Before long, a figure emerged from the portal.

An expression of happiness appeared on the Imperial Protectors’ faces. “Young Miss!”

****

It was Yaomu Shou.

She looked in their direction and rushed towards them with a serious mien.

“Are you okay?” Long Di asked her when she arrived before him.

She nodded to indicate she was fine.

She then handed something over to him. When he saw what it was, he looked at her with a puzzled look.

“What’s this fo-”

“Don’t worry about it. You’ll need it in the future if you don’t want to be hunted down and killed by everyone.,” she advised.

She then looked at her Imperial Protectors and told them, “Help me to cover up him keeping the medium-grade spiritual vein root when the time comes.”

“Young miss-”

“No buts,” she put up her hand to stop them. “I have my own plan and naturally won’t let the family suffer for this.”

Several chimes rang out, prompting everyone to look over and see countless figures flying out from the Spiritual Bingqi Realm.

Long Di’s heavy heart suddenly lightened when he saw Shen Ling, Xiannu Liang and Jia Yan all coming out of the Spiritual Bingqi realm.

He couldn’t see Shen Ling’s face clearly on account of her wearing the peach blossom veil.

Yaomu Baiyin and Zi Yu followed shortly after, then the Iron-Blooded Titan Legion. The pungent smell of blood was splattered all over their armour and weapons.

Obviously, they were put to full use, and the big smiles plastered all over their faces showed that they truly enjoyed themselves.

They looked all over and saw that it was the same for the other areas through the spatial displacement.

However, none of them left. They all remained to observe the situation on the Demon Region’s side.

After all, it was made known that Long Di had the spiritual vein root. They needed to make sure they would be able to act accordingly based on how this played out.

Luckily, they had never seen Long Di mention it was a medium-grade spiritual vein root. If that was the case, then these sects and powers would have mobilised their full military might to fight for the spiritual vein root.

Not even the Iron Body Forge Sect was sure they were able to safeguard such a spiritual vein root.

Only top powers like the Yaomu family, could safely keep such a treasure. This would be the case even if it was a medium-grade spiritual vein root.

Not everyone knew the full power of the royal family, but as the overlord of the entire demon race, their power was at an unimaginable level.

Races such as the human race didn’t have such a King that could unite the entire race. From this alone, one could see that the power of the Yaomu family wasn’t something that just anyone could offend.

They could see that Long Di was somewhat affiliated with those from the Yaomu family, and this made them somewhat nervous.

If Long Di did hand over the spiritual vein root to the Yaomu family, they could only consider it lost.

However, it seemed that Long Di had no intentions of handing over the spiritual vein root. To them, this was the best news.

As more and more people emerged from the people, some elders grew nervous while others darkened instead.

They were nervous because their people hadn’t come out yet. For the others, it was because too few of their disciples came out.

Long Di came over to Shen Ling, Jia Yan and Xiannu Liang. “How are you guys feeling?”

“We’ll live,” Shen Ling replied. All three of them were mostly healed by Yaomu Shou and Yaomu Baiyin’s medicinal pills, so there weren’t any lasting injuries. The remaining issue was Shen Ling’s eyes.

She had deactivated the veil’s ability for a brief moment to allow Long Di to see that her head had been wrapped with a dressing that covered her eyes. There was a medicinal paste on the inside that dulled the pain her eyes had caused her.

This was a bit of an issue, as her spiritual force wasn’t refined enough to the point to effectively replace sight.

This explained why she had a hand tugging on Xiannu Liang's robes. The latter was effectively an abyss ghost’s seeing-eye dog.

Long Di then turned to Jia Yan who was in a sulky mood.

“Are you mad that you got captured like a prize at the fair from life hack influencers?” Long Di asked.

“Long Di!” Yaomu Shou yelled at this blunt block of wood. She didn’t understand half of what he said, but it sounded hella insensitive.

Did they not fix this bad habit of his?

“It’s because I was too weak,” Jia Yan nodded in agreement with Long Di’s words… he thought. Some of that stuff went over his head.

“It’s not your fault.” Long Di placed a hand on his shoulder. “You only really started to cultivate fairly recently. I don’t expect you to advance so fast that you can take on someone from the royal family’s Junior Adjudication Committee.”

Thinking about it, Jia Yan felt this did make some sense, but it didn’t mean that he felt any better about it. Blaming it on something like that would only cause him to pile up excuses on top of excuses for any and every failure that came his way.

Still, Long Di wasn’t going to unduly blame him. Yaomu Qiang was a core formation martial adept, while Jia Yan was a second duan martial disciple.

If he did, Long Di would call him the MC of MCs.

