‘Incredible…’ Xiannu Liang’s thoughts were focused entirely on this wisp of spiritual qi when…

Shing!

****

The spiritual qi flashed as it took on the appearance of liquid crystal. It shimmered as it flowed through the channels of her meridians, but she didn’t let up on pushing it through another grand cycle.

Paying attention to what Long Di told her, she made sure to run this spiritual essence through a grand cycle again.

Long Di himself nodded in satisfaction when he saw. Ordinary people would normally send the spiritual essence they formed into the indentation of the cauldron right after it reached that stage.

However, Long Di knew that the spiritual essence could be further concentrated from personal experience. His cauldrons and destiny allowed him to suck up a huge amount of spiritual energy for himself.

What he found curious was that when he finally got through the initial creation of spiritual essence, it ran through another meridian before he could send it into his cauldron to form its core.

As soon as it ran through this meridian, he saw and felt that the spiritual essence actually changed and further refined itself. Because of this, he knew that spiritual essence was something that could be further grounded down to its basest purest form.

Of course, this was something that most sects knew, but whether a cultivator could reach that level was another case. This was why they normally sent it to the cauldron right after condensing their spiritual essence.

After all, Long Di was a freak with common-sense busting cauldrons, and Xiannu Liang was quite frankly suckling from the teat of a spiritual vein root.

These were not common occurrences. It was because the resources or talent necessary to do such a thing were far and few in between that rendered the creation of such a super-condensed and purified spiritual essence to be rare.

As soon as this wisp of spiritual essence was condensed to the extreme, Xiannu Liang could feel it. There were no more changes that occurred even after several revolutions through the cycle. Pleased with this, she sent it over to her first cauldron.

It traversed through the labyrinth-like carvings that decked the cauldron like a snake meandering a maze of a monstrous size. It wasn’t long before it arrived at the indentation on the outside of the cauldron.

Plop…

The wisp of spiritual essence fell into the dark indentation like a drop in the ocean. Yet, here there were no ripples to speak of. Instead, once it fell inside, everything returned to stillness.

It was as dark as ever, like a gaping hole that hungered for way more that was offered to it.

Xiannu Liang didn’t mind this and got to work on condensing her second wisp of spiritual essence.

Long Di encouraged her to continue and not to be undaunted by her as-dark-as-her-future indentation.

Hearing this caused her to nearly reel back in shocked anger by this comment before his voice boomed in her head to remain level-headed.

Hateful!

Could he not do something like this at critical moments like these!?

Would it kill him if he didn’t !?

“So you attacked him and then he somehow gave you an ear rub and that was enough to subdue you? Pffft… cheap! And you’re supposed to be the ancestor of all cats??? How could you sell yourself so cheap? Have some pride in yourself.”

“Meow!”

“Well, I’m more than aware of how godly his ear rubs are, but you can’t settle and give in so easily. Now he may have won me over by sharing a similar pain that I could sense from a mile away, but that was more emotional than anything else, and I was the one who told him exactly where to rub. Do you think humans know this by instinct? They’re dumb! Every one of them is. Long Di is like part-cat I’m sure, so that’s his saving grace.”

‘“Long Tian Yan, we need to be getting back. We are not supposed to be out for too long.’

As Pebbles was having a heated conversation with Lord Whiskers, he could hear Long Zhe’s voice in his head.

“Meow!”

‘Use your words you heathen!’

“Screw you!”

‘Helspawn!’

Everyone else was confused when they saw Pebbles just shouting randomly until they saw him looking at a blank spot in the sky and deduced that he was probably conversing with Long Zhe.

“I wanna leave or walk or SOMETHING!” Mina was bored to tears. They had been here for days now just doing nothing while Long Di and Xiannu Liang were cultivating.

At this comment, Pebbles said, “Okay, the old lizard ab-”

“Die to live and die again!”

“Meow!”

“Aaaaaah!”

Following an interruption that preceded a provocation followed by a shout of outrage, Pebbles continued where he left.

“As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted. He told me that their cultivation session shouldn’t take much longer and then I will have three days to hang out with my best friend before I’ll have to leave.”

Mina was ecstatic to hear this. “How much longer do we have to wait?”

Shing!

A shining light lit up the region where they all were, and they looked over to see a shining pearl-like object affixed firmly to the side of a cauldron.

It was incomparably pure and though it was crystal; the insides were like glowing liquid crystal that swirled about in a mesmerising fashion.

“It’s just like his…” Mina said absentmindedly, thinking of how similar it was to the cores that remained unlit in Long Di’s cauldrons.

Long Di of course heard this and replied, “I could tell when I lit my first core. The purer and the more condensed a core is will allow you to form a star core that is infinitely close to whatever element you’re cultivating.”

