Chapter 2009 — The Mysterious Phone Call, Part One

"What? You know this Wei Zhao too, Brother Wen?" Li Biaohan blinked, taken aback.

"Hmph. That brat has been working against me all along—he even stole a woman from me!" An Jianwen gave a cold sniff, making no effort to hide it. "But there's something uncanny about him. Unless you're absolutely sure of yourselves, don't provoke him. I'm not sure of myself right now either..."

"That's true!" You Panhu nodded. "I'd give anything to see him dead, but the bastard wiped out three Earth Rank fighters in a single move. I wouldn't dare clash with him head-on either! And they say he's an alchemist besides... Wait—no. If he's an alchemist, why would he buy such a worthless cauldron?"

Wei Zhao and Han Jingyi going to an antiques market to buy a medicinal cauldron was utterly baffling to You Panhu. Even the lowest-grade alchemist wouldn't go to a place like that for a cauldron, would he? The people who bought cauldrons in such places were beginners and novices who had never touched alchemy, picking one up to fiddle with out of curiosity; but anyone who truly knew alchemy—who would use such a piece of junk?

So You Panhu had his doubts. What on earth was Wei Zhao up to, buying trash like that?

"Who knows? There's far too much that's strange about Wei Zhao." An Jianwen frowned. "Forget it, let's not talk about him. Today's a happy day—bringing up that thing will only ruin the mood!"

"Yes, yes. Since those two are classmates of that Wei Zhao and You Panhu, they probably won't come after our boys—they won't have the time anyway!" Li Biaohan nodded, sent the two underlings a text saying everything was fine, and settled down to eat and drink with An Jianwen and the others...

At the Ancient Feng family, Feng Tianhu's face was frighteningly dark just then, while the noblewoman seated across from him wore a look of barely concealed glee.

Feng Tianhu had already received word that Feng Erbing's entire force had been wiped out. He had never imagined that an early-stage Earth Rank expert could kill a mid-stage Earth Rank expert—and that after killing a mid-stage Earth Rank expert, the man could break through and advance a level. What sort of logic was that?

Was his Earth Rank an Earth Rank, and other people's Earth Rank not an Earth Rank? Or was his Earth Rank simply stronger than everyone else's—already the equal of Heaven Rank?

Feng Tianhu could make no sense of it at all.

"Tianhu, I'd say your information was wrong, wasn't it? You sent the peak late-stage Profound Rank expert I had on hand to his death, and in the end your own mid-stage Earth Rank expert went and died too. How does that little bastard have so many experts around him?" the noblewoman said sarcastically, no longer quite so angry over Feng Sanlei's death.

"Second Sister-in-law, that man wasn't sent by Second Brother—he was a friend of Xu Shilan's..." Feng Tianhu's heart was bleeding. The trusted men he had painstakingly cultivated—Feng Erbing, a mid-stage Earth Rank expert, and Feng Sanku, an expert at the peak of late-stage Profound Rank—had just up and croaked like that. Their deaths were far too pointless.

Sure enough, impulse was the devil.

Originally he had only meant to borrow his second sister-in-law's hand to kill Xu Shilan, to give Feng Tianlin a taste of what it was like to lose his own flesh and blood. But then, unexpectedly, his second sister-in-law's man Feng Sanlei had failed and been left behind there; Feng Tianhu panicked and sent out his own mid-stage Earth Rank expert, Feng Erbing. In his view, a mid-stage Earth Rank expert going to the mundane world to kill a single person was simplicity itself. Yet now—well, now the man wasn't dead, the target was perfectly fine, and his own people had all died instead.

The feeling made him want to vomit blood. Feng Tianhu was sick with frustration, and there was nowhere he could go to air his grievance.

He dared not speak of it to anyone inside the Feng family, and dared even less to make it known outside. If his father learned that he had been moving against Second Brother's daughter, there would be nothing good in it for him. So Feng Tianhu had swallowed a bitter pill in silence, with no way to voice his pain.

"I never thought that little bitch would be so good at luring men—as wanton as her mother. She actually reeled in an even more formidable expert!" the noblewoman said hatefully. "Yes, Second Sister-in-law. This is a loss we'll just have to take. For now, let's not spread it around. If word gets out, not only will we lose face, but it'll be hard to explain to Father!" Feng Tianhu warned, terrified that this brainless second sister-in-law would let the matter slip—and that would be real trouble.

"Don't worry about that. I'm not looking for a fight with your second brother!" the noblewoman said. "Let that little bastard strut about for a while. Later, when your second brother becomes the head of the family, I'll be the lady of the house, and then it'll be easy as anything to send a few men to deal with that little bastard..."

"Huh?" Feng Tianhu was stunned. He hadn't expected his second sister-in-law to be quite this foolish. Could she really not see that his intentions were plain as day? Did she not know he was after the position of family head?

"What's the matter with you?" The noblewoman was slightly taken aback by Feng Tianhu's odd expression.

"Nothing, Second Sister-in-law. Go back and rest early. I'm going to look in on Nitian and see how he's doing..." Feng Tianhu could not be bothered to say more to this sister-in-law, and turned to head for Feng Nitian's room...

In the room across from Cheng Yiyi's at the Xueshang Hotel of Donghai Engineering University, Zhang Duopan was gloomily drinking himself into a sulk with Fan Ganhe. Cheng Yiyi had been supposed to go shopping that evening, but she had taken Wei Zhao along and left him, Zhang Duopan, behind. More and more, he felt that Wei Zhao was his nemesis.

A phone rang. Zhang Duopan took out his phone and glanced casually at the caller display—and blinked in surprise. It was a hidden number; he could not see who was calling, and had no idea who it might be.

Normally Zhang Duopan would simply hang up on calls like this, because most of them were scams about prize winnings and the like, and he could not be bothered to wrangle with them. But today he had been drinking, and his mood was thoroughly foul, so he felt like finding someone to take it out on. Here was a swindler delivered right to his door—naturally he would not be polite.

"Hello? How do you do. Who're you looking for?" Zhang Duopan answered breezily.

"Zhang Duopan, is it?" A rasping, duck-like voice came from the other end—impossible to tell whether it belonged to a man or a woman, as though it had been run through a voice changer. It made the listener's whole body crawl.

"Who are you?" Zhang Duopan frowned. He hadn't expected the other party to come out with his name straight away.

"Never mind who I am. I'm here to bring you good news," the duck-voice said.

"Good news? Who are you, anyway? If there's nothing else, I'm hanging up!" Zhang Duopan found it baffling; the fellow was almost certainly a swindler.

"Heh. If you don't want to take first place at the school's freshman gala, then hang up and pretend I never said a word," the voice said with a cold laugh.

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