He simply looked at the energy of the cores becoming more unstable and asked himself a very relevant question, ‘Was genius too strong a word?’

Boom!

****

A mighty explosion, akin to the power of nine peak 1st Star Core Martial Masters went off!

The blast spread like a rampaging beast, razing the nearby peaks and hills to the ground! It showed no intention of slowing down as it continued to destroy the land with reckless abandon.

It was deafening in nature as it travelled along, showing no mercy to whatever it encountered. However, compared to the volcano in the distance, it was far from reaching the apex.

Finally, the explosion began to die down. The unstoppable momentum it displayed quickly petered out until, eventually, it died down completely.

The blast devastated the terrain for miles all around. The peak where Long Di sat was nowhere to be found.

In truth, the peaks for miles all around were nowhere to be found. It was actually quite lucky that the Destiny Scale decided to leave with the disciples, as it would have been caught up in the explosion.

Of course, if need be, it could protect the disciples. But its power was nowhere near its peak, as the absorption process wasn’t perfect and the amount of tribulation lightning within Long Di’s body was limited.

So its power was less than 1% of its peak. In addition, it was using this less than 1% to help the disciples and if it could avoid using that to protect against the human calamity known as Long Di, that would be a win for everyone.

Rumble…

An inconspicuous mound of rubble shook for seemingly no reason. The smaller rocks rolled down to lighten the mound’s weight by virtually zero.

“Bwah!”

Long Di’s head burst out of the ground like a reverse ostrich before he looked around in confusion at the destruction he wrought.

“Oh yeah,” he nodded. “Genius is definitely too strong a word.”

He slowly climbed out of the rubble with unsteady hands.

Normally, an expert at Long Di’s level would be able to escape from such a predicament with no trouble.

However, when he finally erupted from the mound completely, it became obvious what caused the struggle.

His body was filled with wounds of varying degrees. Some of which were so deep that the bone was visible!

Blood painted the stones and rubble he climbed atop of. They streamed down in different directions like several ominous rivers.

If anyone saw his current state, they would be filled with a chill. They would be creeped out even more at seeing his calm demeanour despite such injuries.

Long Di expressionlessly looked at the injuries that covered his body before his hand vaguely shook, summoning a spirit stone.

"Sighs…"

"It's a good thing I brought myself to peak form before I started this, or I would be deader than the first time I died. I wonder how many people can say that?”

Long Di was lucky beyond reason. Of course this could be due to the blessing of luck he got from the goddess. In any case, this wasn’t without work on his part.

What had happened the second before the explosion was Long Di ejecting the nine pseudo-crystallised cores of spiritual qi outside of his body.

The cores were his creation in the end so he had a bit of control over them. Sure he wouldn’t be able to use them due to their berserk nature at the time, but he would have been able to do something as simple as, say, moving them, which he did.

He did give them up in the beginning, however, what he gave up on was getting them under control. After he moved them to the outside, he tried to distance them from himself before he erected a lightning shield of sorts.

It wasn’t a technique or anything, it was just him shaping his lightning qi into that of a shield.

However, this defense didn’t hold up all that well against the cores’ eventual detonation. After all, it was nine of them that went off, that was like nine Long Di’s.

The only reason he was alive was because the speed at which he sent them away from himself was insane. In that short time the distance they travelled caused the explosion to weaken by the time it reached him.

Before long the spirit stone he had, lost its glimmer before disintegrating. The remains of the stone fell between his fingers akin to ash-like sand.

“That wasn’t even a minute,” Long Di was a bit surprised that the stone was already used. It should be remembered that the disciples were still using the one spirit stone to aid in their cultivation even now.

“It looks like my absorption speed isn’t the problem. Heavenly Levyance tribulation lightning or any tribulation lightning for that matter isn’t something that exists in large quantities. It looks like I can only increase my capacity but I can see where that got me. Where did I go wrong?”

Long Di sunk into thought as he brought out a stone in each hand and ran his cultivation technique to replenish his reserves so that he could heal himself. An expert at his level could recover from injuries like this given enough time.

“Let’s see, last time I tried to connect all the cores at the same time. Maybe doing it one by one is the best way. Alright, let’s test it.”

Deciding this and not wanting to waste too much time, he went on a spirit stone binge and absorbed countless stones to not only heal himself, but to also construct the nine cores once more.

‘Okay, just need to be careful,’ Long Di’s consciousness carefully integrated the first core to his cultivation technique. The integration process was complicated, but because he was only dealing with one, it wasn’t too much to handle.

‘Finally,’ Long Di wiped the non-existent sweat from his consciousness’s forehead.

The first core’s set up wasn’t completed as yet. What he needed to do now was to connect this core to his dantian so that his cultivation technique would have perfect symbiosis between the two.

However, it would be best to do this when all the cores were integrated with the cultivation method first so that everything would sync up like clock-work.

With this in mind, he got to work on the second core. However, in the midst of the integration process with the second core, the energy became chaotic once again.

