Protector Gang’s brain short-circuited for a split second before it came back to normal. Yet, the only thought it was capable of projecting, is as follows;

‘SHIT! I’M DEAD!’

****

Protector Gang, who was still currently in mid-jump towards Long Di, yet still giving us enough time to explain so many things in pure detail, like any good anime character, was despairing inside.

Because, not only did Zhen Song offend an unknown junior, he offended a freaking lightning element cultivator!

However, Zhen Song didn’t stop there. He also offended someone who was also able to wield fricking saber intent!

But was Zhen Song satisfied? Oh no, of course not! Because that same lightning element cultivator who could wield saber intent, was also a two-star core genius at the motherloving Core Flame Evocation realm!

However, before the shock could pass, the lightning that danced furiously around the blade dimmed in intensity to a relatively tame level, before disappearing entirely.

Long Di wanted to feel out the power of saber intent, so he didn’t think adding lightning qi to the mix was necessary. That was just overkill. However, you may ask, why did he do it before? That’s easy. He wanted to flex.

When Protector Gang saw that the lightning disappeared, he naturally felt better, but was still apprehensive. At this point, he could only use his physique to overpower Long Di. He had more battle experience than the latter since he appeared young-ish, so surely he could win… right?

Even though all of this took a long time to describe, it happened in a flash and Protector Gang finally appeared before Long Di.

He fired a punch towards Long Di. The air screamed in protest at the power of his blow.

Long Di reacted quickly and used the bronze saber to parry the blow, offsetting Protector Gang’s punch!

Because his blow was defused, there was a bit of time before he could readjust himself to continue his attack. Long Di silently circulated a bit of the somatic essence granted by the Bone Chapter and attacked in this bit of time releasing a slash in his direction!

A ringing sound reverberated as the saber intent that enveloped the saber all came crashing towards Protector Gang!

“Metal Bulwark!”

Protector Gang quickly drew back his arms into a cross block and a metallic sheen covered both of them. They appeared sturdy enough to handle any blow; but how could Protector Gang defend against saber intent!?

What was the role of the saber? To tear through, to rip asunder, to overwhelm and to destroy!

The saber landed on Protector Gang’s arms in a clear trajectory for all to see, and tore through his defences without much resistance!

Bam !

He was not able to fully block that blow!

He was sent flying back until he crashed into a building some distance down the street.

He got up in a hurry and stared at Long Di with wariness and anger. A stinging pain assaulted him and he quickly looked at his two arms to see a large gash there that slowly dripped blood.

This was terrifying! It should be known that body cultivators such as demons possessed a powerful physique and naturally strong defences as well.

Spiritual qi cultivators needed to erect a qi shield or a defensive martial technique to be able to block the move or blow of a body cultivator at the same cultivation level. If they dared to block such a person with just their physical body, then at best they would end up with severe injuries, while at worst, they would end up dead.

Somatic essence could be circulated much faster because it existed and resided throughout the body cultivator’s fleshly body. Spiritual qi, on the other hand, needed to be circulated, starting from the dantian.

As a result, though spiritual qi was more versatile, somatic essence was more or less tuned for battle. Its speed in a fight trumped spiritual qi, no questions asked.

Protector Gang wasn’t ready for this. He couldn’t understand why Long Di was able to harm him.

Thus, he increased his vigilance towards this junior as he began to plan another sequence of attacks. He knew that Long Di wasn’t going to use the lightning qi to augment his attacks. Since he took the initiative to show it to him in the beginning, then it lost the element of surprise.

Boom!

He channeled the tyrannical somatic essence in his body and formless pressure assaulted the surroundings.

As he stared at Long Di, a malicious smirk made its way across his face. He slowly lifted his feet as if he wanted to see if there was a doodoo on the underside, a travesty for all cultivators, of course.

Suddenly, without warning, his foot descended with a crushing might! This was not to check for doodoo at all!

Boom!

A massive explosion, however, this explosion was very peculiar. Rather than spreading out from the epicenter with blatant disregard for friend or foe, it instead moved forward in the shape of a wave!

The ground was tearing up to signal the arrival of the Protector Gang’s attack! This was another specialty of body cultivators. After reaching a certain level of comprehension in his field, one could actually manipulate how their somatic essence was distributed, and in what manner. If a punch was to shatter or bore a hole through an object, that was up to the will of the body cultivator.

