About a week later...
In a tranquil villa at the heart of the city:
One man and one tiger cub were pitifully huddled up together in a corner and staring daggers at Luther.
The previously well decorated and elegant house now strangely seemed to contain spots of black soot here and there, as if someone had torched it intensely at very specific places with pinpoint accuracy.
"Monkey, that piece of fish in your hands seems a bit undercooked. Let me smoke it for you. Ba ha ha ha."
Luther unceremoniously grabbed the juicy piece in between Monkey's chopsticks.
The next instant tiny sparks flew from his long slender fingers and completely blackened the perfect juicy bite.
"Oops. Sorry, bro. Maybe the previous version was better."
Though the word sorry came out, the handsome ruffian did not seem even one bit apologetic.
He threw the completely charred piece back at Monkey and grinned like a maniac.
"Anyone else needs some heating up?" Luther chuckled again, with only Su Lin and him laughing at his miserably poor joke.
He was contently resting on Su Lin's lap, playing with her long curls that kept repeatedly assaulting his face and particularly his nose.
Su Bai (Squirrel) was munching on his food as if he could not see any of the atrocities happening in front of him.
And Rabbit also pretty much endured the spontaneous meeting with the same attitude.
Only Monkey seemed to be taking it really hard.
Since the others were currently busy with various things, only these three had assembled for this sudden meeting.
Though the main agenda for this meeting was to discuss the whereabouts of the special array enchantment rocks, Luther decided to hijack the meeting for a little while to show off his newly obtained abilities.
This week he had finished his close door cultivation and successfully stabilized his cultivation base.
This meant that he was now able to use his cultivation base to unleash his affinity specific attacks.
And in Luther's case, it was lightning or electricity bolts with varying amounts of intensity. Though he was still not adept in controlling the intensity of the attacks just yet.
Monkey gritted his teeth and sulked indignantly. "Master this is just too much. Why this unfair bias? I am still stuck in stage 2 bottleneck and he is now at stage 4!!"
"This... I can't accept this injustice."
Monkey rubbed the poor tiger cub's head and muttered pitifully.
Su Lin chuckled. "Don't worry. Let's go pick a fight with someone. Battling it out is the second easiest way to break through a bottleneck."
Realizing that she let slip some vital information, Su Lin quickly looked away.
Others failed to notice but a small blush crept into her soft marshmallow cheeks.
"Hehe. Obviously, because I am such a hard worker." Luther grinned.
Monkey rolled his eyes. Such a blatant lie!!!! Something just did not add up and today he resolved to get to the bottom of this!!
It made sense for Su Lin's cultivation progress to be leaps and bounds above theirs. She was the master after all.
But why did Luther's cultivation as well sore like this?? And to top it all, he didn't even have to go through the painstaking process of initial meridian opening or whatever.
Every single one of them did, but Luther did not. Why? Why? Why? Monkey cried inside. Damn it. He was tired of living in this unjust world.
Hearing his rant, Su Lin quickly changed the subject, because she knew where this was headed to.
Under no circumstances, should her embarrassing dark past come out. So she swiftly asked about the array enchantment rock deposits.
"Did you find out where he mined the stones from??" It took all of her efforts to maintain a straight face.
"Yes. After a lot of questioning, the guy finally revealed the location. The place is actually not that far away. It is"
"Wait a second. Darling, what is the first easiest method for breaking through bottlenecks?" Luther cut off Monkey and still clung on to the previous discussion.
Su Lin bent down and gazed abashedly at his pitch black pupils, which now clearly had blue satin-like spikes within them and stuttered. "Battling, fighting, and more battling."
"No No. Darling, but you said that was the second. What is the first one?" Luther did not give in and refused to let go of that topic.
As cultivators, it was astronomically important to know how to get past bottlenecks. So how can one slack in learning new things about this area?
And moreover, something felt kind of fishy...
"Just a .. mmm.. slip of the tongue." Her lips twitched looking at the sincere expression on his devilishly handsome face. He did not look like he would let it go any time soon.
The group discussed the mine location, which was coincidentally on the outskirts of Hongkong city, where the Qin family also resided.
This was a good chance to deal with both of these situations together. Su Lin decided to contact Wang Yu before leaving because he probably would want to join them.
And with this as the reason, she immediately slipped out of the room.
As soon as she left, Monkey instantly pounced on Luther, who looked like he was lost in his thoughts.
"Bro, you tell me right now. What did you do prior to breakthrough? Did you attain some sort of enlightenment when cooking? Arghhhh... When will I ever be able to get over this bottleneck!!!"
In the midst of Monkey's rant, Luther's thin lips curved upwards, as he recollected what he was up to when he broke through his bottleneck.
His eyes glimmered intoxicatedly as he looked at the distant figure of his precious wifey.
1 second... 2 seconds... 5 seconds... Reality slowly dawned on him.
Wait. What??
Luther jerked up straight as he suddenly realized what was going on...