The sound of cracking bone rang out almost immediately as the Blood Drinking Devil Ape sought to crush the shidashi mao without a second thought.

“Lord Whiskers!”

****

Krr Sssshhh!!

“Let him go!”

Long Di roared and held nothing back as the lightning screamed when he pushed it to its limit!

The ringing of a sabre’s hum echoed out in tandem as he smashed his sabre onto the arm that clutched Lord Whiskers!

Pu Ci!

Thud!

Fresh blood spurted like a fountain before an arm fell to the ground followed by Lord Whiskers who looked to Long Di in thanks.

Long Di didn’t waste any time and boarded Lord Whiskers, eliciting a meow of surprise from it.

“I’ll be your fangs and claws! Now move!”

Seeing his plan, Lord Whiskers took off at top speed. Lord Whiskers was painfully aware that it alone would find it difficult to harm the Blood Drinking Devil Ape.

Long Di had the ability to do so, but his speed fell a great deal due to the injury he suffered from the Blood Drinking Devil Ape’s blow from before.

After all, the Blood Drinking Devil Ape’s raw strength was its winning point, it being infinitely close to the star creation realm!

For Long Di to come out of it with serious injuries was quite lucky.

Realising this, they acted together to make up for each other’s shortcomings.

Fortunately, it seemed it had trouble keeping up with them, even losing track of them at times.

The Blood Drinking Devil Ape was a rank seven magical beast, but its speed was one of its shortcomings, even among normal magical beasts of the same rank.

Unfortunately, this was to be its undoing, for as of now, it faced a boy and his cat!

…

“I-Is he alright!?” Sun Zixin nervously asked.

Shen Ling and Xiannu Liang absentmindedly nodded as they focused their heavenly gazes in Long Di and Lord Whiskers’s direction.

They themselves were so engrossed in watching the fight that they couldn’t even answer the others properly.

“Are you saying he’s f-”

“He’s fine!” Mina answered clearly, her eyes also glued in the same direction.

The Sun siblings were mortal, so they couldn’t see anything from the distance that Lord Whiskers let them off at before it joined the battle.

Even more worrying was that the scaled cat thing came out of nowhere and laid down on top of Shen Ling’s head.

Wasn’t this scaled-cat thing supposed to be fighting the Blood Drinking Devil Ape?

Why leave the dead-faced boy to face that thing by himself!?

What was going on!?

…

Long Di atop Lord Whiskers was like a tiger with wings as he plagued the Blood Drinking Devil Ape with his Thunder Dragon Rhino Sabre!

Blood ran from it in an unceasing flood. The destructive energy of both tribulation lightning and sabre intent allowed the sabre to easily cleave through the Blood Drinking Devil Ape’s powerful body and not only that, but it also impaired its powerful regenerative abilities.

Long Di and Lord Whiskers played it safe and didn’t attack when the Blood Drinking Devil Ape thrashed all over in a rage.

An hour later, the Blood Drinking Devil Ape’s aura rapidly fell as it was on its last leg.

‘Now!’

Ksh! Ksh! Ksh! Ksh!

Suddenly, a wave of lightning spears manifested and before the Blood Drinking Devil Ape could react, they fired off one after the other.

B-B-B-B-B-Bang!

They crashed into the Blood Drinking Devil Ape’s body with devastating power!

An explosion of lightning spread out, blinding even Long Di. He didn’t hold back with his attack a while ago.

Once the scene died down, Lord Whiskers sucked in a cold breath of air while Long Di nodded in satisfaction.

The body of the Blood Drinking Devil Ape was still there. It stood tall, but countless holes still flickering with divine ivoric calamity lightning peppered it.

The Destiny Scale was refining the divine nature of the lightning that Long Di had taken in from the heavenly execution. As a result, it didn’t have to take from Long Di’s core energy, nor the energy perfused through his body. As a result, Long Di still had access to his divine lightning energy.

Facing so much of this type of energy, it was no surprise the Blood Drinking Devil Ape ended up like this.

Its dark beady eyes were glazed over and its life flame was extinguished. The Blood Drinking Devil Ape was dead.

Long Di walked over to its hulking body and examined it a little before shrugging his shoulders and walking past it.

He and Lord Whiskers made their way to the tree that had the light shroud evil durians on it.

“It just dawned on me that I don’t know what these things do. They don’t look edible though, that’s for sure,” Long Di said to himself.

“Meow!”

“Oh, you’re all evened out now. That’s good to know.”

Long Di commented on the killing intent that was no longer leaking out in a bid to help everyone around it to vacate the contents of their bladders.

Whoosh!

His spiritual force surged and he willed it to wrap around one of the light shroud evil durians when he felt a prickling sensation upon doing so.

He brought it down from the tree for a closer look. It was just like a regular durian except that it was a bit more rounded and bigger… a lot bigger than regular durians back on earth.

In addition, the spikes were far more pronounced. It made the fruit look like a mace of sorts. To top it all off, there was a dark mist that prickled at Long Di’s spiritual force the longer he held it.

It was extremely similar to the feeling his shadow silk robes gave off.

“Is it dark-attributed spiritual energy?” he asked himself. “I’m ninety percent sure this thing isn’t edible.”

“Hey!”

A shout came from behind him, drawing his attention. He looked over to see Shen Ling and the others running over, relieved that he was fi… eh, alive. They were relieved that he was still alive.

“Hey Mina, I found a fruit that I want you to try.” Long Di held out the light shroud evil; durian floating above his palm.

