Chapter 1540 — It Seems Simple Enough

The Ice Palace Master had no choice but to steel herself and listen to Feng Xiaoxiao tell the story of her and Wei Zhao. Moving as it was, her mind was not on it at all; what occupied her now was how to keep Feng Xiaoxiao here.

"Xiaoxiao, you really have woken up!" Wei Zhao was overjoyed to see Feng Xiaoxiao so full of life.

"Wow, hubby Wei Zhao, you really came!" Feng Xiaoxiao jumped straight off the bed, ran to him in a few quick strides, and flung herself into his arms, hands and feet wrapped around him like a koala.

"Ha..." Looking at the lively Feng Xiaoxiao before him, Wei Zhao was overcome with feeling. Everything that had come before seemed like a dream, and Feng Xiaoxiao — it was as though she had never once been unconscious.

"Thank you, hubby Wei Zhao!" Feng Xiaoxiao planted a smacking kiss on his cheek. "Thank you for everything you have done for me. Xiaoxiao is so happy — even dying would have been worth it!"

Hearing this, the Ice Palace Master was struck dumb. I was the one who saved you, along with the Grand Elder — all right? Ever since you woke I have been trying to make nice with you, and you have been cold as ice; Wei Zhao shows up, and this is what I get?

Yet even as she stewed, the Ice Palace Master understood one thing: it seemed that persuading Wei Zhao was the key.

"Aunt Qing, does he understand what we of the Ice Palace intend?" the Ice Palace Master asked Xiao Qing, betraying nothing in her face. A Heaven-tier expert possessed a formidable ability: secret voice transmission, by which sound could be condensed into true qi and delivered to the very person meant to hear it. This was the legendary materialization of true qi — a feat only Heaven-tier experts could perform.

Such a secret art, however, consumed a great deal of true qi, and under ordinary circumstances no one would use it lightly. Only because they needed to discuss matters concerning Feng Xiaoxiao did the Ice Palace Master resort to it now.

"He knows, but he neither agreed nor refused," Xiao Qing replied, also by secret voice transmission.

"True qi voice transmission?" Wei Zhao frowned. Feeling the energy fluctuations nearby and observing the Ice Palace Master and Xiao Qing, he had a fair idea of what they were doing.

"You... you can actually detect it?" This time, the Ice Palace Master was genuinely startled by Wei Zhao.

Had Wei Zhao been a Heaven-tier expert, noticing that she and Xiao Qing were using secret voice transmission would have been nothing remarkable; some even more formidable Heaven-tier experts could intercept such transmissions and hear what others were saying. But Wei Zhao was only a Mystic-tier expert. However capable he might be, there was no way he could sense true qi that had been shaped into form — was there?

"I can detect it. I simply do not know what shady business you two are plotting," Wei Zhao said flatly, his gaze toward the Ice Palace Master turning less than friendly.

Wei Zhao was exceedingly sensitive to the fluctuations of true qi — perhaps because of the cultivation art he practiced. It was also the reason he could discern a person's true strength even when that person was not circulating an inner art or releasing true qi at all.

Otherwise, when a cultivator concealed his strength, his true qi did not leak out, and no other cultivator could possibly sense his power.

And when a low-level cultivator stood before a higher-level one, even if he released no true qi and secretly circulated his inner art with his true qi hidden away, the higher-level cultivator would still discover his true strength.

Only if the situation were reversed — the higher-level cultivator releasing no true qi, secretly concealing it while circulating his art — would the low-level cultivator fail to notice.

"True qi materialization — you can actually see through it? You really are something!" The Ice Palace Master regarded Wei Zhao with astonishment. The more she dealt with him, the more extraordinary she found him. This Mystic-tier expert, whom she had judged so lowly in strength, kept doing things that made onlookers' jaws drop.

"True qi materialization?" Wei Zhao frowned. "So that is what it is called."

Wei Zhao murmured to himself, finding this secret voice transmission rather interesting, and so he tried converting the energy in his body into a strand of sound and sent it toward the Ice Palace Master: "Little Cold Girl, is this how it works?"

"What did you call me?!" The Ice Palace Master ground her teeth in fury at the name he had given her.

"What did I call you?" Wei Zhao had not expected his experiment to succeed. But of course he would not admit to what he had said — this was an expert at the peak of the late Heaven-tier, and her wrath was no joking matter.

"You..." Naturally the Ice Palace Master could not repeat his words aloud. Under the astonished gazes of Xiao Qing and Feng Xiaoxiao, it suddenly struck her that Wei Zhao could also use secret voice transmission. Forget what he had said a moment ago; she asked in amazement, "You... you can use true qi materialization too?"

"So this is true qi materialization?" Wei Zhao shrugged. "It seems pretty simple."

"Simple!" The Ice Palace Master did not know what to say. True qi materialization was indeed a secret art only Heaven-tier experts could achieve, but that did not mean every Heaven-tier expert could manage it. Only cultivators as gifted as she and Xiao Qing could accomplish it — yet Wei Zhao had done it with ease, which left her feeling thoroughly crushed.

"Yes — is this not all there is to it?" Wei Zhao again converted his words into true qi and transmitted them to the Ice Palace Master. To him it felt a little like cheating, for his Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art was a universal energy-conversion art, capable of turning energy into any form whatsoever. So for Wei Zhao, converting speech into true qi was absurdly easy — and it cost him not the slightest bit of his own energy.

For this true qi was converted from the sound of his words, not truly condensed out of the true qi within his body.

"That is it! When you used true qi to blow apart my Ice Palace's wall, that too was true qi materialization. I did not think much of it at the time, but now it occurs to me — you were still some distance from that wall. It must have been true qi materialization!" the Ice Palace Master exclaimed.

Earlier, when Wei Zhao used compressed true qi to destroy Zhang Naipao's meridians and Feng Nitian's body, there was nothing so strange in that, for Wei Zhao had not shaped his true qi into a form and struck with it. Astonishing as it was, the Ice Palace Master had not found it beyond belief.

But in blowing apart the wall, Wei Zhao had undoubtedly used true qi materialization — shaping true qi into form and launching it outward. Many Heaven-tier experts could not do this, and even those who could could never materialize such a quantity of true qi.