Chapter 4429 — The Victory Feast
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
"Many thanks, many thanks! Thank you all, thank you all!" Qi Mingyuan hurriedly cupped his hands in salute to the crowd, the delight on his face impossible to conceal, so excited that he could barely string a coherent sentence together.
Small wonder he was so elated. Returning within the span of a single stick of incense was a full two hundred points!
Yet in one stroke, the entire situation had been reversed by the Skyshaker Escort Agency. Combined with the hundred points from the first round, that made a full three hundred, leaving every other escort agency far behind in the dust. They had become a dark horse the likes of which had never been seen.
"Impossible!" Just as the crowd was lost in jubilation, Hai Wuliang suddenly spoke up in a cold, heavy voice, pointing straight at Wei Zhao. "You turned back halfway, didn't you?"
At those words, the whole gathering fell silent. Every gaze fixed upon Wei Zhao; apart from the people of the Skyshaker Escort Agency, every face was written over with suspicion.
Hai Wuliang was nearly a hundred percent certain of it. To make the round trip within a single stick of incense—even a local snake like Wang Baitiao, who knew the safe route inside and out, could not manage it, let alone some total outsider who had never set foot here before.
At the sound of this, Wei Zhao smiled. Slowly he drew the seal token from his robe and held it high for all to see. After that, not a single person dared question him any longer—surely no one could claim that the seal token he had obtained from the mandatory checkpoint was forged as well.
Hai Wuliang's face shifted through a whole spectrum of colors, turning now green, now purple. As the chief escort of the Four Seas Escort Agency, he was a figure who commanded the eyes of the world on an occasion like this. And yet, in the space of a few short moments, he had been slapped in the face twice in a row, right to his face. There were no words for such a feeling. If a crack in the earth had opened up here, he would surely have burrowed into it and vanished without a trace.
The only chance Hai Wuliang had left to salvage his dignity lay in Wang Baitiao. If Wang Baitiao could also make it back within one stick of incense, then his face as chief escort of the Four Seas Escort Agency would not look quite so ugly.
Yet never mind one stick of incense burning out—he waited until the second stick had burned out as well, and now even the third was nearly spent. And still the No. 1 sailboat representing the Four Seas Escort Agency had not returned. Had the No. 1 jade tablet not remained unbroken, Hai Wuliang would even have suspected that Wang Baitiao had already kicked the bucket.
"Why hasn't that worthless wretch dragged himself back yet?" Hai Wuliang was livid, his face ashen. As a great clan escort agency fighting on home waters, that air of commanding the seas and dictating the course of events had vanished into thin air. Forget standing out now—before the heads of the other escort agencies, he did not even dare lift his head, terrified of being laughed at.
At last, just as the third stick of incense was on the verge of burning out, the No. 1 sailboat finally came limping in. But before anyone could go out to welcome it, they saw that the boat was battered and riddled with holes. Right before everyone's eyes, the hull visibly sank lower and lower, and then simply went under altogether. The crowd stood utterly dumbstruck.
Fortunately, by then they were not far from the docks. Paying no mind to his bedraggled state, Wang Baitiao gritted his teeth and dog-paddled his way back, gasping and struggling all the while.
Before Wang Baitiao could even crawl ashore, the furious Hai Wuliang met him with a kick square in the face. Blood streaming down his face, he was sent crashing back into the sea. Already drained of every ounce of strength, he very nearly drowned then and there.