Chapter 3970 — Meng Zhou's Regret
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
Still, Murong Zhen forced down her anger. Now that Meng Jueming was gone, if she wished to move against Wei Zhao, she must draw in every ally she could—Kang Jingming was one, and Meng Zhou another.
If before this she and Wei Zhao had merely stood on different sides, then after the affair at the Half-Moon Lake in the rear mountain, Wei Zhao had become a thorn in her eye and a nail in her flesh that she must pluck out and be rid of at once. She meant to deal with Shangguan Lan'er, and Wei Zhao was the first roadblock standing athwart her path.
When a woman of Murong Zhen's deep scheming truly set her mind to a thing, she was utterly terrifying. However foul Meng Zhou's attitude, so long as they remained in the same camp, she would endure it.
"Li Zhengming has thrown in with Wei Zhao—you've heard of this, I take it?" Murong Zhen said, forcing down her displeasure.
"Is there such a thing?" Meng Zhou was slightly startled. These days he had been hiding away in his cave dwelling in secluded cultivation to heal his wounds, and knew very little of the outside world. Even the news of Meng Jueming's death had been brought to him by Murong Zhen in person.
"I've no idea what you're scheming, but in my view, the others throwing in with Wei Zhao hardly matters—they're all useless trash, after all. Li Zhengming is different. This man is no trifling matter," Murong Zhen said gravely.
"No trifling matter? And which of your eyes saw that?" Meng Zhou wheezed with effort as he sneered. He had long despised Li Zhengming, and that was all the more true now that he had been reborn.
Murong Zhen shook her head speechlessly and said slowly, "I'll say only one thing: Qiao Hongcai challenged him just now, and he won, clean and neat."
"What?" Meng Zhou's expression changed abruptly. Like everyone else, he had always taken Li Zhengming for a weakling at the peak of the Heaven Rank, and so had never given him a second thought. But that fellow Li Zhengming could actually beat Qiao Hongcai?
Over their three exchanges, he knew full well how strong Qiao Hongcai was. Strictly speaking, even now, reborn from the Ziwu Heart-Shattering Pill, he himself might not find it easy to finish off a Qiao Hongcai of the early Foundation Establishment stage.
That Li Zhengming could defeat Qiao Hongcai proved at the very least that the fellow had already succeeded in establishing his Foundation, and ranked among the first-rate among cultivators of his level.
"This man ought to have been a powerful piece for us to use against Wei Zhao. I assumed that after Meng Jueming's death you would at least make a show of courting him properly—yet to my surprise you paid him no mind at all and simply let him defect to Wei Zhao!" Murong Zhen said with bitter resentment.
By rights, upon learning of Meng Jueming's death, Meng Zhou, as the foremost figure among his subordinates, should have stepped forward at once and sought to take command of Meng Jueming's people.
Yet Meng Zhou had done no such thing. For one, he was busy in secluded cultivation healing his wounds and found it inconvenient to show his face; for another, he looked down on these failures who had not even succeeded in establishing their Foundation, and could not be bothered to waste the effort. Little did he expect that among his own ranks there would appear such an anomaly as Li Zhengming, who had concealed a formidable strength.
Had she known it would come to this, Murong Zhen would have stepped forward to court Li Zhengming directly at the outset. Could she have recruited the man, he would surely have been a mighty arm in the days to come.