Chapter 5042 — Each Other's Origins

As the two of them were talking, they noticed a man and a woman nearby quarreling. From what they could make out, the couple was not only heading for divorce but were locked in a bitter fight over how to divide their property.

Wei Zhao's face darkened at once. He had just been putting in a good word for the men of the mortal world, and here came a scumbag to tear it all down. He truly was not cut out for lying. Clearly, even Heaven could not stand it—how unlucky could he get?

Sure enough, Leng Leng's expression turned a few shades uglier. After a whole day together, the relationship between them had quietly reached a tipping point; one more thin layer peeled away and they could take another step forward. The little ice maiden regarded everyone with a keep-your-distance look, but when she looked at Wei Zhao alone, there was a faint, hard-to-name warmth in her eyes.

Now, thanks to this little scene, the good impression Wei Zhao had worked so hard to build collapsed in an instant. Leng Leng's gaze at him was no longer the keep-away kind, but the chance to strike while the iron was hot and push things further was gone.

"Uh—there are exceptions to every rule. Even the purest place can't be entirely free of a few bad apples. Don't get the wrong idea, please. That scumbag and I are not the same kind of man," Wei Zhao hastily tried to salvage the situation.

"Oh." Leng Leng nodded. Wei Zhao, seeing her expression, could not help feeling uneasy—did that mean she believed him, or not?

The two fell silent for a moment, then Leng Leng suddenly spoke. "Actually, you don't need to explain any of this to me. I told you before—you and I are not the same kind. It's impossible for the two of us to be together. Even if I really did agree, it would never be a good thing for you. It would only bring you fatal trouble."

"That serious? Don't tell me you're a bride who ran away from some great clan?" Wei Zhao put on a show of exaggerated alarm.

"…" Leng Leng was speechless, but she went on all the same. "You can understand it that way if you like. In any case, the two of us cannot be together—I'm not lying to you. The world I belong to is truly not what you imagine. People die over this."

"Heh. We've known each other so long—surely you don't still think I'm an ordinary man?" Wei Zhao suddenly put on a profoundly mysterious air.

"What?" Leng Leng was startled. Her first reaction was to suspect—instinctively—that Wei Zhao might also be a cultivator. Setting everything else aside, judging at least from the way he had produced two top-grade spirit jades in a row, the odds that he was a cultivator were indeed quite high.

But she dismissed the thought almost at once, because she could not sense even the slightest bit of cultivation strength from him. And even if Wei Zhao was a cultivator, he could only be a cultivator of the mortal world. It was simply impossible for someone's strength to be so high that even she—a capable cultivator at the early Foundation Establishment stage—could spend so long face to face with him and fail to notice.

"As it happens, I'm quite formidable myself—it's just that I've fallen on hard times at the moment. Back in the day, I was a figure who shook the martial world. One stamp of my foot and countless masters would tremble inside," Wei Zhao said, deliberately striking the pose of a great master.

Leng Leng was instantly amused, and the thought that had just surfaced was banished to the back of beyond. This fellow was purely clowning around to make her laugh—how could he possibly be a cultivator? She had been far too nervous.

Seeing her expression, Wei Zhao could not help but chuckle. What he had said sounded unreliable, but not a single word was false—say it out loud and it would be the gospel truth. It was just a pity that she had already made up her mind to take it as a joke. What could he do about that?

"It's about time. Let's go eat," Wei Zhao suggested at once.

"All right." Leng Leng nodded. Now that she had a top-grade spirit jade, she was thoroughly content with today's outing.

The two of them arrived at a nearby seafood restaurant. Business was booming—they stood in line a full twenty minutes before getting a table. But once a whole table of seafood was served, they immediately felt the wait had been worth it. The restaurant's booming business was no exaggeration—the food really was delicious!

Leng Leng especially. She ate while marveling aloud. "These dishes are so good—so fresh and tender. I've never had anything like this before. Is this what they call seafood?"

"Yeah. Don't tell me you've never eaten seafood?" Wei Zhao was even more astonished than she was.

"No." Leng Leng did not even lift her head, eating with unrestrained delight. When they had not known each other well, she had been a cold-natured little ice maiden; now that they were familiar, she had loosened up.

Wei Zhao grew all the more puzzled. He watched her eat the seafood with some amusement while secretly wondering—just where did this little ice maiden come from?

According to his earlier deduction, she must come from a place where spiritual energy was denser than the mortal world's but thinner than that of Cloud Terrace Island. Yet both Cloud Terrace Island and the mortal world had seas. No matter how hidden her homeland was, as a cultivator she could not possibly have never tasted seafood—unless her homeland had no sea at all, and was a third, wholly independent plane cut off from both the mortal world and Cloud Terrace Island!

This conclusion truly astonished Wei Zhao. A third plane actually existed in this world—and one that could produce no small number of masters at the Heaven's Way stage. How utterly unexpected.

Wei Zhao turned all this over in his mind. Leng Leng, though eating happily, sensed his peculiar gaze and assumed he was watching her table manners. Her pretty face flushed, and she reined herself in at once, hurriedly restoring her usual cold demeanor. The atmosphere between them instantly turned a little odd.

Only then did Wei Zhao snap out of it. After a moment's thought, he suggested, "Eating like this is a bit dull. Why don't you tell me about yourself? You've never said a word about it."

"Ah…" Leng Leng was startled and stammered, "Well… there's nothing worth telling about me. Why don't you talk about yourself first?"

Wei Zhao had expected this, so he did not press her. He smiled and said, "All right, then I'll tell you about my younger days."

"Good." Leng Leng breathed a sigh of relief. She was not good at making up lies, and it was lucky for her that Wei Zhao had not dug deeper—otherwise she would surely have given herself away.

Wei Zhao cleared his throat with a smile and spoke fluently. "Back in the day, I was a martial artist who stole the spotlight wherever I went. I traveled a thousand miles to study under a master on a fairy island overseas. At the time, I thought I was already a formidable top-tier master—the very pinnacle of this mortal world. But after I got to that fairy island, guess what?"

"What?" Though Leng Leng thought he was spinning tall tales, she was nonetheless drawn in.

"After I got to that fairy island, I realized I was nothing but a frog at the bottom of a well. I'd called myself invincible under heaven, but any random passerby there could have flattened me with a single slap. I was nothing but the lowest-ranking new disciple. In the end, some of us who had come together were assigned to one of the fairy islands…" Wei Zhao rattled on. (To be continued.)