“Am I still your guest?” Yu Di asked.

  “Of course.” Shah al-Rahman gently pulled Fatima down to sit beside him again. “I would also counter that at a certain point, any guest would be remiss if they didn’t return any favors to their hosts. Which is why I was so thankful for those buns you gave us.”

  “Your Holiness, if you would allow me some private time with him, I could extract all the secrets you need,” Fatima said.

  Yu Di didn’t like the look she was giving him. He wasn’t a fat roast pig to be butchered. Although to them, maybe he looked like a fattened goat.

  “That wouldn’t be such a bad idea,” Shah al-Rahman said. “We are running short on time before the Celestial Jade army arrives.” He got up from his seat and walked over to his other female servants. “Yu Di, enjoy Fatima’s hospitality. Most men would kill to be in her presence.”

  Did Yu Di have a choice?

  “I’ll try not to break him,” Fatima said.

  The moment after Shah al-Rahman left the tent, Yu Di smelled cinnamon. Not this again. He almost couldn’t resist the first time. Then again, he didn’t have any Qi in his dantian.

  Thanks to Shah al-Rahman’s generous gifts, not only has Yu Di refilled his Qi to full, he’s also been cultivating the entire time they were talking. He didn’t analyze Fatima’s technique the first time around, but he had an inkling of how it worked.

  First, the technique flooded the area with Fatima’s powerful scent. The natural animalistic pheromones from the opposite sex could drive most animals to do crazy things, let alone through a special Qi technique from a cultivator in the third realm.

  Second, the technique also warped its target’s mind to become naturally lustful by nature. It’s why Yu Di couldn’t think of anything else other than ravaging Fatima despite never having had the urges before for any woman. The closest urge he could ever think of was his lust for leveling up his cultivation.

  Which brought the third point of the technique. It wore down the willpower of the person, making them more and more addicted to the technique through repeated exposure. It became like a drug where it would make anyone beg for death if they didn’t get it.

  The best part as far as Yu Di could see was that it didn’t require Fatima to touch or do anything with her victim. It’s the primal lust and desire that drove them crazy and continually feeding it through her technique that made it devastating. For a Demigod with Qi running through his meridians and with a host of techniques to resist techniques at the Demigod level, it would be easy to resist, right?

  Yu Di had collapsed onto the ground before Fatima, trying to reach for her feet while thinking about all three points. He knew logically what was going on with him now that he was under her technique’s thrall again. Yet his old, pathetic Demigod body reacted in the most primal way it knew how.

  “You are feeling my full power,” Fatima said. “You only had a taste of it before, but you can’t resist me this time. I will commend you, though. Most men would break if I gave them my full power.”

  Yu Di grunted, drool leaking from the corner of his mouth. He was surprised he could resist so well. As a Demigod, he knew better than most that the gap of realms in power wasn’t necessarily the only determinant in a fight, but it was a major factor. He thought that because of such a difference, his brain should have melted from this assault. Yet despite his body not listening to him anymore, his mind was clear.

  In fact, it was clearer than it had been in a long time. The last time he felt like this was when he was a Demigod before the curse struck him down.

  “Now, you’re going to tell me everything I want to know, or I will stop,” Fatima said.

  “No,” Yu Di grunted. He reached for her toes with his fingers, but couldn’t touch them.

  “I think I’ll let you suffer a little bit first for offending his holiness,” Fatima said. “Once you feel you’ve repented, I might give you a little reward.”

  Yu Di pulled his awareness further into himself, allowing his body to do whatever bodies do when suffering from a drug. If there was one thing that being a Demigod taught him, it was that his existence wasn’t purely physical. Otherwise, how could he have done those crazy feats of strength?

  His inner world opened up to him for the first time in decades. Ever since his curse lowered his power levels below Demigod, he couldn’t get in again. This was where he stored all his personal insights on his journey of cultivation.

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  His inner world looked like a small round closet with walls. Clay tablets hung along the walls, with every insight he discovered. It was wide enough for him to sit down on the hardwood floor when he needed to cultivate those insights to gain the next level.

  A new clay tablet blinked black and white in the center of the wall in front of him. Yu Di tapped it and it opened to the newest insight he had from the stone stele within the ‘Forgotten Spirit Sect.’

  There is infinite chaos in the world that is held together by an infinite order. That no matter how much one tries, one can never truly put order to chaos or vice versa. Just like his daughter. No matter how hard Yu Di tries, he can never bring order to that chaotic little girl.

  That insight still rang true in this inner world, highlighting every other insight he’d had in the past. This was the insight that got him to the very precipice of his cultivation as a Demigod. All he needed was one more clue or one more item or one more aspect to bring him over the edge into becoming a true God.

