Long Di cocked his head to the side in what Pebbles knew was amusement.

“Looks like we found our travel guides.”

****

Shu!

Long Di didn’t even need to do anything. He literally stood in place when a gust of wind blew his hair all over and brought with it the change of one large shidashi mao that was now missing.

Shu!

Before anyone could blink, said large shidashi mao returned with three humans dangling by their robes in its mouth.

Well, robes was a nice way of putting it. It was more apt to call them rags, wretched and torn as they were. In addition, the trio was covered with dirt as if they all hadn’t bathed for several weeks at least.

Normally, Whiskers would kill anyone or anything it came across but Long Di required it to curb its somewhat extreme sociopathic tendencies.

“Who are you?” Long Di asked Whiskers’s captives.

However, when they saw Long Di’s lifeless gaze and unfeeling mannerisms, they were terrified.

It didn’t help when Pebbles, perched on Long Di’s shoulder like a corpse-picking vulture, looked at them the exact same way.

“Haha, hahahaa!”

Mina saw this and fell to the ground clutching her stomach as she laughed him to scorn.

Shen Ling and Xiannu Liang wryly smiled at this. It seemed that one needed to get used to Long Di before one felt comfortable enough to talk to him.

Shen Ling and Xiannu Liang just now realised that they didn’t feel that Long Di was terrifying when they met him.

He was odd and quirky, sure, but terrifying wouldn’t be the word they used to describe him, but it seemed that something changed.

Little did they know that since Mina took away the blessing of ‘making him look cool/heroic no matter what he did,’ people would react to Long Di based on their innate gut instinct.

Though the blessing was supposed to make him seem cool/heroic, he was so far gone from being any of those things that the blessing could only bring him to the level of being ‘not creepy.’ As far as Long Di was concerned, that was considered heroic in his book.

Xiannu Liang and Shen Ling looked at Mina, signalling her to try her hand at speaking to the children, and she gave them a look that said over-my-drop-dead-gorgeous-body.

This could very well be attributed to the fact that the last baby she dealt with… she shot a look at Long Di… left her with PTSD. She was halfway done dealing with humans because of him. The parents and other humans in the family were her only catharsis at that time.

“Let me try,” Shen Ling’s voice rang out, startling the trio. They didn’t notice her presence at all despite her just standing there.

Fear gripped them because of this until they actually saw Shen Ling. At this moment, she wore Blossoming Abyss, so they couldn’t see what she looked like, but they felt better dealing with her than they did with Long Di.

“B-Beautiful…” a girl from the group uttered absentmindedly.

A blush coloured her cheeks when she realised what she said. For some reason, though she couldn’t see Shen Ling, this was the feeling she got when ‘looking’ at her.

“Big sister, you’re really pretty!” A boy who didn’t appear more than five or six years old curiously reached out to touch Shen Ling’s face, causing the latter to reel back slightly in shock.

“Sun Kai!” The girl, who appeared fourteen at the most, chastised the curious little boy upon seeing this.

Yet the little boy didn’t seem sorry, unaware of his wrong. His wide eyes flitted all over with boundless curiosity.

Shen Ling quickly regained her composure and turned her attention to the last of the trio. The best guess would place him around fifteen, but his deep scrutiny of everyone showed his distrusting nature.

Then again, that could have been because he was dangling by his robes in the mouth of a magical beast that could rip them to pieces if it so wished, OR it could be because of anything else.

“We mean no disrespect!”

Surprisingly, the boy spoke up with his fist cupped in apology. He took the lead here in a bid to most likely protect the girl and the little boy.

“Don’t worry, we won’t hurt you. We’re just travelling cultivators.” Shen Ling answered him after a while.

“Cultivators!?” the boy called Sun Kai asked with a beaming smile.

“Sun Kai, quiet!” The girl, whose hands were free, grabbed Sun Kai and held him close to keep him quiet.

The boy who asked who they were was a bit surprised to hear this. He already had an idea they were cultivators, but hearing them confirm his guess still surprised him somewhat.

“Lord Whiskers, can you let them down?” Shen Ling asked.

The shidashi mao shot a questioning look in Long Di’s direction, which was greeted with a nod.

After all, these were only mortals. They weren’t cultivators at all. The lack of spiritual qi that Long Di sensed from them confirmed this.

Getting his permission, Lord Whiskers opened his mouth, freeing his captives.

Realising they were free, the boy quickly stood in front of the girl and the little boy as if to protect them from ne'er-do-wells.

