Chapter 16: Accessing the Situation, Again

Chapter 16: Accessing the Situation, Again

Just a moment later, Di Tou found himself situated lying down in a small room. A sense of Déjà Vu hit him as he realized this seemed to be just about the same situation he had woken up into in the morning, only at that time he had woken up in an abandoned hut in the middle of a destroyed village in an old mans body, but this time he had woken up in what presumably was Di Bai, no, it should be said in what was now his room in an academy in Di Bai's appearance.

The first thing he did was of course to slowly climb out of bed, having learned his lesson from trying to jump out of the bed earlier in the day.

Then his next step was to hold up two middle fingers and cuss at the roof. "Lousy old man, f*cking sending me to a place without any warning. What the hell is wrong with you, you tell me this is important and that I can lose my life any minute, and then you f*cking go and disappear without finishing the explanations on the things you gave me?"

After a moment, Di Tou was able to calm down. "F*ck, I'll settle this with you later old man."

What was important at the moment was figuring out where he was, and how to use the two items Di Bai had given him, alongside the scroll that had charged into his body.

Inspecting the two items he had been given earlier, one seemed like a rather typical identity plaque, with the word janitor written on it, while the other was a small black pearl. Di Tou remembered Di Bai having said that this was a communication pearl but the problem was... He had no f*cking idea how to use it.

After playing around with it for five or so minutes, he decided to give up for now, and put it aside for now. This in fact can't be blamed on Di Tou, the fact of matter is that the communication pearl, despite being a tool that had low user requirements was none the less a spirit tool, so at the very least the user had to be able to input either inner force or spiritual energy. Inner force, also known as Qi was typically available to cultivators at the second stage or above. The typical cultivator could get into the second stage within a decade, even if they were considered untalented. So, in this respect this communication pearl really could be considered one of the lowest requirement tools out there. Of course, Mu Di Bai also wasn't trying to trick Di Tou, and neither did he overlook the fact that Di Tou wouldn't be able to use it right now. Part of the sentence he had neglected to mention in his haste was that Di Tou could bring the pearl up to his forehead where Di Bai's sealed power was and in doing so temporarily activate the pearl.

As for the scroll... To be honest Di Bai had no idea if he would be able to do anything with it, or if he even had it on him anymore, but considering that the scroll had rushed towards him before phasing away, Di Tou figured that the scroll was most likely on him and something he had to interact with.

But the question was, how does one even begin to interact with an object that you aren't sure is there, cannot see, cannot feel, and have no information about?

"Come out."

"Divine Mandate."

"Scroll Scroll in my skull..."

"I choose you! Divine Mandate!"

When a serries of increasingly embarrassing attempts to call out the scroll failed, Di Tou decided to try to search his body to see if there were any tattoos or markings that the scroll could potentially be hiding in.

Only to awkwardly realize.

F*ck, he was searching Mu Di Bai's body! n--0VelbIn

When a person gets older, many functions in their body start to deteriorate, the most visible deterioration is in one's skin, its pliability falls, and it ends up sagging, causing wrinkles. Of course, things like your skin can be easily forgotten when you aren't thinking about them, after all it's your skin, you should (hopefully) feel natural in it, but when you're looking at your skin, thinking about it, and playing around with it, it can stick out like a sore thumb and feel very unfamiliar and uncanny. Much more so when you're used to the rather supple skin of a young man, and you're confronted with the wrinkles of an old man, much less an old man who isn't even your own original appearance/body.

Of course, luckily for Di Tou, much of Mu Di Bai's appearance was a conscious choice on his part, rather than a pure natural deterioration, as a cultivator he had long since passed the stage of "returning to one's youth" but had simply chosen to keep his appearance the way it was.

A note on the idea of "returning to one's youth" that should be mentioned is, is that in many cases this doesn't mean the cultivator literally has returned to when they were younger, only with a stronger cultivation. This would result in there being much too many old freaks with youthful bodies. Instead, it's an ability to manipulate one's appearance and represents a deep control over one's body, to the point that they can reverse the ravages of time on them, at least on the outside. In reality, they weren't getting any younger, although it may seem that way, as cultivator's lifespans tend to get longer as they get stronger. There's many reasons behind this increased lifespan, but the most straightforward of which is that a greater cultivation allows the cultivator to better manage their body, slowing down the rate at which one ages. This is also why geniuses, or individuals who reach high cultivations at younger ages are more prized, as even if their cultivation slows down in the later stages of their life, they've effectively gained a longer cultivation time due to rising levels earlier in their life.

Back to the main story, despite having taken the plunge and inspecting every inch of skin he could see easily on his body, Di Tou hadn't found anything that seemed like it represented the scroll on him. And with the help of a large copper mirror that had been resting in a corner of the room, covered by a large cloth he had briefly scanned his back and seen no obvious markings there either.

His left eye twitching, Di Tou thought of another possibility.

"There's no way right..?"