Chapter 258: Life 73, Age 49, Martial Grandmaster Peak
Once the alchemy competition was over, I didn’t hang around to watch the fallout. I immediately led everyone into a building, set up a quick formation, gave everyone a sleeping pill, stuffed them into my storage space, and silently departed for Mount Jiang. WuJing still owed Rulan 50 spirit stones, but I would pay her out of my stockpile. He could make it up to me later. It was far more important that we vanish before anyone started asking the wrong questions.
The only person at the competition who had seemed to grasp the importance of RuLan’s pill was WuJing, but the Third Prince would have been able to gather enough information from WuJing’s reaction to know that he needed to report what he had seen as soon as possible. Once this news reached the right ears, the Wastes would be flooded with enemy cultivators wishing to discover our secrets.
RuLan’s performance might have won the alchemy competition for us, but it made the further existence of our clan in the Wastes entirely untenable. We were now working under a deadline.
Once we were back on the mountain, I woke everyone up and handed out rewards to each of our competitors, including Hong. While he hadn’t technically won, he had done the clan proud, and I wasn’t one to skimp out on rewards.
After that, I visited Bao and handed him the Earth Dragon’s Tongue Fruit. While a Rank 3 pill for temporarily boosting a person’s earth affinity seemed somewhat pointless to me, the fruit’s effects were unique, and I wanted to see if we could find a more valuable use for it.
Next, I held a meeting with the leadership council. During it, I did my best to maintain the facade that everything was normal, but Mo, at least, sensed that something had changed. He didn’t say anything about it, but he kept a close eye on me and was measuring each of my movements.
Of course, it might not have been my behavior that had made him suspicious. He was at the competition with us, and he had been able to see WuJing’s reaction as easily as anyone else. He had to suspect that the importance of RuLan’s pill had exceeded his expectations.
Once the meeting was over, I disappeared and left everyone to their own devices.
Before everything blew up, I needed my storage space to be as habitable as possible. While it was mostly ready, there was still one major project left to complete, the illusory sky formation.