'Long Di! You must become stronger!'
'What the…'
Long Di in a somewhat ethereal form looked around in confusion as he appeared to be in his mind sea, the place where his spiritual force originated.
The clouds above in his mind sea twisted and contorted as if compelled by some terrifying will.
'Become stronger!'
A booming voice resounded once again, sending tumultuous waves rising and crashing within the sea.
The pressure it exuded was suffocating. Though this was his mind sea, Long Di was like a leaf flittering about in a hurricane, unable to stop it.
'Okay, so if you could stop talking so loudly and causing tsunamis to keep rising in my mind sea, that would be grreeaaaat…'
'Become stro-'
'Is this the Destiny Scale talking?'
'......... Nooooo…'
'Though I may or may not have heard voices in my head in the past to cope with… issues, it does get kind of obvious when the only thing in my mind sea at the moment is a self-proclaimed mysterious steel stele.'
'I never proclaimed to be mysterious!'
'And the idiot says…'
'Darn it! Your intelligence is truly daunting, Keyholder.'
'Not really. Bugs used the same thing on Daffy plenty of times, gotta appreciate the classics.'
As this was said, Long Di looked above to see the clouds above parting to reveal the Destiny Scale floating down like the banished relic of some recondite immortal.
It eventually floated before Long Di. It was still as imposing as ever, and the air it exuded was one of royal prestige.
The text that Long Di saw before was gone, replaced with the mottled and faded characters from when it was in the Thunder Cloud City.
Long Di's expression remained the same as ever as he stared at the Destiny Scale, 'Soooo… why am I here, and what is the Keyholder?'
'You are not yet strong enough to know.'
The august voice of the Destiny Scale resounded once more as it hovered before Long Di's small figure.
'Not strong enough to know why am I here, or not strong enough to know what is the Keyholder?'
'Not strong enough to know what is the keyholder.'
'Then may I know why I'm here?'
'Yes, you may. You are here becau—'
'Hold on there. Can I trade this answer in for the answer to another question?'
'Is this about the Keyholder again?'
'... No?'
'Then what is it?'
'I would like to know about the holder of… keys?'
'Interesting…'
'What is?'
'I have no use for and have never experienced the human impulse known as emotion, but I believe I am being overwhelmed by one of them right now.'
'Is it unutterable admiration for me to have come this far at such a young age?'
'Close… it is profound annoyance.'
'Then let's change the subject. Why does my strength affect me knowing what is the Keyholder?'
'Your definition of changing the subject directly involves a deep dive into the very subject we're supposed to be changing?'
'I'm a rebel.'
The Destiny Scale could say nothing more in the face of that.
In truth, the Destiny Scale had existed for a long time, a time that was practically inestimable.
As a result, it had nearly unmatched experience in seeing through the hearts of men and knowing how to deal with them, but this Long Di was a person that escaped the realm of common sense that pervaded the cultivation world.
So it found it very hard to converse with the boy or even beat him in a verbal bout.
'Why can't you tell me anything?' Long Di finally asked.
The Destiny Scale remained silent for a while, as if contemplating its next words. 'Do you know of karma?'
'Sweet burning tire of Jericho, it's one of those cultivation worlds?'
'You know of karma!?'
The Destiny Scale was a bit shocked that a child as young as Long Di knew about the implications of karma!
'Let me guess, if I know about things that go beyond my capabilities, I will pay retribution for it in the future in some obscure, vague way that is practically a heavenly tribulation, am I right?'
'I would… phrase it differently, but that's basically the situation, yes.'
Realisation hit Long Di harder than his uncle ever did. 'Dear god, it's real. I thought it was just a creative and lazy plot device in some cultivation novels that justifies keeping secrets in the novel for no good reason.'
'I'm sorry, cultivation what now?'
'Don't worry about it,' Long Di waved off the Destiny Scale as he thought about the repercussions that this new knowledge brought him.
He looked back at the Destiny Scale. 'We'll talk a bit later. I'm most likely unconscious to everyone else and knowing those children, they're more or less worrying themselves to death.'
'Come back here when you grow stronger, destined one.'
The Destiny Scale floated back up beyond the clouds, eventually disappearing from Long Di's sight.
Soon the environment itself, the sea, clouds and all became blurry all around Long Di. It wasn't long before complete darkness was all that remained.
"Hhmm…"
"H—Hey, I think he's waking up!"
Long Di's eyes opened a crack, allowing him to see the blurred figures of the four disciples.
"L—Long Di, a—are you okay?"
"What happened? You just fainted after killing that cultivator."
"Do you need any milk?"
"Would you like a laxative since you were pretty heavy to—"
The young disciples pelted the still muddle-headed Long Di with questions when they saw him waking back up.