Long Di didn’t dare to look down on this assault. His own bodily defenses experienced a tremendous increase following the circulation of the Bone Chapter. However, his strength would only experience a noticeable increase during the Blood Chapter.

It was this lack of strength during his previous strike why he wasn’t able to levy more damage upon Protector Gang.

The wave of destruction was much too wide and high. Long Di couldn’t dodge it. He could only choose to block!

He planted his feet, held his saber in a guard-style, and circulated the Bone Chapter to maximize his defenses. He didn’t allow the unique pressure borne by somatic essence to leak out. He didn’t want this freak with a fetish for arms to know that he could dual cultivate. This was a breaking of conventions, and couldn’t be easily revealed until he was strong enough.

Bang!

The wave crashed down with a relentless destructive intent!

“Ack!”

A mouthful of blood erupted as the attack crashed into him, sending him reeling back with little control. The energy tore apart his flesh in a bid to rip him to shreds!

“Long Di!”

The other cloaked figures were visibly shaken by the attack released by Protector Gang!

Even Zi Yu was blown back by the power of this attack!

No wonder her family wanted to establish relations with the Zhen family. Their power would increase and allow them to stand on equal footing with the medium size clans in the demon region if they were successful.

Long Di was a sorry sight at the moment. The attack had ripped his hooded cloak apart, so it was painfully obvious the huge chunks of flesh the attack tore off! His robe was soaked with blood that streamed down from the wounds in excess.

The mortals had long since run away from this kind of battle, leaving only cultivation spectators and they were also shocked by what they saw.

Long Di wore an eerily calm expression on his face throughout all this. Absent was anger, fury, frustration, or any other emotion that would be appropriate given the current circumstances.

His calmness and the spectator’s shock stood on polar opposites. Yet, the one who was most shocked at the moment would be Protector Gang. He knew the destructive potential of his attack and it should have obliterated Long Di!

However, he could see that not one of Long Di’s bones was broken. Only the flesh was damaged. What kind of freak among freaks did he encounter!?

Long Di circulated his spiritual qi in a bid to heal his terrifying injuries. At the same time, his saber shone with a gentle glow. This was the manifestation of his saber intent.

Protector Gang’s expression changed, ‘You look like a deformed hedgehog, why won’t you stop!?’

Long Di didn’t answer Protector Gang’s inner thoughts. He rushed in to close the distance between them. As soon as he got close enough, he started to circulate the Bone Chapter to activate the somatic essence within.

He released several slashes upon Protector Gang. The latter could barely react in time and was soon filled with wounds. In truth, if Long Di simply unleashed his cultivation base and released a technique equivalent to his strength, then he could win this battle fairly easily.

However, he wanted a good gauge of his battle prowess and he was starting to get more of a feel for it in the sense of only using somatic essence.

His mind was working in full on what to do at the moment. ‘Should I kill him and the arrogant idiot? I certainly have the power to do so if I try hard enough. But I want to go to the auction, and something tells me it won’t be peaceful if I kill the actual young master of the Zhen family. Alright, I’ll let them off for now, so I guess I’ll-’

“Stop!” Suddenly, someone came in between Long Di and Protector Gang.

“M-Miss Zi Yu?” Protector Gang was perplexed as to why the future fiancee of the Zhen family would stand up for someone who wounded her man.

“Hm?” Long Di’s overactive brow rose a few millimeters in response to this. ‘Unnecessary but not unwelcome. I guess she’s trying to get on good terms with me with that crazy fiancé thing. I’ll accept the help for now, but I won’t marry her. Doesn’t anyone think it’s weird to think about marriage for an eleven-year-old?’

Zi placed both hands on her hip and shouted at Protector Gang, “You dare to lay a hand on my man!?”

“Pu!” Long Di nearly choked on his own shock (that’s a thing) when he heard this. ‘I’m eleven!’

Protector Gang was shocked as well.

What’s going on? Wasn’t she supposed to be the fiancee of Zhen Song?

“Y-Y-Y-Y-You…!” Zhen Song just barely regained consciousness, only to hear Zi Yu’s declaration. His rage rendered him near speechless.

With his pig face on full display, he looked at Long Di in anger. His expression was clearly asking, ‘How dare you steal my girl!?’

His expression was so obvious that even Long Di could read it. As a result, Long Di, wanting to put his fears to rest, quickly announced, “I’m eleven.”

Damn!

Was the exclamation of not just Zhen Song, but of the spectators as well.

