Chapter 1908 — Overjoyed

"There's no other way. This is the only one I could come up with—otherwise I really don't know how we'd deal with him..." Feng Xiaoxiao didn't mind Wei Zhao having a proper wife. She herself was the concubine, after all, and deep down she had already quietly accepted the fact that Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu would one day become Wei Zhao's women too. That was precisely why she had thought up this plan.

Gu Mengyao said nothing for a moment. True enough—Feng Xiaoxiao's idea was the only one that could explain why Wei Zhao had no proper wife but instead had gained one. Wei Zhao remembered clearly how Feng Xiaoxiao had chased after him; if they simply made up some excuse, claiming the concubine business had all been a joke, he wouldn't believe it. He remembered that Feng Xiaoxiao's status as concubine was no joke at all—which was exactly why he was asking so seriously.

"Looks like we can only consider this plan. We really can't think of anything else..." Gu Mengyao accepted the reality with some resignation.

"But you could try, Sister Yaoyao! We said we'd have him find a proper wife, but there's no candidate yet, is there? If you became his proper wife, wouldn't that solve everything?" Feng Xiaoxiao had sensed Gu Mengyao's low spirits and spoke up.

"Me...? I don't think I could... he'd better find someone else..." Gu Mengyao said instinctively—then regretted it the moment the words left her mouth. Why shouldn't she be the one to become Wei Zhao's proper wife?

But the words were already out, and Gu Mengyao could hardly take them back.

"Anyway, you two sort it out!" Feng Xiaoxiao didn't seem to mind. "All right, enough talk—I'm going to cultivate. My time's up."

"Aren't you going to talk to Wei Zhao?" Gu Mengyao asked.

"I... I won't." Feng Xiaoxiao hesitated, then shook her head. "I promised Sister Bingtang I wouldn't contact Wei Zhao until he successfully refines the Ice Heart Jade Bone Pill. I can't go back on my word."

"All right, then let's keep in touch from now on," Gu Mengyao said. "If I call this number, can I reach you?"

"No. This number is encrypted—you can't dial in." Feng Xiaoxiao shook her head. "There's no cell signal at all in the Ice Palace's inner gates, and satellite phone numbers can only be exchanged between the ancient sects... The only reason I could call you is that Sister Bingtang and Aunt Qing trust me. But this number—I can't tell you."

"That's fine, it's no problem. We don't really have anything urgent anyway," Gu Mengyao said, and let the matter drop once she heard the reason.

"I'll contact you regularly. Oh—you said earlier you'd run into trouble? What happened?" Feng Xiaoxiao suddenly remembered what Xiaoshu had mentioned about trouble.

"Well, it was like this..." Gu Mengyao gave a brief account of the trouble they had run into. It didn't sound nearly as hair-raising as when Shen Yushu told it—in Gu Mengyao's mouth it came out rather flat—but even so, Feng Xiaoxiao could hear the danger lurking between the lines...

"What! That terrifying? If Brother-in-law Wei Zhao hadn't exploded like that, wouldn't you have been in real danger..." Feng Xiaoxiao cried out in alarm.

"Yes, but there was nothing to be done. At the time I wanted to contact you, but I had no way to reach you..." Gu Mengyao said helplessly. "Thankfully, it all turned out all right in the end."

"How I wish I could have helped you... but my strength is still too pitifully low..." Even someone as clever and mischievous as Feng Xiaoxiao sighed over her own lack of power. "Sister Bingtang—if I begged her, maybe she'd step in, but she'd look down on Wei Zhao, and she wouldn't honor that two-year agreement anymore..."

Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu fell silent. They didn't know whether becoming an Inheritor carried any danger, but Tang Yun had already become one—only Wei Zhao had forgotten her. If Feng Xiaoxiao became an Inheritor, though, Wei Zhao would never let the matter rest. And if Feng Xiaoxiao were sacrificed to save Wei Zhao, Wei Zhao would hardly be happy when he found out. It was a real headache. Thank goodness they hadn't been able to reach Feng Xiaoxiao back then—and thank goodness Wei Zhao had pulled through on his own.

"Still, if I'd known earlier, I'd have begged her to step in anyway. Worst case, I'd just become an Inheritor. If Sister Tang Yun could do it, so can I," Feng Xiaoxiao said with a smile.

"All right, it's all over now—let's not talk about such gloomy things." Gu Mengyao shook her head. "Xiaoxiao, you go ahead and get busy. Xiaoshu and I will work out how to explain it to Wei Zhao next time he brings this up."

After hanging up, Gu Mengyao sighed softly. Find Wei Zhao a proper wife, just like that? She truly didn't want to—but there was no help for it. She had to admit that Feng Xiaoxiao's suggestion was the only solution.

Wei Zhao had entered the jade pendant space early to begin cultivating the second level of the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art. This feeling of accumulating little by little carried him back to those days in the mountains, cultivating the first level—it felt just the same now. He could sense the true qi circulating faster and faster through his body, driven by the mental technique, yet the true qi drawn into him was not much. To be precise, he no longer had that sensation from when he'd mastered the first level to perfection—that frantic absorption of true qi—and as a result, his rate of advancement began to slow.

Yet Wei Zhao also discovered an advantage: though the true qi was drawn in more slowly, the energy converted through the second level's mental technique was far purer. In other words, though he took in less energy, what he converted was more refined—and this finally loosened the bottleneck that had held him at the early Earth Rank, nudging him toward the peak of early Earth Rank...

When Wei Zhao realized this, he was overjoyed. If not for that, he'd even have been tempted to switch back to the first level of the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art and keep cultivating that—because the first level drew in so much more true qi. But now it seemed that more was useless; the energy loss was apparently greater, and the efficiency too low!

Still, there was joy and there was frustration. The joy was that his strength had improved somewhat; the frustration was that the second level of the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art seemed stuck at the initial stage. When he circulated it, it wasn't especially smooth—nothing like the effortless mastery he'd felt with the first level.

Of course, he had only been cultivating it for a few days. Wei Zhao knew well the saying that greed brings indigestion—strength came little by little, not in one gluttonous gulp. Since Old Jiao had already told him to be patient and advance steadily, he shouldn't be dreaming of some unrealistic rapid breakthrough.

For the fastest updates, please read without pop-ups.