“We won’t hurt you.” Shen Ling said with raised hands.

Suddenly, the boy called Sun Kai broke free from the girl and ran towards Shen Ling with tinkling laughter marking his way.

The boy and the girl paled upon seeing this and tried to stop the boy, but it was too late.

Unexpectedly, Shen Ling caught the boy under his arms and reflexively brought him up to her chest.

“Hahahahahaa!”

His contagious laughter plastered a smile on not just Shen Ling, but on Xiannu Liang and Mina’s faces as well.

Children were little bundles of joy that could put people at ease.

When the two kids saw that Sun Kai was fine, and that Shen Ling and the others weren’t mad, they released a breath of relief and put their guard down as well.

“Well… do you trust us a little more now?” Shen Ling asked, her voice a bit more cheery because of Sun Kai.

The boy stepped forward and bowed to them with a stern bearing. “I beg your forgiveness, esteemed immortals. I am sorry if we offended you before. It’s just that… we didn’t know if you would let us off if we spoke needlessly.”

Long Di found this confusing and wondered what he meant. “What do you mean?”

The boy who could be considered the leader this time around still felt creeped out by Long Di, but decided that these people meant them no harm and answered him. “Most immortals don’t treat us, mortals, very well. We thought it would be more of the same from others.”

Long Di saw that there was more to this than meets the eye, but didn’t know how to bring it up.

“Do you guys know where we can find Cang Bian City?” Shen Ling chose to ask. Naturally, she was present when Long Di was discussing where they would be heading next.

“W-We know where it is but…” the boy hesitated as he spoke, as if refusing their request would net him no good end.

“Speak freely.” Xiannu Liang informed them. At this moment, she had donned her cloak with most of her facial features hidden from view.

“We know where it is, but we can’t leave yet,” he finally said with Xiannu Liang’s urging.

“Why not?” Long Di asked.

He at last admitted, “we need to get a light-shroud evil durian.”

Upon hearing this, Xiannu Liang’s expression turned ugly.

Long Di immediately saw this and asked her in a voice transmission, ‘What is it?’

‘If these children go for that spiritual herb, they’ll die,’ she responded.

Xiannu Liang then told him that the light-shroud evil durian was protected by an extremely vicious magical beast called the Blood Drinking Devil Ape.

“Good lord,” Long Di said with his fingers to his chest in feigned shock, drawing odd looks from the kids.

Realising he got their attention, he rolled with it and asked them. “Why do you guys want the light-shroud evil durian?”

Normally, asking another person why they wanted a spiritual herb was considered impolite, but this was a spiritual herb that was only useful to cultivators or the magical beast protecting it.

Not only that, this particular spiritual herb was being protected by a magical beast that was strong to the point that not even your run-of-the-mill cultivator would be able to defeat it.

“If we can get it and bring it back to Golden Lion Gate, there’s a chance I can enter the sect to become a cultivator. Once I become a cultivator, I can help my siblings live a better life,” the boy said with a resolved expression.

“Golden Lion Gate?” Long Di’s interest was a little piqued. Wasn’t this the same sect that Wei Yun said she would be waiting for him?

Did he find where to go already?

This could very well be a lot easier than he had initially thought. He decided to take this one step at a time.

“You’re pretty brave.” Long Di commented. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Sun Zixin!” He said, pointing to himself before gesturing to the girl beside him. “This is Sun Mei.”

“Greetings esteemed immortals,” Sun Mei gave them a graceful curtsy bow as she could.

He then pointed to the one in Shen Ling’s arms, “and you’re already acquainted with Sun Kai.”

“Sun Kai!” yelled the young child, patting himself on the chest. This elicited a round of laughter from everyone.

Sun Kai was definitely the most outgoing of the trio.

“I’m Long Di,” he said, beginning introductions. “This is Pebbles the Wondercat. Use all three of those words, please and thank you. The one who spoke to you is Shen Ling, Xiannu Liang is over there, and the one behind you is Lord Whiskers Furryback the First.”

There were two names in that list that seemed very different from the rest, with a condition attached to one, but the kids didn’t know how to approach it.

“I’m proud of your resolve to help your brother and sister,” Long Di said once again.

Sun Zixin wore a confident smile upon hearing this. “I’ll do anything to make sure they live comfortably for the rest of their lives! After all, there is no doing without trying”

“Good to hear, because you’ll die trying.”

“What!?”