Situation Changes

Mu Di Bai clapped while laughing, "Haha, I hope I didn't scare you little head, it was just a joke, just a joke." As he clapped, Di Tou was freed of his restraints, and he immediately slumped down to the crown, holding onto the stump of his left hand.

In his head, Di Tou thought, "Hehe… How about I make a joke and take away your left arm, see if you find it funny then." But verbally he said, "Haha, you're too kind senior, how could this little one take offense. Hahaha…" While looking over at his hand lying on the ground, trying to decide what he should do about it. He should probably take it with him right? Leaving it here didn't seem quite right.

While he was in his dilemma, Mu Di Bai started walking up, and Di Tou, startled by the movement, flinched and kept his eyes on the man.

Mu Di Bai, as if unaware of Di Tou's caution, slowly walked up to the man and picked up the hand on the ground, saying, "Stick out your left arm."

"Ah." Di Tou mechanically stuck out his arm.

*Squish*

"F*CK!"

Mu Di Bai had shoved the severed hand onto the open wound, and then grabbed Di Tou's shoulder with his other hand to stop him from jumping away while recoiling from the pain.

"There, good as new." Mu Di Bai said, while giving a derisive look at Di Tou, who was rubbing the place where the wound had been with his right hand, while slowly flexing all the fingers on the left hand.

Now, for those of you who were perhaps wondering why Di Tou was so insistent on trying to hide the full truth from Mu Di Bai the previous chapter, I think it needs to be considered what perspective Di Tou is coming from.

Yes, Mu Di Bai has been relatively friendly up to this point, and he wants to rely on Mu Di Bai to find a place to get his bearings, but at the same time, this is a man he's only known for a couple of hours, and with his worldview of the 21st century and his parent's experience, while Di Tou is a relatively open young man, he isn't someone who easily trusts others.

It isn't to say that he instinctively believes that everyone is hiding a secret motive, or will easily sell him out, but he believes that there's no harm in keeping a few secrets and boundaries to ensure that he remains safe.

Similarly, while he doesn't entirely understand the magnitude of the Divine Mandate in this world, or any other, he can at the very least tell it's something important, considering the way in which it showed up and how it managed to stop time.

He's unsure what Mu Di Bai, alongside the majority of this world's stance towards people from other worlds, whether it's common, or something that will cause him to be harmed.

All in all, whether or not it was the correct choice to try to hide the matter of the Mandate, it was the choice that made the most logical sense for Di Tou considering his growing environment.

While Di Tou was massaging his arm, Mu Di Bai had started walking around in the general vicinity of the area while writing spells in the air that manifested into large floating words. While he was doing this, he was casually talking to Di Tou, "I really wonder what the hell you did to cause a Divine Mandate to show up, those things don't show up for a couple hundred years on end, and even when they do it's normally to kings or oracles, as for mortals…" Mu Di Bai gave Di Tou another pensive look, "at the very least in the twenty thousand years of history that I know of, not once has a mortal triggered a Mandate."

Mu Di Bai paused whatever he was doing. "Hey. You are a mortal right?"

"Haha… Senior you must be joking, Look how frail I am, do you think I want to be this fragile?"

"Hmmm. Well anyways, I guess that solves the question of how you managed to make it into the formation without alerting me at first. The presence of a Divine Mandate changes things, I need to travel get more information on the situation of the various countries now. Every time a Mandate shows up, there's typically a period of major unrest…"

Mu Di Bai once again started staring at Di Tou. "So that means…" Di Tou tested.

"That means that you can't come and work as my employee anymore."

"F*ck! My rice bowl! Good things come and go so quick." Di Tou thought.

"Instead," Mu Di Bai continued, "I'll need you to pose as me in the academy for the time being. Don't worry, you won't have to do much, on normal days I pretend to be an ordinary person, but the majority of the powerhouses keep tabs on whether I'm there or not. If I'm gone for too long they'll cause trouble, so while I'm traveling you'll have to stay there as a smoke screen."

"Huh?"

"I'll do a round of cleaning of the bigger groups of vermin before I leave. But nonetheless you'll have to be careful. The people who receive mandates…" Mu Di Bai gave Di Tou an funny look, "Tend to end up in rather…" Mu Di Bai paused for a second, thinking about what word to use, "extraordinary… circumstances."