Chapter Eighty-Five: Little Gold's Deadly Venom [An extra update for "It was never me who changed; you were the one who grew tired"]

This should have been excellent news, yet he could not be happy about it.

He had discovered that while his physical body had grown stronger, his soul power had become even stronger still—so strong that even he could not tell how far it had gone.

Perhaps this ascent of the soul was not entirely an ascent at all.

It might also be that, through a fleeting moment of insight and the release of his heart in that instant, he was not only advancing, but also independently restoring the soul power from his previous life.

Thus, even he did not know just how formidable his soul force had become.

But one thing he knew: his trump card all along, spiritual assault, could no longer be used.

There was no helping it. The soul power he carried from his past life would recover gradually on its own.

But the body of this life was newly forged; it had to be cultivated step by step. Even if his bodily strength had broken through, his soul power had also become vastly stronger.

This strength was utterly different from before.

Before, his soul power could annihilate any expert at the Meridian Passage stage in a single strike, which meant his soul power had already surpassed that realm and was at least at the level of a Rippling Stream stage expert—otherwise, he could not have instantly killed Meridian Passage cultivators.

Although every time he used spiritual assault, his body would nearly be crippled, at least he remained alive and able to move.

Now, he could only wield soul power roughly at the Meridian Passage level. A spiritual assault formed from such strength might only shake a Meridian Passage expert, but to severely wound them or make them die instantly was almost impossible.

After all, the soul strength of Meridian Passage experts did not differ greatly. Even with automatic defense, most of his spiritual assault would be blocked.

If he forced out soul power beyond the Meridian Passage level, then the slightest disturbance would affect the whole. All his soul power would go berserk.

Before he even launched a spiritual assault, his body would be shattered by the overwhelming force of his soul—no, not shattered, destroyed.

In an instant, the flesh would vanish into ashes, leaving not the slightest trace behind.

At that point, Lin Fan would still be alive, but only as a soul. If he wanted to continue living, he would have to find a body to possess.

Unlike his own body, a body suitable for possession would have to be slightly weaker than his soul strength, and even then it would still collapse, utterly unable to bear it. As for a body equal to his soul strength, the cultivator’s realm would surely not be inferior to Lin Fan’s soul force. How could such a body be so easily seized?

One must know: others possess both soul and flesh, and when facing you at the same level, you are only soul power, a rootless floating water. What could you use to fight them?

Much less when the battle is fought on the other person’s home ground, within their own body.

So Lin Fan would not even dare to think about destroying his body and seizing another. As the saying goes, even a golden nest or silver nest is not as good as one’s own humble den.

Though his current body was somewhat weaker, it was the body with which he had been born, the original vessel that had accompanied him from the very beginning—genuine as can be.

Well... no, that was wrong.

Original and intact was best.

As long as he cultivated it slowly, his foundations would become steadier, and soul and body would become the most perfectly matched. Only then, when he reached greater heights in the future, would there be no hidden flaw.

In short, his bodily strength now was that of a Meridian Passage expert, and his soul power was also that of a Meridian Passage expert. If not for his slightly weaker vital energy, he would already be a genuine Meridian Passage expert in every sense.

At the same time, under such circumstances, his trump card—spiritual assault—was gone.

Of course, if he were facing beings below the Meridian Passage stage, such as the Energy Meridian stage or the Channeling Energy stage, then using spiritual assault would still achieve its former killing power.

However, that was no longer a trump card, only one method of attack among many.

Right now, he had to hurry to Heavenly Scripture Academy, and as soon as possible sort out a cultivation technique. Once that was done, it would not take long before he could become a true Meridian Passage expert with no weaknesses whatsoever.

After he broke the seal, another day passed. Then the snow-white little cocoon hanging from his hair suddenly dropped to the ground and swelled in an instant, until it became as large as half an egg.

With a crack, the cocoon split open, and the ice silkworm crawled out. It was now a foot long, its snow-white body sprouting a pair of fleshy wings, the plump and round shape of before gone without a trace.

Had it not been so small, its appearance would have been extremely handsome indeed.

Because of the ice silkworm’s appearance, Lin Fan once again remembered the matter of giving it a name, and so he resumed the process of naming it.

Naturally, the names he came up with were truly unbearable to the ice silkworm, which resisted with all its might.

Later, Lin Fan recalled that in his previous life, the ice silkworm belonging to Bei Mingxi had been called Old Gold, and by some strange twist of fate he named this one Little Gold, both as a remembrance of the past and in the hope that this ice silkworm would grow as powerful as Old Gold.

Besides, the ice silkworm would eventually evolve into a golden silkworm, so calling it Little Gold was fitting enough.

Surprisingly, this time the ice silkworm did not object. Perhaps to it, so long as it was not given a name like Dumb Dog or Two Donkey, anything would do.

And so, Little Gold’s name was settled.

Thus Lin Fan, with Little Gold in tow, set out on the road toward Southern Heaven Prefecture, though he did not pass through the territory of the tier-four ferocious beasts.

