Chapter 3861 — A Midnight Visit
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
Wei Zhao had no choice but to guard against this, so it was necessary to inoculate them in advance.
"Rest easy, boss—we'll do whatever you do!" Xiao Che and Qiao Hongcai nodded without the slightest hesitation. To be sure, after spending so long in a place like the Welcome Pavilion, packed to the rafters with men, a woman like Murong Zhen held a certain appeal for the two of them—but it had not yet reached the point of being blinded by lust.
Xiao Che went without saying; from childhood in the mortal world he had seen every shade of human warmth and coldness, and his calm, his rationality, and his self-restraint were beyond question. And though Qiao Hongcai seemed hot-blooded and simple, his handling of Meng Zhou in the earlier challenge tournament had made one thing clear: the fellow was coarse on the outside but fine-grained within, not the sort to be used by anyone so easily.
Back at his cave dwelling, Wei Zhao fell into his usual habit and entered the jade pendant's space. Beyond his daily cultivation, his foremost task now was to tend the two Heart-Devouring Linglong Herbs that had just taken root and sprouted.
Because these were seeds the spirit herb nursery had mass-cultivated by special methods, they belonged to the inherently deficient category; and since the method of infusing true qi to alter their growth cycle was itself an injury to seeds already short on vital essence, the herbs grown this way were ordinarily of the lowest grade and could hardly reach even the average standard.
To have gotten hold of two Heart-Devouring Linglong seeds by rare luck, only to end up with two malnourished Heart-Devouring Linglong Herbs—such an outcome Wei Zhao plainly could not accept.
Fortunately, the abundant heaven-and-earth spiritual qi within the jade pendant's space made up for the inherent deficiency to a great extent. The quality was not what one would call fine, but it could at least reach the average standard.
What Wei Zhao had to do now was keep tending these two Heart-Devouring Linglong seedlings until they were fully grown, at which point he could set about refining the Foundation-Establishing Golden Pill.
Apart from the two Heart-Devouring Linglong Herbs, Wei Zhao did not simply take the other spirit herb seedlings that had taken root in the jade pendant's space and hand them in for contribution points; he left them there. As for the spirit herb seeds he had gotten from the others, he returned the seedlings to them in successive batches.
The reason he deliberately did it in successive batches was to avoid suspicion. After all, once the others took those seedlings back, they had no such heaven-sent cheat as Wei Zhao's jade pendant's space; in their hands the spirit herb seedlings simply would not survive, and they could only hand them all in at once.
If they really did that, then when Xiao Che, Qiao Hongcai, Li Zhengming, and even Zhong Yongliang of the Soaring Sky Pavilion—against the general backdrop of almost nobody being able to keep even a single spirit herb seed alive—all handed in ten or more spirit herb seedlings at the same time, it would have been impossible not to draw attention.
And then, if anyone with an eye for such things really did investigate, not only would the secret of how these few cultivated spirit herb seeds risk standing exposed, but more critically, it might drag Zhong Yongliang and Li Zhengming down with it and blow their cover as moles. That would be trouble indeed.
The sissy steward at the spirit herb nursery had said it plainly enough back then: cultivating spirit herb seeds depended not only on strength and skill, but even more on luck.
If a few people had a somewhat higher survival rate, the rest could only look on in envy; at most they might suspect these few had grasped some key trick or other—they would not read anything more into it.