Provocation
Meng Hao trembled, his face pale white. At first, he tried not to calculate how much he had lost, but in the end, he couldn’t stop himself. His mind filled with a terrifyingly huge number of merit points, and he almost coughed up a mouthful of blood.
“Screwed! Royally screwed!!” He felt like weeping, but no tears would come. All he could do was curse his horrible luck at having completely wasted such a good opportunity to earn merit points.
At this thought, he threw his head back and roared, which caused quite a few nearby birds to scatter in flight.
Trembling, heart bleeding, face ashen, Meng Hao felt completely drained of energy. Listless and depressed, it was at this point that he suddenly noticed that someone was flying through the air behind him.
He turned feebly and saw a young woman; his lifeless countenance caused her to stare in shock.
She was graceful and beautiful, with an entrancing face. She wore a long pink garment, and her fragrance was delicate and pleasing.
She looked at Meng Hao in shock for a moment, before tentatively asking, “Um, are you… Elder Cousin Fang Hao?”
Meng Hao listlessly nodded his head. He was still inwardly tied up in knots over the huge sum of merit points he had lost. In his mind, even the sky had turned completely black.
The young woman’s face grew serious as she looked at Meng Hao. She thought to herself that this person was willing to drive himself crazy before giving up, all for the sake of skill with plants and vegetation. She could see a level of unswerving determination in Meng Hao that she did not possess.
“Elder Cousin Fang Hao, I saw you in the Medicine Pavilion just now, and I, Wan’er, couldn’t help but admire you.” She clasped hands and bowed, then held out a tome toward Meng Hao. “This… is a tome that his excellency Pill Elder wanted me to give you.”
Meng Hao was still in a daze. Face blank, he muttered, “I just had an unimaginable amount of merit points placed in front of me, but I didn’t cherish them as I should have… what a waste!!”
The young woman gaped for a moment, unsure about the meaning of what she had just heard. “Elder Cousin, what did you just say?”
Meng Hao shook his head and dejectedly accepted the tome. Then he turned and, looking incredibly depressed, headed off into the distance. The young woman watched him make his way off, and couldn’t help but feel even more admiration for him.
“He is definitely worthy of being the eldest grandson of the direct bloodline. Elder Cousin Fang Hao is crazy about the Dao of alchemy. He created more than 70,000 medicinal plants on the seventh level of the Medicine pavilion, but he still feels disappointed. It’s almost like he’s lost his faith and ideals. A person like that is really rare. No wonder his excellency Pill Elder wanted me to give him that tome.
“Wan’er,” she said to herself encouragingly, “you have to work hard and study more, like Elder Cousin!” She looked at Meng Hao leaving, and was filled with reverence.
Meng Hao had no idea how much encouragement his expression had given to that fragile young woman. He continued along his way toward the ancestral mansion, drowsy and out of sorts.
As soon as he entered the ancestral mansion, his mood worsened. Even as he transformed into a beam of light and shot forward, a group of seven or eight people strolled out ahead of him, chatting and laughing.
Among that group of people was a young woman who Meng Hao recognized from when he had first arrived at East Heaven Gate. She was a female cultivator named Fang Hong. She was clearly a natural born beauty, and she currently wore a long, pale garment. She held her hand in front of her mouth and laughed as she walked along. Among those walking with her, three had cultivation bases at the peak of Dao Seeking, similar to false Immortals. There were a few others who were in the Spirit Severing realm.
All of them were people Meng Hao had seen following Fang Wei back in the temple.
Behind them trailed an old man with salt-and-pepper hair and an apathetic expression. He held his hands in front of him, tucked into the opposite sleeves, and followed the group with a slight bow, almost as if he were a servant.
He was not a member of the Fang Clan, but had a different surname, and had taken shelter with the Fang Clan in exchange for acting as a Dao Protector to members of the younger generation.
The young cultivators around Fang Hong chatted and laughed.
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