Chapter 3842 — The Southern Pass
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
It was only that the other party would not make a move; because of the cave-dwelling rankings, Wei Zhao and the others had no way to go looking for trouble with Meng Zhou of their own accord, and could only wait passively. Then again, no matter how meteoric Meng Zhou's rise might be, with Wei Zhao's strength there was no need for him to take the man seriously at all—he would meet any change by holding fast.
Just as Wei Zhao was single-mindedly nurturing the seeds of the devouring-heart linglong grass, something entirely expected happened: after Yu Jiang carried Nan Tianyong's corpse back, the whole of Soaring Heavens Pavilion was thrown into an uproar.
Nan Tianyong, after all, was no ordinary figure; he was the Pavilion's supervising deacon. For a key man in such a crucial post to be killed on Sandie Pavilion's own territory was nothing short of a provocation against Soaring Heavens Pavilion—there was simply no way it would not cause an uproar!
Yet before the Pavilion's higher-ups could respond, Yu Jiang had already gone ahead and sought out one of Nan Tianyong's two brothers—the second of the Three Heroes of the Nan Clan, Nan Tianguan.
By Yu Jiang's own reckoning, he had originally meant to invite both of Nan Tianyong's elder brothers—his two master-uncles—but as ill luck would have it, Nan Tianxiong, the leader of the Three Heroes of the Nan Clan, had happened to be away on a mission to the outer islands, so the only one still on the northern island of Cloudstep Island was the second brother, Nan Tianguan.
Still, even if Nan Tianguan was the only one, with his strength and standing—both above Nan Tianyong's—it would be more than enough to blow this matter up out of all proportion! After all, Nan Tianguan's cultivation was a cut above Nan Tianyong's.
What greatly exceeded Yu Jiang's expectations, however, was that upon seeing Nan Tianyong's corpse, this full-blooded second brother, Nan Tianguan, showed not the slightest grief on his face—instead, it was all cold laughter.
"Hmph! That thing, the third one—dumb as a brick and foul as a latrine, and weak into the bargain! When we first pushed that piece of trash into a vital post like supervising deacon, I already knew something like this was bound to happen—and sure enough!" Nan Tianguan's face was all merciless mockery, without a shred of brotherly feeling.
Yu Jiang was dumbstruck on the spot. He had been somewhat worried that the man would press the matter too far and discover traces of his own sword qi on Nan Tianyong's corpse; that sword-qi wound at the heart, though very similar to the other wounds caused by true qi all over the body, could still, if someone carefully compared them, give away something fishy.
But now Yu Jiang realized he had been worrying about entirely the wrong thing. With an attitude like Nan Tianguan's, there was no chance the man would care how his so-called master Nan Tianyong had actually died; what he was probably thinking now was, why had this useless third brother taken so long to die?
The thing Yu Jiang most needed to worry about now, on the contrary, was whether this second brother, Nan Tianguan, would actually stand up for his cheap master at all!
If Nan Tianguan was utterly indifferent to Nan Tianyong's death, then Yu Jiang's plan to use it to blow the matter up would be rather hard to pull off. Nan Tianguan was, after all, Nan Tianyong's full-blooded elder brother; if even a close kin like him would not step forward to speak, then even if the Pavilion's higher-ups were forced by public pressure to intervene, they probably would not take the affair much to heart.
In that case, Yu Jiang's goal of using Nan Tianyong's death to alarm Sandie Pavilion and the Law-Enforcement Hall, and thereby ultimately force Wei Zhao out into the open, would become rather unrealistic.
Just as Yu Jiang was racking his brains over how on earth to persuade the man to stand up for his cheap master, Nan Tianguan spoke up of his own accord.