Chapter 1960 — No Silver Buried Here

"I... have no father and no mother. If someone has to be sacrificed, of course I'd be the first..." Sun Jingyan said with a bitter smile. "Besides, among the cultivators of my generation I'm considered rather strong — I've already reached the first level of Great Perfection, which happens to meet the conditions for the other great families to form a marriage alliance with the Sun family, so..."

"Your parents... Sun Yikai told me..." Wei Zhao paused there and said no more. The subject had only come up because he was following Sun Jingyan's lead, and the moment the words left his mouth he regretted them. After all, it was a painful memory of hers, and for him to raise it was rather abrupt.

"They're both gone. It's all right, I've long since grown used to it..." Sun Jingyan smiled bitterly. "It's only that I was too young then — I never even saw what my parents looked like. All I have of them is this little jade pendant..."

As she spoke, moved by her own feelings, Sun Jingyan took the little jade pendant from her breast and rubbed it in her palm. It was plain to see how dearly she treasured it.

"Pure yellow jade!" At the sight of Sun Jingyan's pendant, Wei Zhao's gaze sharpened. He had never imagined that the pendant at her breast was pure yellow jade — one of the very materials he needed to refine his jade-pendant space!

"Pure yellow jade? You recognize it?" Sun Jingyan was startled by the flicker of excitement on Wei Zhao's face. However precious the material might be, surely it was not enough to astonish him like that?

"May I take a look?" Wei Zhao asked.

"Of course!" Sun Jingyan nodded and handed him the pendant.

"It really is pure yellow jade." Wei Zhao gazed at the pendant in his hand and drew a deep breath. He would dearly have loved to keep it for himself, but he knew it was the only thing Sun Jingyan's parents had left her. Even if he needed it, he could not bring himself to ask her for it.

Still, he could not stop turning the pendant over and over in his fingers, unable to put it down.

"You seem to like this pendant a great deal?" Sun Jingyan had caught the possessiveness in his eyes, and it surprised her. Wei Zhao was not short of money; rare as pure yellow jade was, it was no priceless treasure. In the eyes of the great families and the cultivators, it counted for nothing at all.

Perhaps the pure yellow jade could fetch a good price at auction, but to the Sun family, to Old Master Sun, it was merely a fine ornament. None of them had ever cast a covetous glance at it.

"Mm." Wei Zhao nodded, making no secret of it. "To be honest, I need pure yellow jade to refine certain things. If this piece weren't what your parents left you, I would certainly have asked you for it."

"Ah!" Sun Jingyan had not expected that Wei Zhao needed pure yellow jade. She would gladly have helped him, but the pendant was the only thing her parents had left her, and the only clue by which she might one day find them. So there was truly no way she could give it to him. "I'm sorry... I keep hoping that one day, through this pendant, I'll find word of my parents, so..."

"I understand. That's exactly why I said what I did." Wei Zhao picked up the pendant to return it to her. He felt a pang of reluctance, but he was the sort who could pick a thing up and set it down again. Yet just as he was about to hand it back, he could not help uttering a startled "Hm?"

"What is it?" Sun Jingyan could not fathom what had surprised him.

"This pendant..." Because he needed pure yellow jade so badly, Wei Zhao had examined it more closely than usual. Just as he was about to return it, he suddenly noticed a hair-fine crack in the jade.

Had his eyes not been sharp, and had the pendant not happened to be angled toward the light, he would never have found it.

"What's wrong?" Sun Jingyan asked quickly, seeing the strange look on his face.

"This pendant — it looks as though two halves have been joined together." Wei Zhao held it up before his eyes and studied it for a long while before speaking.

"Joined together?" Sun Jingyan was taken aback. She hurriedly leaned in and followed his gaze to the pendant, and could not help crying out in surprise as well — for there on the jade was indeed a fine line. And it was not an irregular one; it ran perfectly straight, as though the stone had been cut clean through with a single blade and then pressed back together...

Sun Jingyan stared in astonishment at the crack on the pendant, so absorbed that she quite forgot her own posture — cheek to cheek with Wei Zhao, in a pose that was rather intimate...

"It does look as though it was cut apart and then pieced back together, only it was done very carefully, so the seam hardly shows. If I hadn't needed pure yellow jade so badly, I doubt I'd have looked closely enough to see it," Wei Zhao said. The crack was invisible unless one held it to the light and studied it.

The discovery astonished Sun Jingyan. She had worn the pendant since childhood and had handled it often, yet she had never noticed the crack. To her it had always been a token, and so it had never once occurred to her that it might be two pieces fitted together...

"Then... why would anyone do that? Could the pendant have broken once and been repaired?" Sun Jingyan, thoroughly puzzled, studied the pendant in Wei Zhao's hand.

"I don't know, but accidental damage seems unlikely. Even if it had been dropped and shattered, it could never have broken into two such neat halves — and the seam runs down the exact middle of the pendant's side. What kind of force would it take to produce an effect like that?" Wei Zhao shook his head, dismissing her guess.

"So you're saying it was done deliberately?" Sun Jingyan asked.

"Very likely. But I can't imagine why anyone would do it." Wei Zhao said, "Still, I have a theory..."

"What theory?" Sun Jingyan asked urgently. It concerned word of her parents; of course she was anxious.

"If I'm not mistaken, there's something inside this pendant." Wei Zhao said, "It was cut open by some masterly means and then sealed back together. Perhaps something was placed inside it..."

"Ah! Then there might be something my parents left for me inside it?" Hearing this, Sun Jingyan grew excited...

"Of course, that's only my guess." Wei Zhao smiled wryly. "And once a pendant like this has been tampered with, it clearly won't be easy to repair... But I truly am not trying to get my hands on your pure yellow jade..."

Wei Zhao's words earned him a glare from Sun Jingyan. "Of course I know you're not. But the more you explain, the more it sounds like there's no silver buried here!"

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