He then turned to the nymph.

“Thanks for saving us in there,” Xiannu Liang executed a bow with a slight blush.

Long Di simply nodded in acceptance of her thanks. It seemed that they were advised of Long Di’s actions when they recovered somewhat.

“How far have you come?” he asked.

Xiannu Liang’s face fell with his question. “I’m in the later stages of the medial grade. I still need to forge it to a higher grade.”

“Like I thought,” Long Di seemed to have expected this. “Don’t worry. When we sort all this out. We’ll be able to get you there.”

Suddenly, a voice filled with cold fury bellowed out. “Imperial Protectors, what do you have to say now!?”

Long Di’s camp gaze drifted over to where Bronze Seat Heng stood with Full Metal Er Jinshu in a meditative pose behind him.

The latter had over thirty percent of his body completely frozen. The frozen section appeared to be made out of pure platinum.

“What did you do to him?” asked Long Long to Yaomu in a whisper.

“Me?” Yaomu Shou appeared insulted that Long Di thought she would do this. “I didn’t do crap. It was Untethered Monk that fought him, and even then, it’s because that idiot used Platinum Aegis despite the risk.”

“What do you mean Bronze Seat Heng?” Ban Yan asked.

Bronze Seat Heng snorted before explaining, “Hmph! That human is responsible for the death of over ninety percent of the Iron Body Forge’s Sect top disciples! Do you still intend to protect him!? Despite the relationship we have with the royal family!?”

“Long Di is under my protection!” Yaomu Shou arrogantly stepped forward. “Anyone who has a problem will have to answer me!”

“Lady Yaomu Shou, the King has ordered for this Long Di to be killed. Don’t you think that your actions right now are a bit inappropriate?” It was an elder from the Blood Crypt Sect that spoke up.

“Screw inappropriate!” Yaomu Shou sneered. “If anyone dares to go after him. They’ll have to go over my dead body!”

“Lady Yaomu Shou, I’m sure you have your reasons for protecting him, and under normal circumstances, we would listen to you. However, as even the King has called for his death, we have no choice but to act on this.” A demon from the Zhen family stated.

Yaomu Shou was instantly angered by this, “You!”

“In addition, he has killed far too many demons to be allowed to roam free. If we didn’t know any better, we’d think you were colluding with the humans against your own,” a nitu demon added.

Just then, a lazy voice drifted over that caught everyone’s attention. “Can we stop with all the useless sophistry?”

“Long Di?” Yaomu Shou wanted to tell him to get behind her.

He stepped past her to let her know it was fine. Seeing this, she stepped behind him so he could take centre stage.

He calmly walked in the midst of the clearing the different powers vacated as a sort of border.

Once he was there, he stared at everyone with an apathetic look. “You all want the spiritual vein root, right?”

Fishing through his robes, he held out a spatial life ring. Once this was taken out, there was no doubt about it. Long Di had the spiritual vein root.

They didn’t know how this boy came to have a spatial life ring, but that didn’t matter. He had the spiritual vein root. That was the only reason they could think of for him to have such a luxurious thing.

He could see how everyone’s eyes went red with greed the minute this was mentioned.

“Then come and get it.”

Suddenly, an elder from an opposing power couldn’t help himself and rushed towards Long Di before anyone else.

D-D-D-Dum!

His cauldrons emerged in an instant and he brandished a spear to take Long Di’s life and relieve him of the spatial life ring.

From his cauldrons, Long Di could tell that this person was a first fusion martial grandmaster!

Yaomu Shou’s grip on her sword tightened. Though she was confident in Long Di, she was well aware of the massive gap between a four-star-core martial master and a martial grandmaster.

If any accident occurred, she would invoke the Imperial Divine Edict in her sword.

‘Steely this will work, right?’

[You doubt my words?]

‘Recent intentions have left me less trusting as of late.’

[Fine then, why don’t you kill him then?]

‘Are you sulking? Do you have emotions? I can’t tell.’

[Pay attention keyholder. Now do it as I told you.]

Krrrsh!

A crack of lightning thundered out when Long Di unsheathed his sabre.

With a single slash, he swung at this lone martial grandmaster.

The martial grandmaster sneered that a mere four-star-core martial master dared to go against him.

“Die!”

He thrust his spear forward when the sabre blasted it apart before landing on his body and blasting him apart as well.

A dull thud rang out when everyone’s jaw hit the ground at the same time.

Long Di just killed a martial grandmaster like it was nothing.

Not even Yaomu Shou knew he was capable of this.

“Well?” Long Di hefted his sabre and rested it on his shoulder. “Who else?”