Chapter 3822 — Waiting for Him to Make a Fool of Himself
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
Leaving aside how Li Zhengming was now full of ambition and setting about preparing to break through to the Foundation Establishment realm, on Wei Zhao's side, after handing over those two Foundation Establishment Pills, his rhythm remained as calm and unhurried as ever. When it was time to cultivate, he cultivated; when it was time to channel true qi into the spirit herb seeds, he channeled it into them. He even still went to the Spirit Jade Hall during the day to mine, on the grounds that he had nothing better to do anyway.
Beyond that, Wei Zhao's most important task at present was to keep watch over the eighty-five spirit herb seeds within the jade pendant's space, especially the two seeds of the Heart-Devouring Linglong Grass—after all, those bore directly on when he would be able to advance another step.
As far as Wei Zhao was concerned, powerful foes now pressed in on every side, and relying solely on the strength of the peak of the early Foundation Establishment stage was already somewhat strained. Only by advancing to the mid Foundation Establishment stage as quickly as possible could he gain greater confidence and move with true freedom to advance or withdraw.
Another three days passed, and the spirit herb seeds within the jade pendant's space still showed no movement whatsoever. Even Wei Zhao, ordinarily so composed, could not help feeling a pang of unease.
Counting the days, it had been a full twenty-two days since these spirit herb seeds had been transplanted into the jade pendant's space—long past the point when results should have appeared.
And indeed that was the case. Apart from Wei Zhao, whether the spirit herb seeds the other newcomers had planted in their first batch lived or died, matters had essentially settled. So before the sixth round of the newcomer challenge tournament began, nearly every newcomer gathered around the arena was discussing the spirit herb seeds.
Judging by the results of these Qingyun Pavilion newcomers' first attempts, the outlook was hardly encouraging.
Anyone who bothered to do a little tallying would find that, across all of Qingyun Pavilion's newcomers, apart from Wei Zhao, Xiao Che, Qiao Hongcai, and Li Zhengming, the remaining eleven had tested twenty-three spirit herb seeds in total—and in the end, only two had successfully grown to maturity and been sent to the spirit herb garden for scoring.
Those two lucky things had each drawn a spirit herb seed of exceptionally strong vitality that demanded relatively little of its surroundings, and so had scraped together a meager harvest. But the other nine, Meng Zhou included, had seen their first batch of test seeds wiped out to the last one.
Grim as this result was, it was in truth only to be expected. After all, the cave dwellings of Qingyun Pavilion's newcomers could scarcely meet the spiritual qi needs of spirit herb seeds, and because of the newcomer challenge tournament, many could not even guarantee delivering true qi on a fixed schedule and in fixed amounts. Newcomers like Meng Zhou and Zha Wu, who were routinely beaten half to death in tournament matches, were everywhere.
This also drove home one point to all of Qingyun Pavilion's newcomers: the spirit herb trial was, for them, nothing short of a raw deal.
The only use of the spirit herb seeds they collected was to have points deducted later—essentially, however many you took, that many would be docked. Even if smoke rose from their ancestral graves and a few seeds happened to be cultivated, that merely meant a few points less deducted. To think of earning points through this stage was sheer delusion.
Fortunately, the vast majority of Qingyun Pavilion's newcomers had long since known better, so they had mostly signed up for the bare minimum of ten seeds. At worst, this stage would cost them a mere ten points.