"Ah, Dean, what's wrong?"
Zhu Qingyu looked at Dean Zheng, who seemed a little off.
She cried out in alarm, hurried over, and steadied him, her face full of confusion.
"Qingyu, did I just give away the Fulong Red Fruit?"
Dean Zheng sat in his chair, a dazed look on his face.
With anything else, he wouldn't have acted this way. After all, he was the dean of an academy, with the status and strength to match.
But the Fulong Red Fruit was different. All the academy's branches combined had only three of them.
It could practically turn someone into a powerful Awakened in a very short time.
"Huh?"
Zhu Qingyu blinked. "Yes. Didn't you say Mr. Lu had great potential and that you didn't want to waste a talent?"
She was puzzled. The dean had given it away himself, yet now he was asking her about it.
Could it be that he regretted it?
They could still ask for it back.
Dean Zheng was a shrewd old hand. He saw the confusion in the young woman's eyes and continued, "Lu Yuan is an extraordinary man, and extremely wary. If you approach him with an agenda, he won't agree, even if there's something in it for him. We have to win his favor little by little."
"He's refusing to work with the academy for now, but that doesn't mean he'll always refuse. We have to be patient."
He'd considered it carefully. He knew that asking outright wouldn't work, so he'd simply given away something valuable without revealing his real intentions.
That might even work better.
Of course,
Dean Zheng couldn't guarantee it. He could only say it was worth a try.
"I see." Zhu Qingyu was clever and understood what the dean meant.
She looked toward the spot where Lu