Chapter 4624 — A Letter from Zhong Island
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 3
*All is well.* That was the first line of the letter, and it was just as Wei Zhao had expected. With Tianxing Dao, that formidable vice island master of Zhong Island, watching over them, and with Cai Zhongxuan and Hou Guanqi helping to look after them as well, any fool blind enough to provoke them would not live to see the next day.
Quite apart from anything else, the deterrent force of the Tianxing Dao name carried considerable weight on Zhong Island. This was a figure who could stand alongside Zhang Lifeng as a legend, and his strength defied all conventional reckoning. While still at the Nascent Soul stage, he had been able to effortlessly annihilate an expert at the Mystery Ascension stage. Who would dare provoke the likes of such a madman?
In addition, Tianchan had also described the recent situation at the Heaven Pill Pavilion. Before Wei Zhao left for the South Continent, because he sent pills over at regular intervals, there had been no shortage of the finest pills of every kind, and business had flourished and prospered. But ever since Wei Zhao went to the South Continent, that supply had been cut off all at once, and the entire Pavilion could only rely on Tianchan alone to hold up its pill supply. Business had immediately gone into decline.
There was nothing to be done about it. Tianchan could refine pills too, and her quality was decent enough, but in both quality and quantity she was simply no match for Wei Zhao, who possessed the Divine Farmer's Cauldron. That she could keep the Heaven Pill Pavilion afloat by herself at all was already a not inconsiderable miracle.
Reading this, Wei Zhao could not help feeling a secret pang of guilt. Had he known, he would have stockpiled more pills before leaving for the South Continent—and in fact he had done exactly that, but he had only laid in half a year's worth. At the time it had never crossed his mind that he would be trapped in the South Continent for so long. This business had brought bad luck not only on Wei Zhao himself, but on Tianchan and the others as well, and the thought of it was unbearable.
What rather surprised Wei Zhao, however, was that although business at the Heaven Pill Pavilion had declined over the past year, it had not fallen as badly as he had imagined. Daily turnover could still be maintained at around sixty thousand spirit jade. That outcome was truly unexpected; even if it was a good deal lower than at its peak, it was still quite extraordinary.
Only after reading the whole letter did Wei Zhao suddenly understand. There were, in fact, two very crucial reasons why the Heaven Pill Pavilion could keep its daily turnover at sixty thousand spirit jade.
One was that Tianchan and Xueli ran the place with great skill. The two divided the work between them: after Wei Zhao's supply was cut off, Tianchan's efforts guaranteed the Pavilion's pill supply, while Xueli, faced with the reality of dwindling stocks of the finest pills, devised a corresponding strategy of raising prices.
Rare things are precious. Raising the price of top-grade pills was perfectly normal anywhere; it was the Heaven Pill Pavilion's practice of selling them like common goods that was truly abnormal. What was more, Xueli's strategy was not a simple price hike—it also began restricting the daily quantity sold according to the remaining inventory.
Selling only three top-grade pills a day—that was a brand-new gimmick that drew people in, and to a great extent it preserved the Heaven Pill Pavilion's popularity.
That alone, however, could at best keep the Heaven Pill Pavilion from dying. It was still unrealistic to think it could sustain daily takings of sixty thousand. Hence the second reason: the patronage of Wei Shenjin.