It seemed they had been in seclusion too long and their minds had grown sluggish. When the boss tells you she cannot offer a satisfactory price, if you remain silent or refuse, you would likely provoke her displeasure.
When the boss says she cannot pay what you deserve, the correct response is to flatter her and immediately declare that serving the boss has never been about money, that you would do it even without pay, and without any discount.
Thus, the two quickly expressed their stance, saying in unison, “Your subordinates wish only to serve the Lord with utmost devotion, regardless of personal gain or loss. We beg the Lord to permit us three to leave the island!”
Wu Fiona gave a light hum through her nose and nodded with a half-smile. “It is enough that you have this intention. Capturing that little vixen Lin Wan’er relies on cunning, not brute force. Sending you would indeed be overkill.”
Wu Paulo turned his thoughts quickly. Hearing Wu Fiona say this, he roughly guessed that she certainly had other tasks to assign the three.
So he immediately asked respectfully, “May we ask what other matters we can undertake to ease the Lord’s burdens?”
Wu Fiona went along with it and said, “Over these years, cultivation has consumed enormous quantities of spiritual stones and pills. The depletion of heavenly materials and earthly treasures is a bottomless pit. I wish to seize the time to gather some essential materials for future needs. However, many materials are beyond the reach of ordinary people. Therefore, I hope the three elders will travel the world for a while and see if you can harvest anything. If you find spiritual stones, in principle I will not interfere. If you find magical artefacts, you may keep them for yourselves. But those rare pill-refining materials that appear only once in ten thousand years are of no use to you if kept. Bring them back to me. After I refine them into pills, I can allocate fifty percent to you three.”
In this world, there are many supreme treasures that those with insufficient cultivation find difficult to obtain, especially rare and exotic beasts in places ordinary people have never visited or even seen. If one encounters an array left by an ancient cultivator before death and breaks it, there might be tremendous fortune.
However, Wu Fiona was inherently suspicious. Coupled with the vast enterprise of the Poqing Society, she dared not venture out alone to seek opportunities. Thus, she planned to dispatch the three grand elders separately to search for those opportunities on her behalf.
Magical artefacts and spiritual stones she truly did not care much about. What she truly valued were high-grade pill recipes and raw materials.
She had never taught anyone in the Wu family the art of pill refinement. Therefore, including the three grand elders, even if they obtained recipes and materials, they could not refine them. As long as they found these and brought them back, she could refine large quantities of pills.
She knew clearly in her heart that if she could not obtain the Hundred Turns Thousand Returns Pill soon, in the coming century she would certainly descend into madness. She had to make these Wu family descendants descend into madness with her. Otherwise, the Poqing Society would inevitably become estranged from her.
Making the Wu family descend into madness was not difficult. They already had wealth and status. What could control them was lifespan.
If there were large quantities of pills, she could halt the iteration of the current Wu family leadership, thereby making this leadership layer utterly loyal to her. Letting them enjoy several more decades of power and the peak of life, they would certainly become infinitely addicted.
This was a decades-long plan of raising venomous creatures in a jar. Several decades later, when the Wu family leaders of the five military governor offices all reached over a hundred years old, their dependence on her would only grow stronger. Because if anything happened to her, or if she cut off their pills, they would undoubtedly die.
In this way, they would face the same predicament as her.
If she could not live, she would turn the world upside down.
If they could not live, they too would certainly be willing to accompany her in complete madness!
