She took a deep breath and steadied herself before asking, “What do you want?”

“A bottle of milk, my cat, Wi-Fi, a phoenix and…” Long Di pointed a finger at the youth’s forehead, “for this boy here to be on really bad terms with life. I’d prefer him and breathing to be in malice if you don’t mind.”

****

“What!? We are disciples of the Nether Immolation War Temple!” She nearly reeled back, unable to believe that I was going to kill one of their disciples.

I put up my index finger as I replied. “One, I don’t give a flying fudge bucket where you’re from. Two, if you’re from some place called the Nether Immolation War Temple, then the name is awesome, but you suck and I hope to god that you’re not the cream of the crop from there lest my disappointment shall be immeasurable and my day fully ruined. Third, and I really need you to pay attention here, I forgot the part where that’s my problem.”

Now that must have struck a nerve as her expression of fear fully blossomed and I couldn’t really give a damn. The collection of hormones, cultivation and simpness that I had in my grasp really got my pet peeved when he did what he did, so I was going to unalive him a little bit.

“Think very carefully about what you’re-”

Krrsssh!

A burst of lightning exploded from my finger before tunnelling into the boy’s head. His head soon exploded, causing pieces of brain matter, skull fragments and the simp gene to burst apart.

Learning from my mistake the first time, I had erected a shield of spiritual qi just for this. The woman, on the other hand, didn’t expect what just happened to happen so suddenly. So the brain matter (very little of it, go figure), the skull fragments and the gene splattered all over her.

It was gross.

“You!” she pointed a trembling finger at me. Whether it be from rage or shock, I had no idea. “D-Do you realise what you’ve just done!?”

I looked from her to the headless corpse in my hand, then back to her before I answered, “Fixed his jacked-up arm?”

“You killed him!” she shrieked at me.

“That was just a side effect,” I advised.

“Side effect, my ass!” she screamed.

“Are you saying that your ass is the side effect? Cuz I’m not gonna lie, I think that may be worse than what I did to him,” I advised.

“You’ve done it now! When Savage Taitan finds you. He’ll tear you limb from limb!” she looked crazy as she looked at me, saying.

“Savage Taitan?” I raised a brow at this. “Is he strong?” I asked.

“Very!” she barked.

I contemplated what she said for a moment with my hand to my chin. Based on how she addressed me, this Savage Taitan must be a gifted disciple of the Nether Immolation War Temple.

Not gonna lie, but I realised that I may have broken some of the established rules of the cultivation novel trope. That trope being, that even with my strength being equal to, or barely below, my enemies in the younger generation, I will continue to body them like I was a full whole realm above them.

The problem here is that my cultivation base has absolutely left everyone in the younger generation in the dust. So life has decided to screw me over by only having me fight elders, and I’m going to assume sect leaders in the future.

So fighting a so-called gifted younger generation genius called Savage Taitan of the Nether Immolation War Temple should be worth it, right?

Well, something tells me that I’m going to be immensely disappointed, but I’ll give it a shot and see what happens.

“You don’t seem to be very concerned with me killing you. May I ask why that is?” I had my own reasons for why I wasn’t going to kill her, but she shouldn’t be aware of that, so I wanted to know where she was getting her courage from.

“Hmph!” she crossed her arms and looked at me really haughtily. I wanted to slap her, but I resisted the urge to hear her explanation.

She very proudly declared, “I’m one of the concubines of Savage Taitan!”

“A man of culture, but not a man of good taste, go on,” I gestured with my hand.

“Screw you!” she cursed before she went on. “As I’m his concubine, I’m under his protection. Combined with him being the most gifted disciple in the history of the Nether Immolation War temple, he has the authority to mobilise the Iron Blood Titan Legion! A legion of warriors that he himself raised and will certainly use to demolish not just you, but even your entire clan, exterminating them in their entirety! You’ll be a sinner for life! If you let me live, at most he will just kill you and nothing else.”

I looked at her when she said this and thought to myself, ‘Maybe I should kill her.’

I quickly shook my head free of that thought and made it a point of duty to establish and maintain my own bottom line. I don’t want to go down the road of killing people that annoy me because considering where I am, (cultivation world), I’ll end up killing nearly everyone.