‘Crap.’ Long Di’s consciousness apathetically stared at the ticking bomb before he ejected it outside his body like before.

Boom!

Another explosion around 9x weaker than the first went off, though Long Di erected another shield, it still broke apart in the ensuing explosion!

Each core was a Long Di at his peak strength. This meant that this shield which was constructed using some of his energy couldn't stand up to an explosion that was composed of all his energy.

However, the distance saved him once again. Of course, he still ended up being flung quite far away.

“Darn it,” Long Di mirrored a meerkat sticking his head out the ground and was still confused why it didn’t work.

“Maybe I should create the cores just before I connect them to the technique, instead of having them wait.”

Long Di took out a pile of spirit stones and got to work once more.

The end result was…

Boom!

“Hold on, do I…”

Boom!

“What about…”

Boom!

“Am I a joke to you…”

Boom!

“Nuclear Gandhi said…”

Boom!

“Okay, maybe I should go about this another way.”

Several explosions later, Long Di took a break from failing and was trying to see where he was going wrong with this.

“Why is this so hard? Everytime I try to connect the second core specifically, I always blow up.”

The first core was still connected to the cultivation technique inside, it just wasn’t connected to his dantian yet. So one core was ready for use, the others were just not going his way.

He brought out his spirit stone and ran his cultivation technique. He brought out his cauldrons and made them revolve them around him once more.

They inspired him to go down this route, maybe they had a way to fix it. He stared at the pearls that were inserted into the surface of each cauldron, and kinda felt jealous that his cauldrons didn’t have to go through the struggles of being blown up like he was.

He saw the lone pearl that shone with grey light making its usual rounds.

All pearls shone with a light but only one at the moment could be thought of as truly lit.

When this thought came to mind, Long Di’s head got to work since this was eerily similar to what he was going through

“What a darn second,.” Long Di slapped his forehead when this idea sprouted. ‘If this works, I will feel like the biggest idiot in the wor… well, let’s not get crazy.’

Long Di had an idea that was both simple and complex in its operation.

He quickly recovered to his peak and then had his consciousness descend into the space where his dantian resided once more.

There was only one core inside. He tried to do it one by one and expelled the extra cores that would have impeded this theory, but as can be seen, this theory was quickly disproven.

In any case, Long Di drove the spiritual qi in his body and created nine clumps of lightning qi, just like before. They were much smaller than before, so it was obvious they were not the full manifestation of his current spiritual qi reserves.

Using his spiritual force, he then condensed these clumps into the same pseudo-crystallised core he had one of at the moment.

The only difference from before was that these cores were hollow. They didn’t have anything inside at the moment. Long Di only used a fraction of his spiritual qi to create the cores but had them act like containers instead.

Small changes had to be made to the first one so that it acted like the rest but this was simple work, of course it was still filled with energy.

So at the moment, Long Di had nine cores, where only one was lit, and the others were dim.

He then went ahead and tried to integrate them once more. He refused to blink (even though he didn’t need to since this was his consciousness, but just roll with it) since he didn’t want to miss the point where life got all explode-ish.

The integration process went smoothly with every single one of them. It was so easy and seamless that Long Di partly wondered if he suffered brain damage from the explosions and was hallucinating. After all, he did go through a LOT of explosions.

After some time, the integration process was completed and not wasting any more time, he then connected all nine cores at the same time to his dantian.

Vrmm!

His body trembled when this took place. His consciousness could clearly see the spiritual qi between his dantian and the first core running back and forth in a mesmerising fashion. The rest of the cores remained unlit and would stay this way for a while.

The reason why this worked was because Long Di realised that this method was effectively following the rules that his cauldron followed.

So Long Di was a one star Core Martial Master. Following this rule, he, with only having one lit spiritual qi core was keeping the cultivation technique in balance with his current achievements.

It was like a child that went to a school with different grades, and went to the 11th grade class simply because he could walk there. However, this didn’t mean the child was an eleventh grader, he simply got too big for his britches. So this was Long Di before, a child that was too big for his britches.

Of course, by having the other cores remain empty in their pseudo-crystallised form, he could fill them whenever his cultivation base increased. So at the moment, Long Di had twice the spiritual qi reserves of cultivators within the same realm.

“Alright, so this is enough for now. Need to get the little ones’ shock therapy ready.”

Long Di got up off the ground and headed in the direction that the Destiny Scale said it would take the kids.

…

Jia Yan, Tie Lang and Feng Yu were all cultivating bitterly inside the domain of the Destiny Scale when all three of them shuddered at the same time.

The destiny scale noticing wondered what was wrong, [Did something happen?]

“No,” Feng Yu answered. “It just felt like… a scourge of some kind has just decided to descend upon us. Is that weird?”

The Destiny Scale, now aware of who was on the way towards them remained silent, but it did think to itself, ‘You all did nothing to deserve this, but something tells me it will be funny. So I will just remain here looking ominous and sagacious.’