Mina was first shocked and partly happy at Long Di’s sudden burst of kindness, but when she saw the ‘fruit’ he wanted her to try, her expression darkened.

“Drop dead!”

“Long Di, what are you doing!?” Xiannu Liang nearly fell over herself when she saw what Long Di had ensconced in what she assumed was his spiritual force.

Long Di looked at her, then at the floating light shroud evil durian, then back at her. “Uhm, holding the light shroud evil durian? By the way, I know that sounds like a question, but it’s really the answer.”

“No! Retract it you fool! That thi-”

Thud…

“Oh!” Xiannu Liang was stopped dead in her speech when Long Di dropped it almost immediately. “That was quick.”

Long Di shrugged. “You looked like you were gonna say something about it being dangerous, then something about my spiritual force being corroded.”

Xiannu Liang was surprised, as this was truly in line with what she was about to say. Then again, this was Long Di she was dealing with. His mind worked in mysterious ways.

Of course, Long Di would simply state this was a method of deduction through common sense. Actually, now that he thought about it, for cultivators in a cultivation world, this was something as ethereal and mysterious as the heavenly daos itself. So same thing, really.

Nevertheless, Xiannu Liang chose to explain regardless as she stared at it in slight fear as it lay on the ground.

“The light shroud evil durian is a peculiar type of spiritual herb tha… Yes, Long Di?”

Long Di had his hand raised, which prompted her to stop and ask him what’s wrong.

“I would call it a spiritual fruit, just saying…” He then lowered his hand.

A period of silence befell everyone followed by an awkward wind.

“As I was saying,” Xiannu Liang continued, acting like what just happened didn’t happen. “It’s a peculiar spiritual fru… F-Fine! Spiritual fruit then!”

She bellowed out after seeing Long Di stealthily raise his hand only to lower it once more when she said spiritual fruit.

“It’s a SPIRITUAL FRUIT,” she glared at Long Di as she said this, “… that has both dark and light properties. The outside of it is perpetually ensconced in a layer of dark qi.”

“Just like mine and Long Di’s robes?” Shen Ling asked.

Xiannu Liang half nodded. “Your robes are made out of shadow silk thread. Which, for the most part, passively absorbs darkness-attributed spiritual energy. But that is the basest, purest form of it in a sense, which would then be moulded by the cultivator. I am not sure, but I am eight parts sure that your shadow silk thread utilised the subset of darkness-attributed spiritual energy known as shadow qi. It is an ethereal concept, but I am aware of it. The name kind of gives it away too. As for the light shroud evil durian, it is known to harbour both dark and death energy, which together is known as evil qi.”

“Hm, sounds fatal,” Long Di nodded as if in understanding.

“I-I guess…” Xiannu Liang wasn’t completely sure how to respond to that. “In any case, evil qi is extremely rare, and it is even rarer to find a fruit or herb that contains it. Regardless, it is heretic and unorthodox in nature. An unnatural thing in severe applications.”

“I don’t think dark qi or death energy, for that matter, is heretic or unorthodox. For it to be called evil sounds stupid,” Long Di commented.

Xiannu Liang’s expression became grave upon hearing this, “Be careful Long Di. I have nothing but trust for you but to other people, death energy is connected to many taboo things. It is wise to not speak wildly about this matter with others.”

Long Di nodded in understanding, knowing that people in cultivation worlds had their own thoughts and rarely, if ever, changed them for anyone.

Shen Ling stepped forward to inspect it with a closer glance. “Then why did that Blood Drinking Devil Ape protect it so fervently?”

Xiannu Liang answered her. “Because of the evil qi on the outside of it, the Blood Drinking Devil Ape can absorb this qi and grow stronger from it.”

“It can absorb arguably death and grow stronger from it?” Long Di raised a brow at this claim.

“The inside of it contains extremely potent life energy, with light qi mixed in. It serves a myriad of purposes and can allow for the extension of life despite whatever medicine the user had taken beforehand. In addition, because of the light qi within and the evil qi without, it also has yin-yang properties that can allow certain magical beasts to absorb that energy without fearing for the most severe of backlashes. The Blood Drinking Devil Ape is an innately evil type of magical beast, so it feeds on this type of energy the most and will fight to the death to protect it.” Xiannu Liang explained.

“When you said that I couldn’t touch it with my spiritual force, do you mean to say this evil qi can damage my spiritual force?” Long Di asked.

Xiannu Liang nodded. “Yes. The evil nature of this type of qi can be absorbed through your spiritual force before making its way to your mind sea and turning you into a mindless and evil devil.”

“Scary,” Long Di stated before turning to the Sun siblings.

He then asked them. “How were you planning on bringing one of these back? I mean, I have a plan, but it doesn’t seem like it’s something you can touch.”

Sun Zixin naturally heard everything and grew confident in taking it back. Alas, he still chose to answer. “I-I have a shovel.”

“That would be fine, actually.” Xiannu Liang nodded.

“Really!?” Sun Zixin was ecstatic to hear this.

“He can use a shovel to pick up something that has evil qi? Gotta say, your people’s definition of evil and their eternal feud with farming equipment must be the stuff of legends.” Long Di looked at Xiannu Liang when saying this who simply crossed her arm and hmph’ed herself into silence.

He then turned back to Sun Zixin and told him, “We’re taking you to Golden Lion Gate, so get ready to leave. I’m taking the tree and the topsoil of the Blood Drinking Devil Ape’s territory as further payment for my services.”

Xiannu Liang and the others were surprised to hear this.

“Come again?”