise held two Foundation Establishment Pills in his grasp, with Foundation Establishment within sight in the near future—which meant that the contest for the number one spot beneath Wei Zhao had only just begun.
Still, the Foundation Establishment Pill had no absolute effect on breaking through to the Foundation Establishment realm. In truth, its function was merely to reshape the meridians within a person's body to be more suited to cultivation, and at most it could provide a certain degree of auxiliary support when charging that threshold. It did not follow that any Heaven-Tier consummate expert who consumed a Foundation Establishment Pill would necessarily succeed in Foundation Establishment.
Foundation Establishment was the single most critical process in any cultivator's life. Whether the foundation laid at this stage was solid directly determined how far one could walk in the future, and so this process could never be replaced by any pill alone.
To charge the Foundation Establishment realm, the most essential and fundamental condition was still sufficient personal depth. Only when one had genuinely touched, through one's own strength, that barrier standing between Heaven-Tier consummation and the early Foundation Establishment stage could external aids like the Foundation Establishment Pill possibly exert their stimulating, charging effect.