The Destiny Scale's aura pervaded Long Di's mind sea as if it wished to advise the young man to back down, but Long Di remained undaunted.
After a while, a single word echoed across the void. 'Fine.'
****
'Good stuff, you can feed me the information from here while my consciousness goes back outside. Anywho, suddenly, the atmosphere has become a bit… unbearable.' Long Di's figure began to fade from before the Destiny Scale.
It left a few words to Long Di before he vanished entirely. 'You should get those wounds looked at. They've been with you for a while…'
'Yeah, I'm afraid I'm going to need more than first-aid for this.' Long Di's figure was gone, but his last words still rang out with the slightest hint of… one could maybe call it melancholy.
…
"Long Di! Talk to meh!"
Pa!
"I'm away—"
"Heavens! He's still looking at me with those soul-sucking, death-filled eyes! Wake up!"
Pa!
"Hold on, Why are you sti—"
"Oh no! Now he's mumbling foolishness as brain-deadness sets in!"
Shu!
Long Di quickly caught Tie Lang's hand before it made a return trip to assault his face.
"First of all, brain-deadness is not a thing. Second of all, how long have you been slapping me?" Long Di's awareness re-emerged only to feel that his cheek was numb.
"You're back!" Tie Lang was ecstatic. He was truly glad that Long Di was alright.
Hearing the latter's question, he proudly declared, "I started slapping you the moment you went braindead-ish! It's a little hard to know when, since your eyes and expression lack any sort of feeling. Don't know how you manage to do that and still make it look cool, but I knew you were in danger somehow!"
Long Di looked at Tie Lang's beaming smile and thought to himself. 'He really does care. He's an irreparable danger to himself and others, but he really does care.'
If it was anyone else, Long Di would have been astonishingly wrong about Tie Lang's reasons for slapping him, since no one is quite as stupid as Tie Lang.
However, he believed him because Tie Lang was kind of, in a way, his almost friend. Plus, Long Di's social skills were so unused that it was practically atrophied. If we compare Long Di's social skills to limbs, he would only be able to wiggle his big toe.
"Why were you so out of it?" Feng Yu asked with a gentle smile on her face.
She was smiling simply because she found happiness in seeing Tie Lang slapping the living daylight out of Long Di. She knew that slapping him wouldn't work in getting him out of his stupor any faster, but darn it, if it wasn't satisfying to watch.
Long Di rubbed his cheek before replying. "I was getting some information out of the exposition stone."
"The what kind of stone?" Feng Yu's smile faded before being replaced by confusion.
"Don't worry about it," Long Di couldn't bother to explain.
He surveyed the area they were in. He had to admit that the temperature at the moment, whilst not unbearable, was certainly reaching that level.
'Whilst I have this moment of reprieve, I should try my best to work on my own cultivation method as well. Its shortcomings are painfully apparent now. First of all, I need to somehow increase its capacity for lightning tribulation energy so I have more to work with. Work on the absorption speed so I don't have to spend so long trying to get back to my peak condition. Those injuries I had incurred back at the not-relic were troublesome as hell. At least I was able to heal with some of those miscellaneous medicines in the Peach Blossom Sage's stash.'
Long Di decided to put all this at the back of his mind for now, since it was gonna take a lot of thinking and turned his attention to the two boys.
"You two, Tie Lang, Jia Yan, do me a favour and sit cross-legged right now, please."
"You said earlier that we should go further in this territory, right?" Jia Yan asked.
"Just… do it. I'll be doing something to help you out a lot." He advised.
When they assumed the lotus position in a comfortable location, a short distance away from where they were initially, he explained. "Due to new evidence that has been provided to me, I have learned that you two specifically do NOT need to destroy your cultivation base since you haven't reached far enough for it to influence your foundation in the future."
"What do you mean we don't need to destroy our cultivation base anymore!?" Tie Lang nearly jumped up in fright.
Long Di turned his attention to Tie Lang. "I don't know how to say that any simpler than I just did," Long Di replied. "Just listen to me. I will do my best to help you guys reach new heights."
Feng Yu and Shen Ling just stood to the side, listening to what Long Di was going to have the two do.
"Now, based on your cultivation method, you use the ambient fire-attributed spiritual energy to cultivate your fleshly body… that sounds so wrong when I say it out loud. Anyway, I'm going to want you two to take this."
Long Di waved his hand and out of nowhere, two glittering gems that shone like stars appeared. As Long Di held them, he immediately felt relaxed and even felt the environment cool down a bit.
"What are those!?" Tie Lang asked in surprise.
"That meme is outdated. Stop that," said Long Di to Tie Lang.
"A-A-Are t-those real—" Feng Yu, being the most knowledgeable out of the group, was shocked beyond belief.
"Yes, they are real spirit stones." Long Di advised.