One had to know that the regions occupied by tier-four ferocious beasts were bordered by other tier-four beasts, and even deeper within there were tier-five beasts. He had no desire to court such danger.

Back when he made the decision to cross the territory of the tier-four beasts, it had been out of sheer necessity, with no other choice.

Now, with the Seven Killers destroyed after the breaking of the Broken Army, and then the Dark Shadow shot dead, only the Greedy Wolf remained. Even if he met it head-on, with his present strength he would fear nothing.

He certainly would not take the road of peril again.

So he followed the fringes of the Azure Python Forest all the way toward Southern Heaven Prefecture.

Along the way he paused and resumed his march, slaughtering many ferocious beasts. Their flesh was mostly devoured by Little Gold, while only the beast cores were left behind.

If Little Gold were given the beast cores, its rate of evolution would absolutely be faster, and before long it could advance again.

The problem was: what then? Once it turned back into a snow-white little cocoon hanging from his hair?

And when he reached the imperial city in the future, if Little Gold had no food, what would he feed it with? He could not let the creature go hungry forever.

One must know that the evolution of a golden silkworm came from ceaseless devouring.

So he kept a private reserve. While in the forest, he let Little Gold hunt to its heart’s content and find flesh to consume, and he himself also kept slaughtering ferocious beasts, tossing all their flesh and cores into his storage ring. That way, once he reached the imperial city, he could take them out and feed Little Gold.

Thus, he and Little Gold advanced in fits and starts, killing large numbers of ferocious beasts every day.

In six days, Lin Fan had accumulated dozens of beast cores, and there were more than thirty beast corpses as well. At the same time, he and Little Gold entered the forested region of Southern Heaven Prefecture.

Once they left this forest, Southern Heaven Prefecture would not be far away.

A long hiss sounded.

At Lin Fan’s words, Little Gold let out a cry, its small head lifted proudly toward the sky. Though the sound was not loud, it was filled with domineering arrogance.

Boom!

Little Gold’s body swelled suddenly, and in the blink of an eye it became a colossal beast, biting down on the already-dead, now blackened, multicolored giant python.

Gulp.

With a toss of its head, Little Gold swallowed the entire python whole.

Then its body shrank in an instant, becoming a little snow-white snake that flew onto Lin Fan’s shoulder. Opening its mouth, it spat out the giant python’s core.

By then Lin Fan had already extended his hand and caught it, then placed it into his storage ring.

No one may have seen this scene. If anyone had, they would surely have cried out in shock, for the multicolored giant python devoured by Little Gold was a tier-three ferocious beast, the Frost Python.

That was a creature comparable to a human at the Energy Meridian stage, yet it had been killed so easily by Little Gold?

In truth, Little Gold was only a tier-two ferocious beast, but because its innate talent was so formidable, its speed was not in the least inferior to that of a tier-three beast, and indeed it was the sort especially adept at speed.

What was even stronger was the power of its venom.

As a tier-two beast, it could easily poison any tier-three ferocious beast to death upon contact.

So when it killed the tier-three Frost Python, what truly caused the python to die instantly was the venom that spattered out after Little Gold shot into its mouth.

Only then did it drill out through the top of the Frost Python’s head.

Thus, although Little Gold was only a tier-two beast, its true combat strength was such that, apart from tier-four beasts, few tier-three beasts could be its match.

With Little Gold’s speed and its terrifying venom, almost no tier-three ferocious beast could withstand it. Even tier-four beasts would have to treat its poison with extreme caution.

Little Gold needed to devour large amounts of energy to evolve, yet it preferred poisonous spiritual herbs even more. Not only did they harm it, they actually made its venom even fiercer.

Of course, spiritual herbs containing such poison also held abundant spiritual energy, which was highly beneficial to Little Gold’s evolution.

Little Gold’s true body was only a foot long. When it had just devoured the Frost Python, what it had displayed was only one of its devouring abilities.

Lin Fan reached out and stroked Little Gold’s head, then lowered his gaze to the Thousand Piles of Snow at his waist and smiled faintly.

“By now, Thousand Piles of Snow has absorbed about enough soul force. With one or two tier-four beasts, or the soul force of one or two Meridian Passage experts, it should be able to advance into a spiritual artifact.”

From the moment Lin Fan obtained Thousand Piles of Snow, he had inscribed it with a spirit-gathering formation.

From the slaughter on the night of the lantern festival, to the Zhang clan, and then beyond that, through the ambushes during Lin Fan’s training and his later counterkills, and up to this very moment.

There had been far, far too many people and beasts who had died at Lin Fan’s hands.

The Energy Meridian stage alone was beyond counting; there had also been two Meridian Passage experts and two tier-four ferocious beasts, each with different cultivation levels and thus different soul forces.

So under such slaughter, the spiritual essence within Thousand Piles of Snow had already grown nearly complete.

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