Chapter 5170 — The Reply
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
Beyond voicing her worries, Tian Chan's letter also touched on the recent state of the Heavenly Elixir Pavilion. Wei Zhao frowned to himself as he read, yet in the present circumstances there was nothing he could do. A clever housewife cannot cook without rice—without an adequate supply of high-grade elixirs, it was inevitable that business would gradually be stolen away by the famous Medicine Sect, which now had the seventh-rank alchemist Zheng Dongyang personally presiding over it.
From the very start, Wei Zhao had allowed only three months for the projected spirit-yuan. According to the Southern Heavenly Aurora, three months was essentially the limit for such a projection, and so the high-grade elixirs he had prepared in advance were only enough to sustain him for three months. He had never expected that, thanks to the unexpected boon of the Star-Ink Charcoal, he could hold out safely until now. That the Heavenly Elixir Pavilion should find itself struggling to keep going was, then, only to be expected.
But matters had come to this, and the Heavenly Elixir Pavilion could only rely on Tian Chan and the others to keep shoring it up. Though it seemed Wei Zhao had nothing to do here in the secular world for the moment, an Ancient Alliance had cropped up, and the Ancient Trials would soon follow. Whenever the chance came, Wei Zhao would have to investigate it himself. Compared with that, the Pavilion's difficulties were a small matter indeed.
Fortunately, the Heavenly Elixir Pavilion was merely in a difficult position. With the solid reputation it had built over the past few years as a foundation, the worst it faced was some shrinkage in business, not the desperate straits of shutting its doors. And with a patron like Ota Zhou watching over it, the Medicine Sect could at most resort to some petty, underhanded tricks in the dark; it could never strike at the Pavilion's foundations. The Heavenly Elixir Pavilion stood as steady as Mount Tai.
As usual, this was a letter to be answered. After reading it, Wei Zhao immediately wrote back to Tian Chan and the others. Besides briefly describing his own situation to set their minds at ease, he raised another matter in the letter: he asked them to collect the cultivation methods of the various sects of Cloud Terrace Island.
This was by no means a mere whim; in truth, Wei Zhao had long harbored the idea. Back when he had used the Azure Cloud Serene Heart Formula to subdue Xin Yi'an, he had already been sighing that he should have collected more sect methods while he had the chance.
They did not need to be profound or exquisite—only the entry-level methods of the various sects on Cloud Terrace Island would do. With those in hand, he would be more than the martial grand-uncle of the Cangwu Sect of North Island; he trusted that wherever he went among the Ancient Sects, he would be enshrined as a martial grand-uncle. Especially if he were to have further dealings with the Ancient Alliance in the future—these sect methods would be the finest calling cards.
Of course, relying solely on the abilities of Tian Chan and her companions, gathering the cultivation methods of every sect on Cloud Terrace Island on a large scale would be no easy task. After all, these were the closely guarded secrets of each sect; even the most basic entry-level methods were never made public. There were only two ways to get them: either bribe disciples within those sects, or buy them outright from the black market at a high price.
Commanding the Heavenly Elixir Pavilion, that veritable money-making engine, Tian Chan and the others had no lack of spirit jade. So long as a sect's method appeared on the black market, obtaining it should not prove difficult. The difficulty lay with those tight-lipped sects of Cloud Terrace Island—if a method was not even to be found on the black market, then matters became troublesome.