While the disciples travelled through the forest, the two boys stole glances at Long Di from time to time, which didn't escape the notice of the latter.
"What is it?"
Though Long Di thrived in awkward situations like a fish in water, he could see that it was starting to get unbearable for the two girls, so he decided to break the ice.
"Uhm, w—we…" Tie Lang fidgeted while his face turned red in embarrassment, unable to form a proper sentence.
"W—We're sorry that we thought you betrayed us earlier," Jia Yan finally said.
"So that's what it was?" Long Di was a bit shocked that this small matter weighed so heavily on the boys' hearts.
"What do you mean!? You were only trying to save us, but we went so far as to curse and said some unsavoury things about you and to you!" Tie Lang finally blurted out, ashamed of his lack of trust.
"Don't worry about it. It was meant to look real, and the mere fact that you showed such raw emotion in concern for your comrades is worthy of praise." Long Di said.
"Really?"
"Really," Long Di consoled the little demon race disciple.
"Which reminds me, Feng Yu, could you be a dear and take out those experts' storage rings, please?" Long Di asked, after a while.
When the matter of the storage rings was brought up, everyone's eyes lit up.
Though they could take a look at the storage whenever they wanted, propriety was practised here and since Long Di was the one who defeated those experts, the spoils were his to take out.
Nevertheless, when Long Di brought it up for them to deal with the matter of the rings, they all still became excited. Even their senior sister Feng Yu was grinning wildly.
They couldn't stop since they didn't want to stay in the valley, so they started to handle this whilst on the road.
"Okay, so give me the storage ring for the one whose voice still haunts us in our dreams."
Hearing Long Di's comment, all the disciples burst into laughter. Feng Yu quickly handed over the storage ring to Long Di without hesitation while he put it away.
As for the other storage rings, Long Di and she perused the contents of the rings, and a look of surprise showed on her face.
"Senior sister, what is it? Are the rings empty!?" Tie Lang asked in surprise.
"How could it be empty!? We're rich!"
When Tie Lang saw that Long Di's expression didn't change in the least, and that their senior sister lost her composure, he was afraid that something was wrong.
It was decided that only Long Di and Feng Yu would peruse the contents of the rings. Since one was their literal saviour, while the other was the most senior among them.
Counting the wealth within the rings and combining it, they counted ten million gold coins, a few spirit stones, along with several yellow-ranked weapons and a few orange-ranked weapons.
"Interesting," Long Di said after going through all this.
"Interesting? Is that all you have to say? Just interesting!? With this, we can revitalise our sect!" Tie Lang exclaimed when he heard of the wealth in all the rings.
"Oh really?" Long Di raised a brow at his words.
"Don't be so stupid, Tie Lang!" Feng Yu rebuked him. "We'd need much more than this to revitalise a sect. Not to mention that when it comes to certain things, mortal currency such as gold will never allow you to buy it."
"Oh," Tie Lang hung his head with an embarrassed smile.
He couldn't really be blamed for this, for it was his first time coming into contact with so much money.
"It's fine," Long Di waved it off. "On to other matters, Feng Yu, since you had a sword, I can assume that you're a sword user?" He asked.
Feng Yu nodded, wondering why he was asking about her weapon preference.
"Hm, here then."
An ornate sword with exquisite carvings with powerful fluctuations appeared in front of her.
"Ah!"
When Feng Yu saw the sword, she nearly tripped over herself in excitement.
"T—This is an orange-ranked medium-grade secular weapon! I—I can't accept this!" She quickly handed it back to Long Di.
He pushed it back into her embrace. "It's fine. It's good to put things like this in the hands of people who can use them better."
Seeing how adamant he was about this, Feng Yu finally accepted the sword. "Thank you, Long Di. I will remember this favour."
"Don't mention it," he said, not thinking too much about it. After all, they were not his, so it didn't hurt him to give them away.
If others saw what Long Di had given them, they would have most certainly thought he was mad.
The disciples knew how valuable these kinds of weapons were. It had to be known that secular weapons were divided into four ranks, white rank, yellow rank, orange rank and black rank, with each rank having a low, medium, and high grade as well.
