Borrowed Time

"Ah? What if I just find a place to hide and quietly bide my time and build my strength?"

"Che, what do you think the Divine Mandate is? An all-powerful cultivation elixir? It's a form of give and take. You complete the duty that the Divine have ordered you to do, and in the process, you gain strength to greater influence world events. Besides, by accident or otherwise holders of the Divine Mandate tend to find themselves drawn into major events. You'll have to increase your strength swiftly to match the opponents you'll face, or you'll die."

Di Tou's face paled, as a modern 21st century youth the greatest challenges he faced were the big three of finding a job, finding a wife, and finding meaning in his life, but none of those challenges were necessarily lethal. Well, that's not true, if you don't find a job you could potentially starve to death, but nonetheless Di Tou's life had been relatively peaceful up to this point.

While he had seen a few kids fighting after school here and there, he himself had never been close enough to anybody to involve himself in the conflict. Death and fighting seemed rather far away. Even if he had any aspirations for this cultivation world, they'd only really extend into the level of becoming rich or becoming a grand merchant. Nothing so… grand.

"Anyways, even if you could just hide somewhere and cultivate, they'll find out about the fact that you exist sooner or later. What do you think I'm doing right now? I'm erasing the traces of space time manipulation here, but it can't hide the fact that a Mandate holder has shown up for any longer than a year or so. Time is of the essence." As Mu Di Bai finished drawing the character he was on, he turned once again to look at Di Tou.

With a hint of the seriousness he had portrayed earlier when he was interrogating Di Tou he said, "Little head. No, Di Tou. There are many challenges in life you cannot turn away from. Running will only delay the inevitable. What you need to do now is grasp this opportunity and make yourself as strong as possible in this buffer period when nobody knows about you. I will do my best to keep your existence a secret, and try to investigate what's going on in the other continents so the conflict can be minimized before it begins. If people find out I'm missing they'll start investigating what's going on so it's important that you keep up the facade that I'm still at the academy. At the same time it'll serve as decent protection for you until it is revealed."

"Al- Alright."

"Hmm, it's really annoying that we don't know what type of Mandate you got exactly." Mu Di Bai stared at Di Tou with piercing eyes. Just as Di Tou was starting to sweat and ready to crack, Mu Di Bai continued, "But once you get to the academy you'll have to interact with all sorts of different people, and you'll get the chance to try many different things discreetly. This should give you a chance to figure out in what ways the Mandate will assist you. It could be anything 2000 years ago The Medicine King Lu Yi Shi would get stronger as he made pills, and 3000 years before that The Unparalleled General Kong Min Yan got stronger as he managed to sway more soldiers and fought the enemy. Another 700 years before that the Divine Jester Fu Jing Xu got stronger when people laughed at him. It could be just about anything."

Di Tou was ridiculing himself in his head, "Hehe… Others made medicine, fought wars, and wrote comedy. I'll get stronger by cleaning toilets and sorting trash. I can't wait to see the reaction when I pull into a battlefield with my hands still stained with sh*t."

But on the surface maintained the look of a dutiful student. This was something he was rather good at. As mentioned before, Di Tou was a rather middling student in school, and like many other students, it wasn't necessarily that the content was too hard or too difficult to grasp, or that he was particularly stupider than the ace students, but rather the fact that he found the subjects too boring! Like many other youths of his generation, he acted like he was paying attention on the surface, but in reality was finding ways to slack off and daydream. And thus, alongside many of his peers, his golden years were passed.

As Mu Di Bai was continuing to ramble on about how it was important for Di Tou to take advantage of time while writing out the complicated characters he suddenly froze. "Sh*t. Who's so bold to intrude into my formation." Dark lines colored his face, after all, this formation was placed in a place that was rather personal and important to him, and today, for the first time in almost over 200 years, not one but two people had tried to invade his formation. "F*ck, do they think this Laozhi is dead?"

Turning once more to Di Tou he said, "We don't have much time anymore, come here."

Di Tou dutifully walked over. Once he had arrived Mu Di Bai brutally smashed his hand towards Di Tou's forehead. Di Tou startled was about to jump back, to find himself once again restrained by an invisible force. Just as Mu Di Bai's palm was about to land on Di Tou's forehead, it stopped no more then a centimeter away. "I just put a portion of my power in your mind palace, before you reach the 5th realm of cultivation it should be able to passively protect you from attacks under the 6th realm. Once you're in the 5th realm you should be able to more clearly access the power, and with some careful usage you should be able to use it to deflect up to three attacks of the 8th realm and below." As he was speaking Mu Di Bai returned to making the letters in the area nearby, although he had significantly increased his pace this time around, and it seemed as if he was writing 5 or 6 characters all at the same time. In a few moments, it looked like he was finished with whatever he was doing, and with one final unclimactic glow, all of the characters that had been floating in the air faded away.

Mu Di Bai stared into Di Tou's eyes again. "Di Tou, remember, from now on you are pretending to be, me, Di Bai. Most of the people at the academy don't know my name. If they ask, brush them off saying you're just an old janitor."

Then, with a swish of his arm, Di Tou's appearance gradually started to morph, before matching Mu Di Bai. Then Mu Di Bai reached into his sleeve and took out two items handing them to Di Tou, "These two items are the academy identification token and a communication pearl, you use them by-" Mu Di Bai's expression darkened again, "F*CK! DO THEY REALLY THINK THIS LAOZHI CAN'T DO ANYTHING TO THEM?"

Mu Di Bai started to fly up in the air, addressing Di Tou one more time he said, "Remember what I told you. Don't let anyone find out." And with a swish of his sleeve started to fly away. While for Di Tou as Mu Di Bai swished his sleeve, his world turned to black.