Chapter Ninety-Five: Paralytic Venom

In truth, if she could gather all the materials needed to refine Foundation Establishment Pills, she could also seek out a master alchemist, pay him handsomely, and ask him to prepare the elixir. That was why Chu Xiner had been so overjoyed upon seeing the Seven-Leaf Purple Vine Flower.

Alas, the main and supplementary ingredients required for the pill numbered no fewer than forty or fifty kinds. Chu Xiner already possessed more than half of them, but she had no idea how long it would take to gather the few herbs that remained.

“Fellow Daoist, what can I do for you?”

Just as Chu Xiner was pondering this, the attendant who had just been speaking with the man had already shaken him off and come over to her with habitual politeness.

“Do you have Black-bearded Snake Vine and Toad Grass here?”

At his question, Chu Xiner immediately composed herself and deliberately lowered her voice to state her purpose.

“Yes. Black-bearded Snake Vine is five hundred spirit stones, and Toad Grass is four hundred and sixty-one spirit stones a stalk. How much do you need, Fellow Daoist?”

Feiyun Pavilion truly deserved its reputation as a property of the Feiyun Sect, the largest trading house in the market. The two poisonous herbs unavailable elsewhere were both in stock here, and from the attendant’s tone it sounded as though they had more than one stalk besides.

The price, however, was rather steep. If not for Xiao Wen’s needs, Chu Xiner would truly have felt reluctant to waste such money.

“One stalk of each will do. Here are the spirit stones.”

Xiao Wenzi’s paralyzing venom required only one set of materials to be successfully activated and refined. Afterward, there would be no need for him to keep ingesting poisonous herbs. Thus Chu Xiner bought only one set before turning to leave the market.

With a magical mask on her face, a loose black robe around her body, and a hoarse voice that gave no hint of gender, she had also just bought poisonous herbs. It was all too easy for others to mistake her for a ruthless and vicious rogue cultivator.

For that reason, although many cultivators in the great hall of Feiyun Pavilion saw her take out nearly a thousand spirit stones, none were willing to provoke her.

After all, cultivators of the same level often found rogue cultivators far more formidable in battle. To casually offend a poisonous cultivator was to risk failing to seize treasure and instead becoming the sheep led to slaughter. Who would do such a foolish thing?

After traveling more than a hundred li from Feiyun Market without anyone pursuing her, the tension in Chu Xiner’s heart finally eased.

After another two hours of rapid flight, with the sky growing dark and still no accident occurring, Chu Xiner found an uninhabited peak. Sword light flashed, and before long a crude cave dwelling had taken shape.

After setting up a formation and installing spirit stones, Chu Xiner sat cross-legged on a cushion and began to meditate and cultivate.

On the other side, inside more than ten open jade boxes, the figure of a huge mosquito flitted in and out. The poisonous herbs, including the Black-bearded Snake Vine, were all fed upon by him in turn.

Under the wrapping force of his demon spiritual energy, the toxins of more than a dozen poisonous substances were gradually refined and purified within his body, while impurities were expelled as the circulation of his power completed each cycle.

What came next was to merge them with the venom already within him. This process had to be handled with the utmost caution, for one misstep would not only prevent the venom from evolving into a paralyzing toxin, but might also leave him poisoned himself, making the effort more than not worth it.

Time passed slowly. Although Xiao Wenzi was not human and had no forehead from which sweat could pour, he still felt as though he were drenched through.

Fortunately, through careful and patient effort, the tempering process for awakening the paralyzing venom went smoothly. By daybreak, he had finally transformed his own venom into a paralyzing toxin capable of affecting a cultivator’s body and divine sense.

By the standards of cultivation and combat strength, Xiao Wenzi, having reached the eighth level of the Demon-Qi Realm by cultivating the Blood Spirit Grand Art, could already rival a cultivator at the eleventh level.

In other words, against someone of the same rank, he only needed to inject one or two drops of this venom into the target’s body to render them quickly paralyzed.

