Chapter 4948 — Better Not
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
Precious places that belonged to the Alliance's high officers had been thoroughly occupied by these wholly unrelated figures. What sort of celebration banquet for the Road of Giants was this? It was practically Wei Zhao's family dinner. Had Zhuang Yifan taken leave of his senses?
Arranged the way he had them seated, the other academies might as well not bother going on at all. In days to come, the academies the Alliance favored would surely all be decided by Wei Zhao, and the rest could only stand far off to the side.
The crowd whispered and murmured among themselves, yet openly not one dared show the slightest displeasure. Even Wang Dianxing of Thunderclap Academy, seated not far away, could do no more than shoot Wei Zhao sidelong glances, daring to resent but not to speak.
Thanks to Wei Zhao, he had already been beaten into a daze before his attempt to break through to the Mystic Ascension, which directly caused that attempt to fail. Once the foremost of the Four Young Masters of the Nascent Soul, he now cut a thoroughly good-for-nothing figure, with not a trace left of the proud aura of a favored son of heaven. This one-time genius could be considered utterly ruined.
Wei Zhao did not so much as glance at a defeated opponent like that. It was only the low murmur of discussion around him that made him faintly uncomfortable. Zhuang Yifan's arrangements really were a touch too arbitrary; to make room for the likes of them, he had with a single word shunted the other Alliance high officers off to other tables. This Alliance Chairman was so high-handed that one hardly knew what to say...
Yet this, too, was a manifestation of his formidable strength. Even holding the post of Alliance Chairman, the power he ultimately wielded still had to be won by strength. Were a man of ordinary ability to hold this chair, even if he were not left a figurehead, he would find it very hard to cow so many Yellow-rank academies.
As for Zhuang Yifan, with the terrifying power of his late Earth-Splitting stage, no one in these parts could contend with him at all. The authority of the Alliance Chairman in his hands was naturally domineering in the extreme—by and large, he did whatever he pleased, and no one dared breathe a word against it, only obediently falling in line.
"Master Lin, I entrust this matter of the pill refinement to you. Zhuang offers you a cup—down the hatch first!" Zhuang Yifan paid no heed at all to the astonished looks of those around him and opened straight away with a toast. A dignified Alliance Chairman lowering himself so far, with scarcely a shred of reserve—such a thing was a category all its own.
"Chairman Zhuang is too kind." Wei Zhao drained his cup in turn.
"Master Lin, I know you will surely need a good rest these days, so I have had a separate courtyard prepared here at the branch—the setting is absolutely unmatched, and I trust it will satisfy you. What does Master Lin think?" Zhuang Yifan proposed in a most earnest tone.
"Oh?" Wei Zhao gave him a look of amused appraisal. On the face of it, Zhuang Yifan's pains seemed well meant, and his manner was so earnest as to leave no room for fault; but his intent was hardly as simple as the surface suggested. This was plainly a fear that he might slip away, and so a means of keeping him under soft house arrest at the Alliance branch.
Zhuang Yifan met Wei Zhao's gaze with a smile. He, a dignified Alliance Chairman and a mighty expert of the late Earth-Splitting stage, was lowering himself so far before a junior like Wei Zhao—all, of course, for the sake of the Earth-Solidifying Pill. Some precautionary measures were only necessary; after all, they were utter strangers to each other. Who was to say whether this young man of such formidable background could be relied upon?
Their gazes clashed invisibly. After a moment, Wei Zhao suddenly smiled faintly and shook his head. "Many thanks for Chairman Zhuang's kindness, but I think it won't be necessary." (To be continued.)