Before the stall.
Wang Ba looked at Tang Ji's seemingly meaningful smile and froze inwardly. Then an unbelievable thought struck him.
Could he be...
He could not help glancing at the man's youthful appearance, then turning to look back at the brocade-robed elder still standing before the palace.
Actually!
Now that I look!
There really is a slight resemblance!
Tang Ji naturally could not guess what Wang Ba was thinking. Seeing that Wang Ba seemed to have understood, he concealed nothing further. He pointed at the elder before the palace and said with a smile:
"Once you get there, tell him you wish to enter the Hundred Questions Tower. He'll know what to do."
"Uh..."
Wang Ba immediately realized he had misunderstood. Still, seeing how certain Tang Ji looked gave him some confidence.
Mainly, their earlier conversation had given him some sense that this man's breadth of knowledge far exceeded his imagination. His identity had to be extraordinary, and someone like that truly had no need to toy with him.
Besides, there were people whose true nature you might never see clearly even after a lifetime together, while others were worth knowing from the very first meeting.
To Wang Ba, Tang Ji felt like the latter.
With that thought, a trace of confidence rose in Wang Ba.
"Of course, this is only a chance to obtain a place on the third layer. Whether you can seize it depends on you."
Tang Ji offered that reminder, then said no more.
Hearing this, Wang Ba solemnly cupped his hands and bowed.
"Thank you, fellow Daoist!"
With that, he rose and packed up his stall.
But when he looked up to speak to Tang Ji again, he discovered that the man had vanished once more.
He had not noticed a thing.
*So this