"Xiaoshu! There are no roast chicken wings here!" Gu Mengyao shot her a glare, then turned to Fatso Lai. "Sorry to trouble you!"

Only then did Gu Mengyao put on the airs of a proper young lady from a distinguished house.

"Same for us — anything simple will do." Tang Yun likewise spoke politely to Fatso Lai.

"Right away, I'll have my wife cook some noodles!" Fatso Lai breathed a sigh of relief; he had been afraid these young ladies would be hard to please.

In no time Fatso Lai's wife had the noodles ready, and Fatso Lai carried them out himself, one steaming bowl apiece, set down before each of the girls.

Gu Mengyao, Shen Yushu, Tang Yun and Liu Xinwen were all hungry, and for the moment they called a truce, every head bent over a bowl. Gu Mengyao and Tang Yun ate with some refinement; Shen Yushu and Liu Xinwen cared for no such thing, slurping and smacking, and the noodles smelled and tasted wonderful.

Fatso Lai was often out at drinking parties, and at a banquet it was hard to get your fill, so he always ate a little something at home before sleeping. Noodles being the handiest thing of all, his wife had trained herself into a master of the craft; her noodles came out better than anything you could get outside.

When the noodles were done, Fatso Lai cleared the bowls, and the girls went back to glaring daggers at one another, the smell of gunpowder thick in the air...

With food eaten and drink drunk, the war began.

Gu Mengyao, seeing that Wei Zhao had still sent no word after so long, grew all the more anxious, and could not help complaining, "Wei Zhao was going off to take revenge. Why didn't you stop him? If you had stopped him, he wouldn't have been hurt!"

"How could I have stopped him? He went to avenge me — that only proves he loves me, that he worries about me. I should be glad!" Tang Yun said. "Otherwise, why wouldn't he go and get himself hurt for you?"

"Who says he hasn't been hurt for me? He even took a bullet for me. Isn't that right, Xiaoshu?" What Gu Mengyao meant was the bank robbery, though that bullet had not been taken for Gu Mengyao but for Guan Xin.

"Oh, that's nothing — Brother Arrow-Brand jumped into the sea with me to save me, and we even fought off sharks together!" Shen Yushu chimed in.

Fatso Lai sighed, took his wife by the hand and sat down far away; he did not dare go to sleep either. Quarrelling he could bear, but he truly feared these women might come to blows.

"Old Lai, just who are these people?" By now Lai's wife still had not worked out the relationships among them; all she knew was that the injured man in the room was Wei Zhao, her husband's boss, a miracle doctor who had cured her father-in-law's illness.

The present Guan Daifu Pharmaceuticals had also been founded by Wei Zhao, so Lai's wife knew he was a formidable man, and she respected him as much as her husband did.

It was only that of the four girls in that room, three were impossibly beautiful, and each one claimed a connection to Wei Zhao, which gave Lai's wife rather a headache.

"This... I'm afraid it can only be dealt with once the boss wakes up. I don't know what any of them are to him either..." Fatso Lai smiled bitterly. "Let's just stand off to the side and watch. So long as they don't come to blows, that will do."

……………………

Wei Zhao had handed his phone to Fatso Lai and told him that if Tang Yun called, he was to help explain things. Then he shut himself in the room, dropped onto the bed, and sank into unconsciousness.

The next instant, Wei Zhao entered the jade pendant's space.

It was the first time Wei Zhao had met a foe of his own strength head-on, and the clash had left him feeling wretched beyond words. Luckily there was the jade pendant space; otherwise he likely would have died this time.

"Whoo—" Wei Zhao sensed the energy elements around him repairing his internal organs at an inconceivable speed, and could not help letting out a long breath.

The feeling was wonderfully comfortable, like the surge of pleasure an instant before a breakthrough in level — so comfortable that Wei Zhao could not help ***...

This was the second time Wei Zhao had entered deep sleep since Feng Xiaoxiao drained his energy dry; of the world outside he could sense nothing at all.

Minute by minute, time crept on. Wrapped in the pure energy of the jade pendant space, Wei Zhao's ruined body mended swiftly. How long it lasted he could not say, but at last he gave a long, exultant cry and rose to his feet.

Wei Zhao flexed his body left and right, hardly able to believe it. Healed? Actually healed, all of it?

He knew well enough how grave his injuries had been; even propped up by all those miracle pills of the old man's, he probably could not have risen from bed in two or three months. Yet in this jade pendant space his wounds had healed so swiftly! You could call it a miracle.

"Elder Jiao, I'm recovered?" Wei Zhao asked, scarcely daring to believe it.

"Recovered!" Jiao Yazi nodded.

"The jade pendant space can heal wounds too?" Wei Zhao asked, puzzled. When he had collapsed onto the bed, entering the space had been pure instinct; in truth he had not known that passing out would carry him into it on its own, still less that it could heal him.

"Obviously. Your energy can heal other people, so naturally it can heal you." Elder Jiao rolled his eyes. "Can't you ask something above kindergarten level?"

"All right, then that means if I slowly absorb energy outside — true qi from the natural world — I can recover gradually too?" Wei Zhao asked.

"In theory, yes," Jiao Yazi said. "But that's another kindergarten-level question. The true qi out there is thin; what you take in can't keep pace with what your body burns through. If you can't hold out long enough to absorb that much energy, you're finished."

"So that's how it is..." Wei Zhao nodded. Then that fellow Uncle Zhu, without any miracle pills, would probably be done for. "One more question: why do I feel that I'm even a little stronger than before? My level hasn't changed, but my strength feels greater?"

"Very good, you're improving. That's a grade-school question." Jiao Yazi's words made Wei Zhao break out in a sweat of shame, but without waiting for him to speak, Jiao Yazi went on: "What they call 'no breaking, no building' — that is the principle. Your bones and organs were all shattered, then forged anew and repaired by the pure energy of the space. Naturally that leaves you far stronger than anything you'd built up outside with thin true qi!"

Wei Zhao had a flash of understanding: so it all came down to the purity of the energy. It seemed this jade pendant space truly was a treasure.

"Wounds that severe, healed in such a short time — truly unbelievable!" Wei Zhao marveled.

"Short? It's been nearly ten hours," Jiao Yazi said mildly.

"What? Ten hours?" Wei Zhao was startled. To his own senses it had felt like an hour or two at most; he had never imagined so much time had passed.

In that case, wouldn't Tang Yun be worried sick?

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