Chapter 5087 — Even More Exquisite
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 3
"Think nothing of it. Offenses born of ignorance are no offenses. Rise." Wei Zhao waved a hand with an indifferent expression, yet inwardly he let out a quiet sigh of relief. Fortunately his gamble had paid off—the Azure Cloud Pacified Heart Formula, all but useless to him before, had proved immensely valuable at this moment. A good memory truly reaped countless benefits.
"Yes. Thank you, Martial Granduncle." Xin Yi'an scrambled to his feet at once with the utmost respect. The look with which he now regarded Wei Zhao held none of his former sense of superiority; instead, he kept himself exceedingly humble.
The three great sects of North Island had strict rules. The man before him was a genuine ancestral elder, and one who moreover possessed the original Azure Cloud Pacified Heart Formula—and perhaps even knew other lost sect methods as well. To the entire Cangwu Sect of North Island, he was nothing short of a living treasure. It left no room for the slightest disrespect.
Seeing Xin Yi'an's attitude, Wei Zhao immediately felt that his gamble this time had been brilliantly wise. True, failure would surely have provoked the other's hostility, but high risk meant high reward, and now that he had become the man's Martial Granduncle, the affairs of the mundane world and the Antiquity Alliance would resolve themselves naturally.
More than that, Xin Yi'an's reaction also confirmed Wei Zhao's earlier conjectures. At least one point was now beyond doubt: the Cangwu Sect of North Island in the Antiquity Alliance and the Azure Cloud Pavilion of North Island on Cloud Terrace Island did indeed share the same lineage—otherwise they could never have shared the signature sect method that was the Azure Cloud Pacified Heart Formula.
By the same reasoning, the Soaring Heaven Sect of North Island and the Mystic Mechanism Sect of North Island were likely in the same situation. Wei Zhao privately surmised there were two possibilities. Perhaps the founders of the three great sects of North Island in the Antiquity Alliance had actually come from the Threefold Pavilion of North Island on Cloud Terrace Island—which would explain why both the sect names and the cultivation methods matched perfectly.
Of course, the reverse was not entirely impossible, but judging by the vast disparity in strength between the two sides, such a possibility was exceedingly slim. After all, one could hardly claim that a group of people emerged from the three great sects of North Island in the Antiquity Alliance, fled to Cloud Terrace Island, and then suddenly saw their strength surge, going on to make the Threefold Pavilion of North Island flourish?
Yet both of these together amounted to only one possibility. Another, bolder hypothesis lingered in Wei Zhao's mind: perhaps, far back in the Antiquity Era, Cloud Terrace Island and the Antiquity Small Jianghu had been one and the same place. Then one day, for some reason, a cataclysm had struck, splitting that place into two isolated planes—one called Cloud Terrace Island, the other called the Antiquity Small Jianghu.
The sects of both places shared the same lineage and should originally have been of similar stature, but because the spiritual qi of the Antiquity Small Jianghu was far inferior to that of Cloud Terrace Island, it had gradually declined, day after day and year after year, until it reached the state it was in today.
Both possibilities existed, though Wei Zhao leaned toward the latter. For if those ancestors of the Antiquity Alliance had come from Cloud Terrace Island, they would surely have left clear records concerning it; yet Cloud Terrace Island was now regarded in the Antiquity Small Jianghu as nothing more than a baseless rumor—which showed this possibility was not very likely.