Chapter 81 (1/2)

Azalea stood beside Grandpa Vremya. He was cultivating underneath a large tree. After bringing his flock of inner disciples to an abundant pasture, he told them to graze and promptly stopped caring about them. “You’re not going to explore?” Azalea asked. “What if there are beasts as strong as golden-core cultivators out here?”

Grandpa Vremya grunted. “Killing sows bad karma.”

Azalea pursed her lips. “Even killing beasts?”

“Even killing plants and insects,” Grandpa Vremya said. “If you ignore microbes, I’ve never killed anything.”

“Microbes?”

Grandpa Vreyma opened his eyes. “They’re tiny creatures unseeable with the human eye.”

Azalea scratched her head. “Then how do you know they’re there?”

Grandpa Vremya rolled his eyes. “The same way you know ghosts exist even though you can’t see them. Why does your bread go moldy? Microbes. Why does leaving food out for so long cause people to get sick after eating it? Microbes. Why do people get sick? Ghosts. Everything in the world has a reasonable explanation.”

Azalea furrowed her brow. Grandpa Vremya was a lot of things, including not quite right in the head. She wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or if he just believed he was telling the truth. Instead of pursuing a conversation about tiny invisible beings, she chose to take a seat across from him and closed her eyes.

“Shouldn’t you be exploring?” Grandpa Vremya asked. “Don’t tell me you came to a pocket realm just to cultivate.”

Question marks filled the air above Azalea’s head. Wasn’t that exactly what Grandpa Vremya was doing? Did he lack the self-awareness to realize the hypocrisy in his question? “Shouldn’t you be exploring?”

“Weren’t you listening?” Grandpa Vremya shook his head. “Killing sows bad karma. Stealing too. It’s likely all the rare spiritual fruits are guarded by beasts. If I explore, I’ll pick up one or two herbs, but that’s about it.”

Azalea tilted her head. “So, you really came to the pocket realm just to cultivate? Couldn’t you do that in the sect?”

Grandpa Vremya shook his head. “You’re still inexperienced. To fully exploit a pocket realm, you have to identify its unique point. This pocket realm contains miniature titans that only appear at night. Compared to the value of the miniature titans, everything else is meaningless.”

Inexperienced? “You’re just as inexperienced as I am!” Azalea pouted. She was sure he had never entered a pocket realm before, and she was sure he didn’t read the description of the mission she had chosen either. If anything, she was more experienced than him! Also, what was with Grandpa Vremya’s naming sense? “Why do you call those things miniature titans? That’s like saying … a tall shorty.”

Before Grandpa Vremya could come up with a response, an inner disciple shouted, “Senior Brother Vremya, save me!”

Grandpa Vremya and Azalea looked off to the side. An inner disciple was charging towards them, her face red and her body sweaty. Her clothes had tiny holes in them as if she had run through a thorny bush. Behind her, a tiger with wings was chasing her; one of its wings was covered in a layer of ice. In the inner disciple’s hands, there was a baby tiger. The mama-tiger seemed to have understood the inner disciple’s words, and it glanced at Grandpa Vremya with a wary expression.

Grandpa Vremya sighed and waved his hand. His Frostwind Armor Golem appeared by his side; however, it no longer looked graceful. It was covered with black lines, dried titan blood, and it had six pulsating masses attached to its back in a hexagonal formation. The tiger stopped in its tracks and roared at the golem, slapping its front legs against the ground, hoping to intimidate its new opponent.

The inner disciple exhaled upon realizing the mama-tiger was no longer chasing her. She slowed down and turned around to see what was happening. The mama-tiger was circling the golem with its hackles and tail raised. The black lines on the golem flashed, and it ran towards the inner disciple. The mama-tiger stared blankly as its opponent ran the other way, and the inner disciple froze like a deer in headlights upon seeing the armored monstrosity charging at her. It took less than a second for the golem to appear in front of her. It grabbed the baby tiger out of her arms and gently lobbed it towards the stunned mama-tiger. The baby nearly fell onto the ground, but the mama-tiger snapped out of its daze and caught it just in time with its unfrozen wing.