Chapter 4773 — The Counterattack of the Smug
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
"You mean the poisoners are those cooks?" Liu Ziqi's eyes narrowed. She still sensed that something was off, but since so many of them agreed, she could only follow their line of reasoning for now.
"It's possible, but the odds are next to nothing. They're all top-tier magnates of Cloud-Step Island—getting them to poison food would be worse than killing them. Besides, their families are all at the Eastern Continent Academy; there's no reason for them to do such a thing." Ren Zhongyuan stroked his chin and offered his analysis with feigned objectivity.
"Quite right. They have very little contact with us Eastern Continent disciples, so they shouldn't have any motive for this. And if they truly harbored such intentions, they could have acted on the road before we ever reached the Western Island—why wait until now?" Yi Xiaotian chimed in.
Watching the two of them play off each other coldly, Wei Zhao had by now roughly guessed what was going on. They had dragged everyone else's thinking into their rhythm, and the next step would be to turn the spearhead on him.
"If that's the case, then who? No one else can enter or leave the kitchen without permission, so there shouldn't have been a chance to poison anything." Liu Ziqi shook her head. The kitchen was not a place one could simply sneak into under cover of darkness.
"No, it's true that the rest of us had no chance to poison anything—but there is exactly one person who meets that condition: the one responsible for transporting the food today. Once we drag that person out, every question will answer itself!" Ren Zhongyuan finally showed his fox's tail.
"The one transporting the food today?" Liu Ziqi's brows drew together. The work rotations were arranged by a dedicated disciple, and she truly did not know the specific assignments, so she looked at that disciple and said, "Who is it?"
The disciple pulled out the roster, glanced at it, and his expression changed. "It's Wei Zhao!"
In an instant, every gaze fell upon Wei Zhao, filled with shock and fury. None of them had ever known Wei Zhao, none of them bore him any grudge—who would have imagined that the moment this creature boarded the ship, he would scheme to poison them all?!
"Wei Zhao? How could it be Wei Zhao?" Liu Ziqi was equally startled. She had felt something was wrong from the very start, and now it had indeed come to pass.
"That's right, it's him! I saw him transporting the food earlier!" A disciple quickly stepped forward to testify.
"Yes, yes, I saw it too!" Quite a few other disciples echoed in agreement. This was hardly a secret—more than half the Eastern Continent disciples present had witnessed the scene of Wei Zhao carrying the food.
The crowd was in an uproar, and Wei Zhao was instantly made the target of every spear, thrust in a single moment into opposition to all of them. Under threat of death, they could only clutch at this one straw of salvation. Only by pinning down Wei Zhao as the true poisoner could they obtain the antidote!
"Hmph, wolfish ambition indeed! We kindly let you hitch a ride on our ship, and instead of gratitude you mean to poison every last one of us to death—what exactly is your game?" Ren Zhongyuan stared coldly at Wei Zhao, the corner of his mouth unconsciously curling into a strange arc of conspiracy come to fruition.
"No point wasting words on this kind of scum. Seize him at once and force the antidote out of him—every moment we delay is another moment of mortal peril. We cannot afford the delay. What say you, Vice-Headmistress Liu?" Yi Xiaotian incited the crowd.
"Right, seize this true poisoner and bring him to justice, force the antidote out of him at once!" The crowd was indeed frantic now. Anyone who discovered a time bomb of poison drifting through their body would find it hard to stay rational.