"Where'd you get those from!?" She looked around in a panic, trying to make sure that no one was spying on them from afar to see what Long Di had taken out.
This was unneeded as Long Di had long sent out his spiritual force in a radius of hundreds of metres to make sure that there were no peeping toms close by.
"These are some of the things that I received from the Peach Blossoms Sage's Spiritual Intent as payment for my services," replied Long Di.
"Payment? Payment for what?" Feng Yu asked.
"Can't say anymore. There are certain things that I need to accomplish in the future and my telling you what it is will more or less kill you. I can't be bothered to explain karma to you now, but once you grow strong enough, you will come to know what it is."
When Feng Yu heard this, a frown found its way across her face. This was basically what Shen Ling told her as well, and she found it hurtful that they were keeping secrets from her.
However, it wouldn't help to linger on it, as she knew that Long Di would never tell her once he decided on it.
"Okay guys, I think this is really wasteful of the spirit stones, but I'll think of this as an investment. Now, spirit stones can be thought of as pure spiritual energy that has been condensed into the form you see before you. They are a natural treasure of heaven and earth and in this sense, unlike certain herbs and medicinal pills, they can be used without reserve and you needn't fear any future sequela. Now, when extracting the spiritual energy within the stone, because of your cultivation method, it should be converted to the fire-attributed spiritual energy that you'll need to cultivate your fleshly body."
"Hold on! Are you sure it's wise to use something so precious on us!?" Feng Yu was worried that Long Di was being unnecessarily wasteful in an attempt to make them a little better than they were.
In her eyes, she wasn't sure if they themselves were worth such an expenditure.
Though inexperienced in most social conventions, Long Di realised this was the case based on what little clues there were. "Stop thinking that you're so cheap that you're not worth being spent on."
"B-But I—"
"No buts," Long Di cut her off before turning his attention to the two.
"Take this," He handed over one spirit stone each to them. "Now I want you to run your cultivation method and try to extract the spiritual energy present in the stone."
Tie Lang and Jia Yan each held a spirit stone and closed their eyes. As they drove their cultivation technique, their skin turned the same faint shade of red that Feng Yu's skin did when she ran the cultivation method before.
Not long after, the faint heat they exuded began to rise at an exponential rate! Before a mesmerising sight came into view.
Whoosh!
Suddenly, flames covered the two boys from head to toe.
"T-Tie Lang! Jia Yan!" Feng Yu and Shen Ling flew into a panic before rushing towards the two boys.
"Keep back. They're fine." Long Di had to keep them both back from disturbing the two boys.
As he pointed in their direction, the two girls could see that it was not simple fire that covered the two boys, but a powerful fiery aura!
Tie Lang and Jia Yan were barely discernible in the fiery aura their technique conjured.
"What's happening to them!?" Feng Yu looked to Long Di for answers.
"This large fiery aura is a result of most of the energy of the spirit stone being released into the atmosphere," he explained.
"T-They're wasting it then! Tell them to stop so they can do it right!" Feng Yu nearly choked on her own words when she heard this.
"They can't help it. They can only absorb so much energy at a time at their current level. The rest that they are unable to absorb and use is lost to the heavens and earth."
Long Di truly did consider it an investment in having Tie Lang and Jia Yan use spirit stones at this stage. Because of their low cultivation realm, they could only absorb so much spiritual energy at once.
Feng Yu felt a pain in her heart when she saw this.
"Ugh!"
A groan of pain could be heard coming from Tie Lang, followed shortly by Jia Yan.
"Are they truly okay?" Shen Ling asked when seeing their current state.
"They are. I'm assuming that you guys never experienced this acute pain before because of how slow you were going in the past. However, body cultivation is not something that is painless. Considering the name of this method, I would think that the fire is literally forging your body, and much like a blade in the forge, it tempers your body like steel, so that you may call upon more power in the future."
These were Long Di's thoughts as he observed their progress.
"Okay, now it's your turn." Long Di turned his attention to Feng Yu.
"Alright, I'm ready." Feng Yu took a deep breath and assumed the lotus position as well. She even held her hand out for a spirit stone.
"Just to confirm, you have a cauldron already, right?"
"Yeah," Feng Yu confirmed.
"Good to know. Here's your stone," Long Di handed her a spirit stone as well. "Do not move on to the next cauldron. You currently have a medial-grade cauldron. I'm going to need you to make that not a medial-grade cauldron."
"Isn't that too va-"
"Shen Ling," His gaze then landed on the abyss ghost, who stared back at him a bit nervous. "What grade cauldrons do you have?"
"Uhm, my first cauldron is at the medial-grade, and my second one is at the high grade." Shen Ling shyly replied.
Long Di raised a brow at this. "Impressive."
"T-Thank you," Shen Ling replied.
"So, I'm going to need to destroy your two cauldrons."