Naturally, they didn’t take his declaration at him backing down at all. Instead, they took it as Long Di flexing his young age around and yet was still capable of stealing his woman from him.

This was a real ma- eh boy? Male? This was a real male!

“Y-Y-Y… Puh!” Zhen Song was enraged that he coughed up a mouthful of blood and fainted.

“Young master!” Protector Gang rushed to Zhen Song’s side.

“Aw, he’s so happy he fainted. Good thing I nipped this in the bud.” Long Di said to himself, thinking he cleared up this misunderstanding.

Protector Gang didn’t pay any attention to Long Di at the moment. He quickly took up Zhen Song and sped off. He was outside the city in a flash, and was soon out of view as well.

Long Di looked around and could see many people staring at him. Some stared at him with indifference, some with respect, and even some with malice. After all, a girl as beautiful as Zi Yu actually chose to be his woman.

Truly, a beautiful woman could easily cause the downfall of a nation.

Of course, Long Di didn’t pay any attention to this. He simply felt uncomfortable under the gaze of everyone here.

He was just about to turn around and leave when a young man donned in Daoist robes appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

He stared at Long Di for a moment and flashed him a smile in response. He then announced to all the spectators here.

“Hello everyone, my name is Yang Fuyou, a disciple of the Qian Dao Sect.” He wore a smile on his face, like that of a savvy businessman. “Though I’m overstepping my bounds by announcing it here, I would still like to announce that the auction is about to begin.”

When this announcement dropped, it was like a great movement took place all at once! All the cultivators took off at breakneck speed to head to the Qian Dao Sect’s auction house!

When Long Di saw this, his brows furrowed, “Wasn’t this supposed to be a normal auction? Why is it so popular?”

He shook his head free of these useless thoughts. He was heading to the auction house anyway, so he would eventually find out. He quickly called everyone over and was about to leisurely make his way to the auction house when suddenly…

“Mister Long Di?”

“Sigh…”

Long Di’s footsteps froze, and he turned around to see Yang Fuyou staring at him with a gentle smile.

He approached Long Di with calm and steady steps, “Could I have a bit of your time?”

“What do you want to ta-”

“Long Di is that you!?” a familiar voice echoed out that compelled Long Di and Yang Fuyou to turn their heads.

When Yang Fuyou saw who it was, his expression visibly changed. He quickly handed Long Di a medallion. “When Mister Long Di arrives at the auction house, you can show this to the attendant. I must take my leave now, excuse me.”

“Oh, ah, sure.” Long Di took the medallion and Yang Fuyou didn’t waste any time as he quickly took off.

Long Di quickly turned around to see Yaomu Shou speeding towards with a wide grin on her face.

‘Why run away as soon as he saw her. I mean, if you think she’s ugly, you could have been a lot less obvious about it,’ thought Long Di.

“Did you miss me?” she asked, still as playful as ever.

“No,” Long Di was naturally unamused.

When Zi Yu saw who it was that approached Long Di, the colour left her face. “Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-”

“If you can’t even string together a coherent sentence, then your already dead candidacy for wife just came back to life, then died even more somehow,” Long Di said to the babbling female not far away.

“You got a wife!?” Yaomu Shou was shocked.

“The candidacy is dead.”

“Then it was alive!?”

“It was stillborn.”

“It lived as a fetus then!?”

“Are we still talking about the candidacy here? Cuz if not, I would like to point out once more, I am eleven.”

“G-Greetings yo-”

Yaomu Shou rushed towards Zi Yu in a flash and covered her mouth with nary a warning, “None of that,” Yaomu Shou smiled as she said this.

Several thoughts whirled around in Zi Yu’s head before a certain thought came to mind and she instantly burst out in a cold sweat. She could only shake her head to comply.

Yaomu Shou was pleased when she saw this. Indeed smart people didn’t need to say much to each other. She then turned back to Long Di before asking, “Long Di, I have something very important to talk to you abo- where are you going!?”

“To the auction house,” Long Di said, with his entourage in tow.

“Don’t you want to know what I have to say!?” she shouted, running after him. When she caught up, she was secretly shocked. ‘I have never had to run after someone before. Why is it that I don’t detest doing so for him? This is getting really interesting.’

“No,” Long Di said without feeling.

“Even if it’s…” she quickly fell into step beside him and stopped what she was about to say, pausing for dramatic effect, “about your goddess.”

Several females and even Long Di himself froze when they heard this.