Chapter 4269 — A Step Too Late
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
But Wei Zhao had never been of such mediocre temperament. No matter how fine a treasure, if it lay beyond his reach, he would not covet it; yet whatever fell within his reach, he never let slip easily.
"Mm, I'll follow your lead." Huang Xiaotao nodded. Had she been alone, carrying the infant ginseng and the Wandu Golden Elixir Fruit, she likely would not have dared linger here; but with Wei Zhao beside her, she had no such worries at all.
"Then let's search around this area. But to be safe, we shouldn't stray too far from this route map," Wei Zhao said, consulting Chu Bubai's so-called family heirloom map.
By position, this was still fairly close to the core of the Lu Feng Forest. The only place confirmed safe was the route they had already traveled; to wander about heedlessly would not be boldness, but digging one's own grave.
And just as Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao were preparing to continue their treasure hunt, a figure abruptly appeared in the devastated spirit beast graveyard—a man in black beneath a bamboo hat.
"Plucked already? I'm a step too late?" Looking at the traces of battle before him, studying the mist that should have been there but had already dispersed, and the gray-robed man's ghastly corpse, the man in black could not help but be stunned, so shocked that for a long while he could not speak.
He had come all this way from the North Island for the sake of the infant ginseng, only to arrive a step too late—someone had beaten him to it. How was a man supposed to swallow that?
For anyone else, missing out on a natural treasure as vital as the infant ginseng would of course be a great pity, but it would be no more than a spell of regret. The problem was that he had not come for the infant ginseng for his own use.
"Ruined! Ruined! It's all ruined now!" The man in black paced about in a frenzy, scratching his scalp and muttering to himself, "This was the key material for the gene serum research! The last failure in creating a Nascent Soul expert very likely came from a problem with the infant ginseng's gene mimicry. We had to find a genuine infant ginseng to attempt a remedy—but now, like this... how am I supposed to explain this to Miss Luan when I get back?"
Creating Nascent Soul experts—that was the key project headquarters had prized above all else of late. If his own poor start caused the entire project to stall, and, dragging on long enough, it might even be abandoned halfway—that was a responsibility of monstrous proportions, one no one could bear!
At the thought of such grave consequences, a chill ran down the man in black's spine; he had frightened himself into a cold sweat. The organization's methods of punishment were truly brutal beyond what ordinary people could endure.
"Damn it! If I find out who snatched the infant ginseng before me, I'll tear him limb from limb!" the man in black ground out through clenched teeth, boiling with rage. (To be continued...)