Li Yi stared at him. In his mind, he knew he didn't truly possess a special identity; he was simply an orphan—or at least that's what everyone believed. There was no need to reveal who he was directly.
"I am simply someone who was in the right place at the right time to help. The threads of destiny simply crossed, 'like the wind that blows the sails of a ship,'" Li Yi said.
He knew that upon returning, the Director would investigate him, but it wasn't as if they could find anything relevant to identify him.
Grand Director Leng Lubai, upon hearing this, didn't know what to think. However, that cultivator had helped him far too much to risk over-investigating him and turning him into an enemy.
"Thank you for the help. Truly, if it weren't for you, we would have ended up losing many of these forces," the Director said. "When we return and finish organizing everything, we will give you one-third of the beast carcasses, and you are invited to the First Martial Arts School."
"I will do everything possible to win over this extraordinary cultivator," Leng Lubai thought. "With his strength, perhaps he can enter 'that place' and obtain great resources."
"That sounds fine to me. We'll see each other in a while; I'm going to see how the people in the village are doing," Li Yi replied before withdrawing. The Grand Director watched his figure move away with a contemplative gaze.
In just a few seconds, Li Yi reached the edge of the village. He observed that quite a few cultivators had died; though they seemed few compared to the enormous number of fallen beasts, they were many for the size of their group. He quickly entered and reached the center, where the ephemeral mundanes and the mediocre base-level cultivators were gathered.
Among the crowd, he managed to spot his siblings. Shen Shinyu was the first to see him and asked the others to follow her. Upon arriving, both she and his brother Zang Li checked him from head to toe. Seeing that he was unharmed, they breathed a sigh of relief.
"Brother Li Yi, how many beasts did you defeat?" asked one of the younger brothers.
Shen Shinyu had already told them about their brother's great strength, which had left them astonished and a bit incredulous.
"Don't worry, now we will have enough resources so that everyone can cultivate in peace and form a good base," Li Yi said with a smile. "Better we head to the cabins and settle everything."
At that moment, the only sounds were the conversations of those grateful to still be alive and the laments of those weeping for their fallen kin. Li Yi looked at them, wishing that from now on, they would live better and one day manage to leave such a dangerous area.
After walking for a few minutes, they arrived at the cabins, most of them destroyed by the battle. Suddenly, they heard a groan of pain coming from one of them. Looking inside, they saw Brother Xuhan Mo on one of the beds, treating his wounds with herbs. Seeing them, he showed a smile.
"Rest easy, they are just a few wounds that will heal soon," he said, observing Li Yi. He knew that without Li Yi's help, they likely would have lost many to the beasts that pierced the formation.
For a while, everyone dedicated themselves to repairing the damage. Many people from the village were summoned to help collect carcasses from the battlefield, so everyone was busy. Li Yi entered his partially destroyed cabin; he didn't care, as he didn't believe he would live there for much longer. He focused on the spear-shaped weapon in his hand and took the sphere he hadn't finished absorbing out of his bag.
Both objects possessed a great amount of special energy, but first, he wanted to understand how they worked before absorbing them completely. The energy he felt in the Vortex was special. Unlike the natural energy of the environment, what he obtained from the corpses was purer, and another part seemed to contain specific attributes or essences from the attacks received.
He wouldn't think more on it for the moment; he would wait until tomorrow to meet with the cultivators.
That night, all the siblings gathered in Li Yi's cabin; they were anxious to hear the tales of the battle. Li Yi hid nothing and began to narrate how the conflict unfolded.
The siblings were shocked to learn of the overwhelming number of beasts that outnumbered the cultivators. They shouted in amazement as he described how he massacred them with pure physical strikes, and their wonder grew even more when he recounted his confrontation against a super-powered beast whose attacks were capable of shattering mountains.
Despite how shocking and bloody the story was, Li Yi did not plan to omit any detail; he knew that sooner or later, they too would have to face great battles in order to grow.
When the story ended, Sister Shen Shinyu took charge of leading the little ones back to their cabins. In the end, only Xuhan Mo and Zang Li remained. Li Yi knew what they were looking for: they wanted to know how he had become so strong, but he had no simple way to explain it.
"Brother Li Yi, did you perhaps obtain some ancient inheritance or become the disciple of a supreme being?" Zang Li asked curiously.
"Or is it that you found a mystic object that helped you fight those cultivators?" Xuhan Mo added immediately.
"No," Li Yi replied calmly. "It really wasn't anything like that."
"In reality, I possess a special constitution that has allowed me to obtain this strength. I hadn't been able to awaken it before due to a lack of resources, but after gathering enough, I managed to consolidate my base and it finally awakened," he explained.
He wasn't entirely lying. He possessed a Sacred Constitution that helped him refine energy, though his true strength didn't come directly from it, but from his unique method of forging his cultivation base.
The two brothers were baffled; they had never heard of such a thing. Li Yi briefly explained its function and the advantages it granted him. Xuhan Mo was stunned; he couldn't imagine such an attribute existed, let alone that his brother was the one who possessed it. Although he found it hard to believe that mere refinement and purification of energy granted such power, if that was what his brother said, he would believe it without hesitation.
After talking a bit more, both withdrew and let Li Yi rest.