Yaomu Shou was comfortably ensconced in the safety of Long Di’s arm.

She answered with great ecstasy, “That’s it alright!”

****

It took a while for the two, that being Lu Pei and Yaomu Baiyin, to extricate themselves from their current predicament. Once they were free, they soundly glared at Long Di.

Lu Pei felt betrayed. Where was the trust between men? Between fellow Thundercloud City natives?

Yaomu Baiyin was even more incensed. She was a girl, and he kicked her in the butt!

Did this boy lack all sense of propriety!? What brute would do such a thing!? And to such a pretty girl at that!?

However, Long Di couldn’t care less about what they thought of him and inspected his surroundings, compelling them to do the same.

They were inside what appeared to be a separate dimension.

No night or day existed here, and the surroundings abounded in darkness. Everyone stood on what appeared to be soft ground and a dense fog floated above like the clouds of the sky.

“Heavens!” Lu Pei exclaimed when he saw what Yaomu Shou came here for.

“S-So pretty!” Yaomu Baiyin was just as blown away.

Not far from them was a giant serpent composed of what appeared to be light. It slithered across the ground not paying attention to the intruders in its domain. It was easily more than a thousand metres long and it radiated a pure sense of spirituality.

It appeared like a heaven-swallowing python ready to devour the skies and plunge the earth into chaos. Strange ring-like lines ran the stretch of it whilst thousands of runes covered its body.

The runes alone appeared to be moving in a bizarre manner, as if they were striving to decipher the secrets of the heavens.

Lu Pei and Yaomu Baiyin were both entranced by it and couldn’t look away. Just breathing in the air in its presence caused the bottleneck they were both stuck at to weaken a great deal.

Long Di saw this and nudged him with his elbow.

Lu Pei immediately knew what he meant and didn’t waste any time. He promptly assumed the lotus position and tried his best to calm down so as to enter a meditative state.

He knew he wasn’t qualified to take something like this for himself, so he might as well just take advantage of it while he still could.

Yaomu Shou saw this and nodded her head in approval. She had to admit that this Lu Pei understood what it meant to get the best out of every opportunity that presented itself to him. She had faith that should he be able to grow up, he would shock the cultivation world.

Yaomu Baiyin didn’t need to cultivate now. She was just shocked at the spiritual vein root, since it was her first time seeing such a thing.

Long Di gently put Yaomu Shou down, allowing her to stand on her own two feet.

She inspected the spiritual vein root before them and couldn’t help shaking in excitement.

“I can’t believe it! It’s actually a medium-grade spiritual vein root!” Yaomu Shou looked as if she would start dancing at any moment now.

Not counting Long Di, not even Yaomu Baiyin could remember when she last saw her lady react in such a way.

“How can you tell?” Long Di asked. The amount of spiritual vein root it exuded was incredible. Even he had trouble gauging it.

“See those?” she pointed at the legs and claws that decked its body. “Only Medium grade spiritual vein roots have those. Regular spiritual vein roots don’t have claws or legs or anything. They just look like giant snakes. “

Long Di nodded in understanding before asking, “So how do we take something like this?”

Yaomu Shou hurriedly rummaged through her robes until she took out an old ring.

“A storage ring?” Yaomu Baiyin asked in confusion.

She shook her head. “It’s called a spatial life ring. It’s a special type of storage ring that contains a modicum of the heavenly daos. Because of this, it can contain life and things with intense spirituality.”

“Seems old,” Long Di commented.

Yaomu Shou frowned, “of course it is. It’s rare since it can only be made by the Ren’duans and those stinky old blacksmiths only make what they want! This was commissioned by the King a long time ago and it’s been in the family ever since. I… uh… ‘borrowed’ it just in case I saw some herbs while I was out exploring.”

It was obvious that this ‘borrowed’ actually meant stole. Though they didn’t know why she took something as important as this, they knew that causing trouble for the family played a huge part in it.

She then turned to Long Di with an excited expression. “Can you help me with this?”

Her face was all smiles at the moment.

Long Di cocked his head to the side, staring at the medium-grade spiritual vein root, “Yaomu Shou, I have an idea. Whatever you wish, I will comply.”

Yaomu Shou was a bit perplexed by this, but nodded all the same.

“Will you… will you give me this medium-grade spiritual vein root?” he asked.

Silence descended and for the first time, Long Di saw an angry Yaomu Shou. Even Yaomu Baiyin, who was originally wary of Long Di, felt disgusted when she heard his shameless request.

Her lady had obviously expressed her intent to take the medium-grade spiritual vein root earlier.

In addition, based on the conversation in the cave, it was obvious that Yaomu Shou had helped to make sure that Long Di got a lot of good stuff.

“Greedy!” she spat.

“Long Di, you know I consider you a friend. But a medium-grade spiritual vein root is not something just for me. It’s something that can help me to build a stable foundation in the family and change my fate!” If it was someone other than Long Di, she wouldn’t even bother explaining.

She wasn’t worried that Long Di would take this from her either, but she was disappointed that his greed would take over upon seeing the medium-grade spiritual vein root.

Long Di shook his head when he heard what she thought and explained. “You misunderstand me. Though it would help me greatly, I’ve had a plan for the longest time and I think this thing,” he pointed at the medium-grade spiritual vein root. “Will help me.”

“What plan?” the anger vanished from Yaomu Shou’s face only to be replaced by confusion.

He then came close to Yaomu Shou’s side and whispered in her ear.

Yaomu Baiyin saw Yaomu Shou’s face switch from confusion to perplexed to disbelief before settling on shock.

“You’re mad!” she nearly reeled back in astonishment.

Long Di shrugged his shoulders in response. “Psychology would say insane but meh. Still, it’s what I want to do. I was serious about my claims back then.”

She stared wide-eyed at the young boy before her for a long time before she put a hand to her head and let out a loud groan.

“Long Di, let me ask you this one more time.” This time she looked Long Di straight in the eye and asked. “Are. You. Serious?”

“I’m not gonna dignify that with an answer,” he replied.

“Humour me!” she demanded.

“I do have little dignity to give. Fine, yes.” he relented.

Hearing this, she paced back and forth for a while, mumbling something to herself. Most likely weighing the pros and cons of whatever mad plan Long Di had in mind.

Once she nearly walked a ditch in the ground, she stopped and pointed at Long Di with a trembling finger, saying, “You can’t fail!”

“If I do, I bequeath my body to you,” he stated.

Yaomu Shou stared at him for a while before yielding to his demand. “Fine.”

Yaomu Baiyin was caught off guard by this. What did they talk about that led to this being an acceptable trade-off in the face of failure?

Grateful at receiving the go-ahead from Yaomu Shou, he turned to the spiritual vein root to subdue it for himself.

“Long Di?”

He heard Yaomu Shou’s cry from behind, compelling him to turn around to face her once more.

“Y-You’re still my friend throughout all this… right?”

His face gave nothing away, but his next words put a smile on her face. “You wouldn’t be miffed if I got angry at you for that, right?”

Saying this, he turned around and faced this medium-grade spiritual vein root.

While staring at it, Long Di asked, “how do I subdue this medium-grade spiritual vein root?”

Yaomu Shou took the initiative to answer, “You’ll need to negotiate with it.”

“Come again?”