Chapter 5168 — Wei Zhao's Origins, Part Two
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
"Now you know what they mean by 'the hearts of parents everywhere,' eh? All of us tying ourselves in knots, running ourselves ragged, just so a certain young man could get his training in—all of us playing along with you." Lin Dongfang laughed.
"Wait a moment. If this jade pendant of mine was made by Sun Jichuan, then what about Elder Jiao? What's the story with Elder Jiao? A living, breathing man can't very well have been made by him too, can he?" Wei Zhao asked hurriedly.
"No, that he wasn't. Jiao Yazi's a real person, right enough—seems he was your grandfather's martial nephew or something of the sort, it's all a muddle, and I can't sort it out cleanly myself. You can go ask them yourself later. The long and short of it is, your whole family and your master too have run into serious trouble," Lin Dongfang said, his voice grave.
"Because of the Center?" Wei Zhao asked at once.
"Just so—because of the Center! Li Bozhao was your grandfather's classmate back in the day. That man is no small matter. Sun Jichuan's level of technology is impressive enough, isn't it? Set beside him, Li Bozhao is not one whit inferior—otherwise the Center could never have commanded such hyper-advanced, era-surpassing technology. That man is a formidable enemy!" Rarely did Lin Dongfang speak with such a solemn face.
He had known even before this that the feud between his family and the Center traced back to his grandfather's generation, but hearing it spoken of now, Wei Zhao still felt dazed. He truly had not expected that his family and the Center were enemies across three full generations!
In fact, until this moment he had found it all rather baffling. Plainly there was no irreconcilable hatred between himself and the Center, yet for some reason the two sides always ended up at odds, consciously or not—conflicts of every kind kept breaking out. He had even come to regard the Center as a nuisance because of it. But looking at it now, this had been fixed fate all along!
In that case, from here on he would not be merely making small moves against the Center. Even if he ground the Center to dust, Wei Zhao would feel no guilt—this was, after all, simply what he ought to do.
"Putting it that way, you've loaded me with crushing pressure," Wei Zhao said with a bitter smile, though the look on his face was resolute. Not knowing these things had been one thing; now it was different. The burden on his shoulders had grown heavier. With the Center confirmed as a powerful ancestral enemy, anyone in his place would feel the weight—and though he had never feared heaven or earth, even he could not help feeling it pressing down on him.
"What pressure do you have?" Lin Dongfang curled his lip dismissively, then said with a chuckle, "The Center may be no one to trifle with, but up to now, at most it's taken note that a person like you exists. For the time being it won't be throwing its full strength at a greenhorn like you. If you want to talk pressure, that's all on your master and your parents—they're the ones facing the Center's true power."
"Then where exactly are my master and my parents now?" Wei Zhao pressed eagerly.
Earth was certainly out of the question—otherwise, with modern communications as they were, he could not have failed to catch even a whisper. His guess was that they were either on another plane like Cloud Terrace Island, or out in deep space. True, by the standards of present-day secular technology that sounded far-fetched, but one had only to remember that both the Center and his own side's Sun Jichuan commanded era-surpassing technology far beyond the secular world—so it was not entirely impossible.
"That I don't know in any detail, because I've never been there myself. Broadly speaking, they should be on another plane." Lin Dongfang's answer was just as Wei Zhao had expected.
"The same as Cloud Terrace Island?" Wei Zhao's eyes lit up.