He didn't bother to answer their questions right away and instead looked around, trying to get a bearing on their current location.
"Where are we?"
He realised that the bodies were gone and the layout of the trees looked completely different compared to before.
"We had to move from where we were before, but we're still in the valley," Shen Ling answered.
Long Di looked at them slightly surprised, though no one could tell. "You managed to move me? Interesting."
"Yeah, yeah, interesting, but why did you faint like that? You gave us a scare when you fell like that," Feng Yu asked him once again.
Though this Long Di was a bit… eccentric in his bearing, she couldn't deny the fact that he saved them, so her worry was understandable when he suddenly fell like that.
"Do you know how strong that man was?" He asked them.
When he saw all of them shaking their heads, he issued a sigh before he loosened the top part of his robe.
When Shen Ling and Feng Yu saw this, their faces turned bright red before they turned away in a hurry.
"W—What are you doing!?"
The flustered Feng Yu asked in shock. Shen Ling said nothing but continued to cover her face with her hands, peeking occasionally through the gaps between her fingers.
The two boys, Tie Lang and Jia Yan, though faring much better than the girls, found Long Di's actions baffling and were unsure how to act.
"That cultivator I was fighting last, was almost an entire realm above me," he said, ignoring their varying reactions.
"He was, as he put it, a half-step cauldron core flame fusion expert, sweet mother molasses that's a mouthful. I swear, I'm gonna start abbreviating some of those later names or just use the titles for each realm and be done with it."
When he said this, the embarrassment and awkwardness plaguing everyone receded like the tide as everyone's expression save for Long Di's turned to one of shock and horror.
Their minds were working overtime trying to understand what kind of demon was this before them.
It had to be known that fighting above realms was not something easy to do, even for the most gifted of geniuses.
Of course, this difficulty was not present when dealing with those outside of sects.
After all, the cultivation resources between the two were much too different. This was why even Ao Lan could easily suppress the family leaders back in Thunder Cloud City, though she had a lower cultivation base than the latter.
Her foundation was much better than theirs, plus the quality of her spiritual qi was leagues above in terms of purity as well.
"How far away from the site did you all carry me?"
Asking this question, the faces of the disciples became red once more, "W—We weren't able to move you very far, only a mile or so…"
Long Di nodded once more as if this was expected, "Well, this is why."
Long Di cleared the top part of his robe where a crude-looking breast plate-like item came into view.
"What is th—"
"A training item given to me by my master," Long Di answered.
This was the item that caused Long Di's jewels to contract in shock a few chapters ago when he felt its weight.
Uncle Tian Lu wanted Long Di to work on his physical body as much as possible in preparation for the later training he had in mind.
These pieces of equipment had runes on them that increased their weight to an unbearable level.
Though it didn't show on his face at the time, this was the reason why he was breathing so hard when he was killing the cultivators earlier.
The strain he was under to move the way he did was something only he knew about. Of course, it was these very same armaments that ended up saving his life.
"These things are pretty heavy and so they were the reason why you couldn't carry me farther awa…"
"What is it?" One of the disciples asked when they saw that Long Di paused for some reason.
"It just dawned on me that one of you asked if I wanted a laxative since I was so heavy. Were you actually and literally implying that I was that heavy because I'm full of sh—"
"Focus on the important things, please!" Feng Yu chided Long Di when she saw how quickly his priorities shifted.
"Fine, whatever," Long Di relented, putting aside what he thought was truly important to lay their curiosity to rest.
"You see this dent?"
As he said this, they could see a handprint-shaped dent on the chest plate portion of his training equipment.
"The Bronze Seat risked aggravating his injuries when he used his full strength to land a full-powered strike. Though it eventually became his undoing, without these things, cumbersome they may be, they are responsible for saving my life."
"Ugh."
"A—Are you sure you should be forcing yourself like this?" Shen Ling shyly asked when she saw Long Di was already getting up from where they bought him.
"It's okay, I'm more resilient than you'd think. In addition, we need to leave the valley quickly. Come on."
Since Long Di showed signs of leaving, the disciples didn't dare to tarry and couldn't wait to leave this place.
It was still as beautiful as ever, but there was now a sombre atmosphere that permeated the air here.
'It looks like my cultivation technique needs some more fine-tuning indeed, I was careless earlier when I wanted to name it. It's a good thing that master stopped me.''
Long Di's internal injuries were healing, but it was taking a long time to do so.
Since the absorption speed of the cultivation technique was lacking, it was a task to use the energy to heal himself.
In addition, the earlier battle exhausted the tribulation lightning reserves he had in his body.
'So I need to find a way to increase the absorption speed. Not only that, I need to find a way to increase the amount it can hold in my body at full capacity, I need to break and bring my cap to greater heights.'
"Sighs… So much to do."