Chapter 4312 — Asking Questions
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
Though Wei Zhao was indeed relieved to see that Wang Xinyan was doing well, he now had a new worry: he did not know whether he ought to go and make himself known to her.
He thought back to the very first time he had seen Tian Chan at the auction on the Far North Island—Tian Chan had not acknowledged him at first either. What Wei Zhao did not know was whether Wang Xinyan might have similar reasons of her own for keeping her distance.
If he revealed himself rashly and it brought her some kind of trouble, that would run counter to everything he had intended. Yet to leave without even a word, to pretend he had not seen her and let the two of them be swept apart to opposite ends of the earth—that would be too heartless, and Wei Zhao himself would never be able to accept it.
To reveal himself or not—that was the question, and Wei Zhao could not help but sink into a dilemma.
While Wei Zhao was tangled up over Wang Xinyan, Huang Xiaotao, watching him from the side in his distracted state, was just as tangled up herself.
She could guess that it was mostly on account of the woman up on the stage, but precisely why he was behaving this way was something she could not possibly know. Only Wei Zhao himself could answer that, and what Huang Xiaotao was now agonizing over was exactly how she should ask.
She had always been thin-skinned. Even though she and Wei Zhao were as close as could be, there were still some things she simply could not bring herself to ask—and the crux of it was that she feared asking too much, or asking wrongly, and incurring Wei Zhao's displeasure, which would leave her regretting it endlessly.
She was not like those girls from the secular world, Wang Xinyan among them. From childhood she had been schooled in the ancient rites, and a woman's jealousy was an unpardonable offense, one of the seven grounds for divorce. Besides, she had truly never harbored any such feelings, and so she was all the more unwilling to let Wei Zhao mistake her for being jealous of the woman on the stage.
Just as the two of them stood there, each caught up in her or his own tangle, a somewhat familiar voice suddenly sounded beside them.
"Hey there, brother! Got your test token yet?" Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao turned at the sound and found that the newcomer was none other than Ge Wei.
"Oh, yes. I have it. You seem to be doing brisk business today, sir!" Wei Zhao nodded, exchanging a rather astonished glance with Huang Xiaotao, thinking to himself that he was hardly well acquainted with this fellow—so why had he come back?
Wasn't this fellow selling his secret guide to passing the assessment? Had he really finished making the rounds so quickly? There were nearly ten thousand people in the whole venue; at a hundred spirit jades apiece, that added up to a business worth several hundred thousand spirit jades at the very least. He surely could not have moved that fast.
"Heh heh. Just scraping a living, that's all—hardly anything worth calling brisk business." Ge Wei grinned and pursed his lips, then remarked with no small regret, "I'd been counting on this carefully compiled secret guide of mine to make a proper killing while I had this rare opportunity. Ah, what a pity..."
"Hm? Your secret guide is certainly worth the price, sir, and I saw plenty of people buying it. So why the pity?" Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao could not help asking in puzzlement.
"Plenty of buyers, sure—but I can't keep selling. Didn't you notice, brother, how all those academy guards around us have got their eyes on me?" Ge Wei shook his head with a bitter smile.
If not for that, he reckoned he could have kept busy the whole day. As things stood, though, if he carried on peddling, he would likely be seized on the spot—and once he was convicted of disrupting the selection process, he would be in for far worse than he could stomach.