Chapter 5040 — Searching for the Spirit Jade
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
Yet in the three years he had spent on Cloud Terrace Island, his strength had surged and his views had shifted along with it. However one looked at it, he could no longer be counted an ordinary man of the secular world; as his level changed, so too did his horizons and his angle of vision. To stubbornly cling to the values of an ordinary man was not only unscientific but wholly out of keeping with the world he now moved in.
He remembered how, back in the secular world, having several girlfriends at once had been scandalous beyond words—yet on Cloud Terrace Island, strength commanded all respect. A man like Zhang Liju with several wives bore no stigma at all; on the contrary, he was looked up to and talked of with relish, and no one had ever called it improper.
In the end it came down to a shift in thinking. Wei Zhao had been a textbook product of secular values, convinced that monogamy alone was fairest and most reasonable. But as time went on he found he no longer minded; love between man and woman was a thing that followed its natural course, neither to be forced nor firmly refused.
Cultivation was not merely a matter of power; more important was the cultivation of the heart. As the saying went, the Dao follows nature, and the highest good is like water. The higher one's level, the more broadly one saw things, and the fewer one's obsessions. This imperceptible shift in Wei Zhao's thinking was itself a kind of transformation.
After all, it was not only Zhang Liju—even the top-tier figures he revered, men like Shangguan Tianhua, had more than one wife. And it was precisely because he had come to see things this way that he could accept Huang Xiaotao, Ning Xuefei, and Huo Yudie as a matter of course, and that he now pursued Leng Leng as he did.
Setting aside the fact that his starting point was to sound her out for information, Leng Leng herself was a girl who invited tenderness. A fair maiden is a gentleman's natural quarry; to claim he felt not the slightest impulse in that direction would be pure self-deception.
As these strange feelings stirred in Wei Zhao's heart, Leng Leng, who was sitting almost pressed against him, felt much the same. Given her cold nature, she would never normally let anyone come this close, yet for some reason she did not recoil from this slightly intimate gesture—just as she had not back on the bus.
She even found the feeling faintly warm and sweet. Stealing a glance at the young couple nearby, also huddled together over a phone, Leng Leng felt her pretty face flush.
Wei Zhao soon noticed this and glanced at her with some surprise. Once this little ice girl really warmed up to someone, she seemed fairly uninhibited—could she be the classic cold outside, passionate within?
They were sitting so close that when Wei Zhao turned his head, she could feel his breath distinctly. Leng Leng finally grew flustered; with a small cry she hurriedly edged a step away.
"What's the matter?" Wei Zhao asked, feigning bewilderment.
"N-nothing. Let's just go to the jade market—the phone business can wait." Leng Leng's expression held a note of embarrassment. Though she did not mind this intimate yet not excessive contact, she was still shy at heart.
The crux was that she knew she and Wei Zhao could never be together, and so she truly did not want to give him the wrong idea. To offer someone a misty hope for what was plainly impossible, only to snuff it out with one's own hands—nothing in the world was crueler than that.
"All right." Wei Zhao felt a touch of regret, but such things could not be rushed. To have made such intimate contact today was already a rare breakthrough; had she gone further just like that, he would have been astonished. As things stood, it was quite good enough.
The two set off for the jade market. Despite the name, it did not sell only jade; there were gold and silver jewelry shops and even curios, calligraphy, and paintings. To be precise, this was a jewelry street.