Mina opened her emerald-green eyes and a light flashing with spirituality lit the confines within before it disappeared entirely.

She heard what Long Di said and brought her core-ladened cauldron to take a closer look at it.

It truly was like Long Di’s cauldrons. It was only then that she realised that very few people had cores like Long Di’s. Even Er Jinshu fell short just the slightest bit. Only people such as Yaomu Shou, Untethered Monk and the like possessed cores like this.

“But my bloodline cauldrons will allow me to effortlessly absorb the energy most compatible with me.” Xiannu Liang said after hearing what he said.

Long Di cocked his head to the side as he stared at her cauldrons before stating, “I don’t know much about bloodline cauldrons honestly. However, I do know that, based on what I felt, if your core isn’t pure to the utmost limit, when you absorb the energy required to light it up it will be ‘tainted.’”

“Tainted?” It was Shen Ling’s turn to be confused. Though she couldn’t see, she heard everything and could paint a picture of what was happening. She was nowhere near their level, but knowing what to expect in advance was good.

In addition, Long Di was trying to explain it in a way that was easy to understand. He was from another world, so his words were unconventional but could be grasped.

He went on to explain, “Imagine this. Say you asked someone for a cup of honey water, but they woke up salty as hell that day and decided to use the bowl that had hot sauce in it to-.”

“What’s hot sauce?” Xiannu Liang asked with a raised hand.

Long Dis’s gaze slid to her in a way that caused her to blush with shame. She could feel it coming. He was about to say something to make her feel stupid.

“What do you think it is when you hear the words ‘hot’ and ‘sauce?’” he asked deadpan.

And there it is!

She knew it was coming, and yet she walked into it like a housewife walking into her abusive husband’s fist.

“Back to where I’m coming from,” Long Di went back on track, which was phenomenal considering how most of his conversations went.

“Now, with the remnant hot sauce in there, how do you think it would taste?” he asked the general public.

Shen Ling raised her hand excitedly.

“Yes, Shen Ling?” Long Di pointed to her even though she couldn’t see it.

“It would taste sweet and hot!?” she answered.

Long Di clapped his hands. “It would taste sweet and hot, correct.”

Shen Ling smiled when she heard she got it correct and smiled smugly to herself.

Mina glanced at her and commented. “You are too precious for him.”

“Ignore the class failure, everyone. She’s the salty person who puts hot sauce in honey water.” Long Di said.

“Screw you! That was an accident!” Mina barked at him.

Pebbles, Whiskers, and the others didn’t pay much attention to this conversation as their cultivation methods differed greatly in their entirety.

“So the water is… the spiritual essence, o-or core?” Xiannu Liang asked nervously.

Long Di turned his attention back to her with a raised brow. “Careful, you’re making me proud there.”

She smiled upon hearing this and went quiet not wanting to ruin her record like Mina. After all, she doesn’t put hot sauce in people’s honey water. Only Minas (plural for Mina) did that.

“The water is the spiritual essence or core in this case.” Long Di continued. “If it has something in there already, it will affect how it turns out. The star core will be spicy honey water instead of just honey water. The hot sauce here is the impurity present in ambient spiritual energy, which is why the latter needs to be refined and concentrated for use, to rid it of the inherent ‘hot sauce.’ The failure that caused this is laziness also known as the salty Mina in your life, so you need to curb it. Well, resources are a factor as well, but that’s called poverty, which is also Mina, so same thing.”

“Drop dead!” Mina was beginning to wonder if she could have a day of peace when Long Di was nearby!

“I get it!” Xiannu Liang felt enlightened after hearing Long Di’s lecture on the importance of the cores and their impact on the star core stage.

“You drop dead too!” Mina turned her anger on Xiannu Liang simply because Long Di alone wasn’t enough to vent her anger on.

Xiannu Liang giggled at this. She knew that Mina didn’t mean anything by it and was just driven to anger by Long Di, which was… understandable.

“Alright.” Long Di stood up. “Let’s do this.”

Mina’s eyes brightened at this and stood up too. “We’re leaving!?”

“Eeeh…” Long Di twinkled his fingers at her.

“The hell does that mean?” Mina was confused.

“It’s my hand gesture for kinda, but not really.” Long Di told her.

Her brain nearly short-circuited again. “That was way off!”

“Potayto Potahto.”

“That doesn’t apply here!”

“So Xiannu Liang,” Long Di turned to the Nymph, completely ignoring Mina only to hear a ‘screw you!’ from over yonder before urging her on. “You know what to do.”

Xiannu Liang smiled and walked over to Shen Ling.