Chapter 5023 — Another Foundation Establishment Cultivator

In order to cultivate in peace, he had carefully surveyed his surroundings beforehand. Few people lived in this residential compound to begin with, and the building he was in had only a handful of occupants.

Apart from the small convenience store on the ground floor with someone in it, only the third floor was occupied. His own floor, the fifth, had no one across the hall; the sixth floor above was empty, the apartments not even renovated, so certainly no one was there; and the fourth floor was the same. Given all that, how could footsteps suddenly be coming from outside at this hour?

Could it really be a ghost? Wei Zhao's heart stirred. Though he stayed by the door without opening it, he quietly released his spiritual sense.

The footsteps drew closer and closer, and finally stopped just outside the door. Wei Zhao had been rather excited at first, but he soon realized it was excitement for nothing. It was no ghost at all, but two living people—and one of them he had met just that day: the real estate agent.

Apart from the agent, the other was a tall woman with a cold bearing. Wei Zhao had not noticed at first, but then he discovered that she too was a cultivator—and not a weak one. She was in fact an expert of the early Foundation Establishment stage!

It had been only a single day since his return to the mortal realm, and this was already the third Foundation Establishment expert he had seen. Wei Zhao could not help wondering privately: just what great event had befallen the mortal world?

The woman, however, appeared to be seriously injured; her qi was visibly unstable. An ordinary person could not have detected anything unusual from her outward appearance, but it could not escape Wei Zhao's eyes.

"Miss, the rent on this place really is cheap, but I have to say one thing up front, so you won't turn around and accuse us of deceiving consumers—that would be the death of us." So spoke the agent.

"Speak," the tall woman said, a single word dropping coldly from her lips.

"To be honest with you, someone was killed by an electric saw during the renovations on this place, so they say it's haunted. Your apartment is across the hall, but I still have to make it clear to you in advance. Nobody believes in hauntings, but I figure it's better to believe they exist than not—wouldn't you agree?" The agent rambled on and on. Perhaps because the other party was a beauty, his attitude was far more sincere than it had been with Wei Zhao that day.

"A ghost? If it dares come, I'll cut it down." The tall woman spoke coldly, then took the key, walked into the room, and casually shut the door behind her, leaving the agent standing at the doorway not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

This woman was fierce enough! Wei Zhao clicked his tongue in secret amazement. Cultivators, being powerful, did not share ordinary people's dread of ghosts and monsters—but a female cultivator was still a woman in the end, and however strong she was, she could not change certain womanly habits: fear of bugs, for instance, or fear of ghosts.

This female cultivator was plainly an exception, though. Her words and deeds were cold and domineering, with not the slightest trace of frailty.

"Looks like I'll have to find a chance to have a talk with this little ice queen." Wei Zhao muttered to himself, stroking his chin. It was not that he coveted her beauty—with so many fair companions already in his life, ordinary beauty no longer moved him at all. Even if she were a peerless stunner, he would not feel much astonished.

The thought had arisen purely out of regard for her strength. For an early Foundation Establishment expert to appear so suddenly—if she had nothing whatsoever to do with the two Foundation Establishment experts from before, Wei Zhao absolutely refused to believe it.

Still, Wei Zhao did not intend to go knocking on her door right away. This little ice queen was clearly hard to talk to at the best of times, and now that she was injured, she would surely be doubly wary of strangers. Under such circumstances, going to ask about such matters would be nothing but asking for trouble.

What was more, Wei Zhao's own strength had recovered nowhere near enough. A mere peak late Heaven Rank—enough to handle an injured early Foundation Establishment expert, perhaps, but not enough to truly overawe her. The most urgent thing for Wei Zhao now was to keep recovering his strength; unless absolutely necessary, he did not want to clash head-on with anyone.

So if he wanted to question her, he would need a suitable opportunity. Forcing the issue would only backfire.

Only once all was quiet across the hall did Wei Zhao push open his door and go downstairs to the convenience store to ask around, only to learn that there was no night market anywhere nearby—he would have to go into the busy downtown.

Fortunately, Wei Zhao was astonishingly fast. What took others half an hour on an electric scooter took him less than five minutes—and that included the time spent asking for directions. Otherwise he would have been even quicker.

Sure enough, the night market was a clamor of voices, all sorts of characters gathered in this one place, each of them drinking beer and eating grilled meat while boasting and venting a few complaints on the side. If one cared to listen, two hours spent here would be enough to learn absolutely everything.

From affairs of state down to neighborhood gossip, from one end of the world to the other, people talked of everything under the sun. Wei Zhao did not even need to strike up a conversation; he simply sat there and ate a little something, and everything worth knowing came to him.

The first thing he could confirm was that the mortal realm was not in chaos—at least, the overt social order had suffered no disruption whatsoever. From this he inferred that the cultivators hidden beneath that social order were not in great turmoil either; otherwise, if things had truly descended into irretrievable chaos, the social order would inevitably have been affected, rather than remaining as calm as it was now.

In other words, there had been no large-scale conflict between these newly emerged Heaven Rank experts and the mortal realm's original cultivation forces. That admitted only two explanations: either very few people knew of their existence, or these Heaven Rank experts had reached some kind of understanding with the hidden clans and ancient sects, and their relations were not hostile.

Either way, neither scenario was bad for Wei Zhao. As long as there was no large-scale conflict, it meant that Qiu Lingshan and the others should not yet have run into any trouble—after all, so many of them were bound together through their connection to him, and any one of them coming to harm would alert them all. At that point the Mystery Investigation Bureau and all those clans and sects would be thrown into chaos, and things would not be as calm as they were now.

Having deduced this much, Wei Zhao could at last set his mind somewhat at ease. He still had to find a way to learn the origins and intentions of these Heaven Rank experts, but at least it was not as urgent as he had feared. He could wait until he had comfortably recovered his strength before making his plans.

Beyond that, Wei Zhao had also worked out his current location. This was a small county town in the southwest, a county-level city called Xima, separated from Donghai City by nearly the whole of Huaxia—not just far, but extraordinarily far.

What was more, transportation here was underdeveloped. There was no airport and no train station to speak of; to travel any distance, one first had to take a bus to the neighboring prefecture-level city, where the airport and train station were.

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