“I won’t bother arguing with you about why I’m not afraid of that. So just leave and go tell your war temple or whatever. I’m also with the people that you antagonised earlier before, so two birds with one stone and all that good stuff.”

She sneered at me, probably thinking that I wasn’t afraid of her backing and didn’t dare to do anything.

“So you’re with them!?” her eyes practically glittered upon hearing this.

“Then I’ll make sure you and that slu-”

Pa!

“Language,” I said, knowing where she was going with that unfinished word and I wasn’t having it.

“Di-Did you just slap me?” She stared at me wide-eyed, in disbelief I did what I did.

“Are you craz-”

Pa!

“Language.”

“But I didn’t say anything wro-”

Pa!

“Language.”

“Sh-Shtop it-”

Pa!

“Language.”

“Waaaaah!”

Pa!

“Language.”

After a while, I stopped slapping her. There may have been a bit of venting there, but I’m petty as hell, so sue me.

Her face was red and swollen to the size of a pig’s head, and all I could hear was a soft whimpering.

I brought my own face close to hers, then to her ear before whispering, “I’m not afraid of you or your Savage Taitan. Bring them all on if you wish. However, if you cross my bottom line, then count your blessings that you’re from a temple, for you will need to pray to your God for the unholy devastation that I will rain down upon you.”

Her eyes widened in fear, even though the way her face was swollen should have dubbed such a deed impossible.

I pointed in the direction behind her, “G-”

Shu!

Before I could finish saying ‘go’, she already ran off at breakneck speed. Trying to get as far away from me as possible.

She was booking it too, “She seems to be using a movement technique. I need to get me one of those. I wonder if I can create one? I do have lightning after all, which is synonymous with speed.”

Krsssh!

Thinking of that, I channelled lightning to the sole of my feet to try creating a technique. As the lightning crackled around my feet, I took a step forward and not a single thing happened.

I was just running around with lightning on my feet. That was a letdown. Meh… I’ll come back to this later.

I decided to get back to the gang, so I started to make my way back. It was quite a ways back since I tailed these two for quite a while before taking action since I didn’t want Tie Lang, Feng Yu or the others to see what I was doing. I was also impressed with Zi Yu too. If that’s how she deals with entitled A-holes, then she can travel with me anytime.

After travelling for around fifteen minutes, I heard something that I could only describe to be the sounds of battle coming from another direction.

My curiosity got the better of me, so I made my way over to see what was happening. I must have travelled for about two hours before I made my way to what appeared to be a stone forest of some kind.

There weren’t trees made out of stone, mind you; there were just giant slabs of stones of varying sizes. There must have been tens of thousands of them. Some towered into the skies, reaching into the clouds while others were around three Long Di’s tall.

Boom!

One of the stone slabs deeper within exploded as a large figure crashed through at an insane rate!

Bam!

He slammed into one of the stone slabs, violently shaking the surroundings. I positioned myself to get a good look at the situation, since I never saw things like this very often.

The figure that was now plastered on one of the large stone slabs was a beast of a man. He looked human save for his size, which was about four and a half Long Di’s tall. Large muscles decked his body, covered with scars that showcased how this person lived on the edge day by day.

His expression was fierce, which put his beast-like fangs on full display. His black hair fell wildly to his lower back while he only sported a tiger-skin fur that covered his family jewels and matrimonial peacemaker.

In his hands was a giant bone meat cleaver of sorts! It had a jagged edge that promised pain for any unfortunate enough to be struck by it.

If someone was to ask me what a Savage Taitan was to look like, it would be this guy right here.

Boom!

The beast that attacked him came charging through the rubble of rocks he created.

When it came into view, I finally had a good look at it. It was a giant beetle that appeared to be made of stone. There was a giant circle in the middle of what you would call the wings.

“Shit.”

I knew this was the Zhendong Beetle, and if you’re wondering why I cursed earlier. It’s because the Zhendong Beetle is extremely sensitive to vibrations in the area and the spot on its back will multiply to match the number of hostiles it’s engaging.

If you’re wondering, while I was telling you this, that round spot on its back just increased to two.

“You better come out!”

“Shit times two,” the barbarian looking oaf was apparently aware of this and called me out.

I walked from behind the stone slab I was hiding and waved in his direction.

“Hello there, my name’s Long Di and-”

“I don’t care who you are, eat my blade!”

“Come again?”