  Maybe this was that opportunity. He had been given a chance to look through all his insights and make a final breakthrough. With any luck, Fatima might keep him in this state for a few days until he broke through.

  Yu Di touched another tablet. It blinked red but then it didn’t open. He tried another. It didn’t open either. He tapped every single tablet within his inner world. None of them opened.

  His hands shook as he stared at all the blinking tablets. This can’t be happening. Had he lost all his insight? Was he now stuck as a mortal, destined to die a miserable death?

  Yu Di tapped the newest tablet again, reminding himself of his daughter. He conjured her face from memory and placed it beside all the tablets. It hung like a painting within his inner world, giving the gloomy and desperate little closet a glimmer of hope. If nothing else, that face would be the last thing he’d remember as he died.

  Enough of this. Even without these stupid tablets within his inner world, he remembered every insight intimately. He became a Demigod in a few short decades because of his ability to comprehend better than most. As long as his curse unlocked enough, he could do it again. This time, he’d have better insights to empower his ascent to becoming an even stronger Demigod.

  Yu Di relished the thought of gaining those levels all over again.

  With a thought, he cleared all the other tablets from the wall. He kept only the newest one. Using that as the cornerstone of his understandings of cultivation, he would rebuild.

  Yu Di was going to introduce some uncontrollable chaos into this world. The Shah thinks that he’s God-sent to rule the world? Maybe he’s right that there was a reason for him meeting Yu Di at this point in his life.

  Yu Di was going to disrupt his entire plan.

  Yu Di took a deep breath and took control of his physical body again. The cinnamon smell assaulted his nose again. There was even a hint of cardamom on his tongue. He swallowed a few times, trying to get it out. He hated that taste.

  At least Fatima had done nothing to him yet. She leaned back in the chair with her feet dangling in the air.

  Yu Di’s stupid body reached for it like a baby.

  Despite knowing exactly how her technique worked, Fatima’s power level was two realms above his. There was no way Yu Di could break free from that hold. However, that didn’t mean Yu Di was at this woman’s mercy.

  Yu Di had developed a technique that allowed him to control his body through sheer will regardless of what was affecting him as long as his mind was clear. It would take more than a third-realm cultivator to affect him. He hesitated to use it because the technique would destroy many of his muscles and tendons that he forced to move, essentially turning himself into a puppet until he could heal them.

  That required a lot of mental effort. So much so that despite his Demigod mind, he wouldn’t be able to use any of his power or techniques afterwards.

  Yu Di inched forward toward Fatima’s big toe.

  Anything to avoid this fate. Yu Di focused his mind and wrapped the technique around his entire body, forcing it under his control. He hadn’t used this technique for so long that he collapsed onto the ground.

  Yu Di pushed his arms and his legs, willing them to move. They shook a little before going still. At least the technique worked. All he had to do was push harder.

  “It seems my toy is finally broken,” Fatima said. “Maybe now you will listen to me and I might let you suckle that toe you so desperately want. Get up.”

  Yu Di popped up from the ground with a forceful jump. He might have pushed his legs a little too hard as his head met the tent, collapsing it on them. The moment he hit the sand below, chaos ensued.

  “You worthless slime,” Fatima shouted under the tent. “Fix this.”

  Yu Di crawled out from under the tent and skidded on the sand. He had enough Qi to summon his flying board from the festival. Whoever invented it was a genius. It allowed him to fly without the need to imbue his Qi. It ran off spirit stones that should be fully charged within his storage ring.

  Yu Di hopped on and with his mind, he piloted it east, out of Shah al-Rahman’s camp and hopefully toward Yu Lin. He’d worry about that once he reached the Celestial Jade Empire.

  “You can’t go that way,” Fatima said. She appeared right beside him on her own flying carpet. “The moment you cross our camp lines, I will kill you.”

  “So stop me.” Yu Di pushed his flying board harder. As long as he could get out of the camp, he was certain he could find a way out of Fatima’s grasp.

  “Why? I would love nothing more than to end your miserable life so that I can go back to mine. I’ll even be one of the few below the Demigod realm to kill an actual Demigod. That alone would be worth losing whatever useless information you have.”

  Yu Di laughed. Fatima is right. She’s two realms above him and it took this debilitating technique to get his body moving again. There’s no way he could elude her killing blow.

  He stopped his flying board, allowing it to hover just before the camp’s perimeter. If he couldn’t escape this way, then he had only one option left.

  “Good, come back to me,” Fatima called. The smell of cinnamon wrapped itself around Yu Di’s body. He shook uncontrollably from her technique.

  “Not today.” Yu Di turned his flying board and raced toward the barrier.