With Chu Xiner at his side, once the target could no longer move, sealing and subduing him would be effortless. Delighted, Xiao Wenzi immediately sent the girl the message that his task was complete.

After hearing that Xiao Wen had already used his innate ability to refine paralyzing venom capable of easily restraining cultivators around the tenth level, Chu Xiner was half skeptical, though her joy still outweighed her doubts.

She decided to find a lone minor cultivator to try it out that very day. If it worked, then in the future she would no longer need to be so cautious when finding cultivators for Xiao Wen to feed upon.

On a hillside lush with green grass and shaded by ancient pines and cypresses, the wandering cultivator Zhao Yuhai was walking along, his divine sense enveloping everything within several dozen meters as he carefully searched and discerned.

Clearly, with his cultivation at the peak of the eighth level, he was still not strong enough to challenge those fierce demonic beasts. He could only rely on luck to find spiritual herbs and exchange them for resources.

Suddenly, he discovered a small patch of blue-green grass half a foot tall, with narrow, flattened leaves among the rocks.

Stone Azure Grass.

Yes, this was exactly the Stone Azure Grass used to refine Spirit-Condensing Pills, and it should be worth several spirit stones.

Zhao Yuhai was overjoyed and hurried toward where the herb grew.

Yet as he bent down to dig up the spiritual grass, he failed to notice that the transparent figure of a huge mosquito was approaching him swiftly, as faint as a wisp of smoke.

“No—what the hell is that thing?”

The world of cultivation was dangerous at every turn. Although Zhao Yuhai had remained vigilant while gathering herbs, his realm was limited. Before Xiao Wenzi, aided by an invisibility talisman, had even come close enough to thrust out his proboscis, he had sensed nothing at all.

The moment he realized something was wrong and became alert, it was already too late to evade.

He could only cry out inwardly. Then he felt his body beginning to grow numb and weak from the back of his neck, and in the next instant his soul was struck by a wave of uncontrollable dizziness.

Before Zhao Yuhai, whose body had gone numb and could no longer move, could even understand what had happened, a surge of spiritual force slammed into him. His head tilted to one side, and he fell completely unconscious.

No one knew how much time had passed before he slowly woke.

What greeted his eyes were tree branches and, above them, a stretch of azure sky partially veiled by leaves. He had somehow appeared from the rocky place where the Stone Azure Grass had been growing in an unknown dense forest.

Memories from before he had blacked out surged over him like a tide, but Zhao Yuhai had no mind to investigate them further, for he felt his entire body burning with a maddening itch and stabbing pain. When he rolled over and forced himself to stand, he swayed so badly that he nearly fell again.

“No, my face, my hands—who did this to me?”

Spreading his divine sense and seeing his present, pig-headed appearance, Zhao Yuhai let out a hysterical, miserable howl.

At the same time, Xiao Wenzi, who had gained more than a thousand system coins and was the instigator of this affair, was happily comprehending his technique inside the spirit beast pouch at Chu Xiner’s waist.

The paralyzing venom had truly not disappointed him. With only one drop, it had rendered the peak eighth-level Zhao Yuhai unable to move, allowing Chu Xiner to subdue him with ease.

After breaking through to the eighth level of the Demon-Qi Realm, Xiao Wenzi had not only advanced greatly in cultivation, but due to his enlarged body, his blood-drinking speed was also much faster than before.

It had taken him less than ten minutes to exchange for more than fifteen hundred system coins. By calculation, he could now convert nearly three system coins every second, which meant swallowing more than twenty drops of blood. In the past, that would have been utterly unimaginable.

However, when he exchanged enough for the ninth-level mental art of the Blood Spirit Grand Art, Xiao Wenzi did not obtain any new secret technique. This left him, for a moment, somewhat disappointed, despite his earlier anticipation.

Still, the first several layers of the art had already come with accompanying demon techniques, and the fundamental spells of the Blood Spirit Grand Art in the Demon-Qi Realm were already numerous. As the saying went, too much to chew is hard to swallow. Thinking it over, Xiao Wenzi quickly let it go.