Chapter 4301 — A Familiar Face
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
Seated in the center of the three was Dean Ling Yuanqing, whose aura was plainly more vast and profound than those of the two beside him; his strength was likely the greatest of the three.
The vice-dean seated to his left was a woman who appeared to be around forty years old. Of course, to have reached such an exalted realm as the Mountain-Opening stage, her true age must surely be far greater than that—though exactly how old she was, there was no way to know.
Still, by Wei Zhao's understanding, a face of about forty could mean only one of two things: either this woman deliberately chose not to restrain her appearance, or she had only finally advanced to the Heaven Tier around the age of forty.
Yet on reflection—was there any woman under heaven who did not cherish beauty? Among the cultivators Wei Zhao had seen, there were many male cultivators who made no effort to control their looks, but of female cultivators, he had truly never met a single one!
Cherishing beauty was the nature of every woman. Unless one's face had been ruined or one had suffered some trauma that left a psychological scar, no woman would willingly let her looks wither with age—and the woman on the platform showed no such disfigurement or injury.
By this reasoning, Wei Zhao was eighty percent certain that the woman on the platform was deliberately maintaining control over her appearance. Otherwise, why hadn't she turned into an old crone?
But if that were so, only the second possibility remained: that this woman had not finally advanced to the Heaven Tier until she was around forty.
Such aptitude might just barely pass in the secular world, but set against Cloud-Tier Island, it could not even compare with cultivation geniuses—it was not even middling; her aptitude could only be counted as inferior. Yet how could a woman of such aptitude possibly have reached such an absurd height as she now occupied?
For a cultivator of inferior aptitude, reaching the Foundation Establishment stage was normally the limit; even the Golden Core stage was a vain hope, let alone the Mountain-Opening stage, several levels above Golden Core.
Surely one could not claim that this woman's aptitude had been poor early on and grew ever better as time went on, as if she became more enlightened the further she progressed?
That defied all common sense and all logic. Wei Zhao marveled inwardly, though such a question could only be answered by asking the woman herself—otherwise he supposed no answer would ever be found.
Apart from this woman, the vice-dean seated to Ling Yuanqing's right had an entirely different style of presence—a man with a rather fierce, domineering countenance.
Dressed all in austere black, with a head of slicked-back hair gleaming with oil, at first glance he looked like a bandit from the wilds, and at second glance like a village bully—in short, he did not look like a good man, and crucially, not even a respectable sort of villain. Setting aside the aura he radiated at that moment, on the surface he looked for all the world like nothing more than a petty bandit chief unfit for polite company.
Yet this fellow with such a face was, in fact, a legendary top-tier Mountain-Opening expert. One had to remark: truly, a man cannot be judged by his appearance—the ancients did not deceive me.
After observing the three carefully, Wei Zhao's gaze ultimately returned to the woman. One thing struck him as rather odd: the aura emanating from this woman faintly struck him as somewhat familiar, as if he had seen her somewhere before—seemingly very familiar, yet for the moment he could not place it. (To be continued~^~)
...R640