Secular weapons on a whole were not something that they were qualified to think about. To begin with, white-rank secular weapons were only held by wealthy members of big sects.
Orange-rank secular weapons were things that were held by the elders of the big sects. Not to mention black-rank weapons, which were something that only people on the level of sect masters were qualified to touch.
If there were so many yellow and orange-rank secular weapons on these people, then it meant they were even above most big sects.
From this, it can be seen how ecstatic Feng Yu was, and it didn't end there. Long Di quickly called over the two boys and asked them about their weapon preferences as well.
It wasn't long before the two of them each received high-grade yellow-rank secular weapons of their own. It wasn't that there weren't any more orange-rank secular weapons; it was just that their weapon types weren't in those grades.
An example of this was Jia Yan who received an axe.
Lastly, Long Di turned to Shen Ling. "I'm guessing there's no weapon that you feel a particular attachment to. Am I right?"
Hearing this, Shen Ling's expression turned to one of mild surprise. "How did you kno—"
"I know a thing or two about Abyss Ghosts," after saying this, Long Di didn't thrust any weapon upon her.
Every disciple's expression turned to one of shock when they heard of this.
"H—Hold on!" Shen Ling took the initiative to stop Long Di from changing the subject, something that he is known to do quite expertly.
"What is it?" asked Long Di, a bit confused.
"What do you mean you know a thing or two about Abyss Ghosts!?"
Surprisingly, Shen Ling wasn't the one who asked this question, instead it was Feng Yu.
Abyss Ghosts were a race shrouded in a fog of mystery. Documents, scrolls, and books that included information on them were scarce and far too few.
The most prevalent information about them that still existed referred to them as a race of tragedy that called a calamity upon themselves. Not even the calamity itself was described.
As a result, information about their attributes, properties, or even their characteristics was practically non-existent.
However, that didn't stop them from being hunted down, and any power that dared to harbour one would become a public enemy and would be in danger of being eradicated.
"I only know a few things," Long Di admitted.
"Well, a few things are more than most people in the world!" Feng Yu was even more ecstatic than Shen Ling to hear about this.
There were times in the village when she would see Shen Ling daydream with a forlorn look on her face.
She knew that Shen Ling was curious about her people, but there was too little information available and the elders refused to talk about it.
"I can't talk about it," Long Di admitted. It was like a basin of cold water poured on Feng Yu's head.
"Why not!?" Feng Yu asked.
"Can't say," Long Di shrugged.
In truth, Long Di got all his information about the Abyss Ghost from the Destiny Scale. He didn't know why, but shortly after it ejected Long Di from his own mind sea. It told Long Di a little about Abyss Ghost, but nothing after that. It also told him this wasn't something he should talk about willy-nilly.
"Wait a minute!" Feng Yu wasn't done here. "You can't just leave us on a cliffhanger like that—"
"Before that, how many times have you all come to this so-called demon city?" Long Di asked, cutting her off.
"Huh?" The disciples were caught a bit off guard by the question, but they still told Long Di that they only came a handful of times.
"And how many times was Shen Ling a part of these excursions?" asked Long Di, his expression still impassive.
"Oh."
It didn't take long for them to realise that Shen Ling never came with them when they came to the city.
Each one of them followed an elder to the city at least twice, Feng Yu actually visited times before, but Shen Ling had never gone, they didn't even realise.
"Let me tell you this right now. There is a reason for that. They don't tell you certain things because they don't want to get you implicated, the secrets surrounding her are nothing that you guys can handle." Long Di's voice rarely took on a serious tone, but the disciples could hear it clearly.
"I can see the outlines of the city in the distance. Do me a favour and don't bring up Abyss Ghosts, I don't know how much you know about them, but they are a taboo-like existence to everyone else and you can get yourself and everyone you care about killed if you talk about them wantonly."
The disciples' expressions changed once more when they heard about this. They never knew that something as uncontrollable as one's own race could call down sudden destruction upon themselves.
"Here," after a while, Long Di passed a storage ring to each disciple.
"You'll find 2.5 million gold coins in each ring. Something tells me that finding whatever herb we need won't be easy. When we get to the city, let me do all the talking and this will be painless."
The disciples went on their way, unaware that a pair of eyes were looking at them from afar.