Chapter 605: Tongue

Daniel and the Invincible Oasis never came, or rather, they never found Liam.

After two weeks in hiding, Liam resurfaced and carefully scouted the area, using his superhuman senses and his body’s innate cloaking method to their full potential, quickly obtaining reassuring results.

Liam spotted vague tracks. Some were faint scents, while others involved unusual Qi patterns, as if foreign breezes had blown over the forbidden zone, leaving marks that had yet to disperse.

Investigations had clearly happened, but not in an intrusive way. They had likely come from specific magical items and weaker experts who even kept their distance.

The reason was obvious. Daniel couldn’t know the details, but killing Andrew was no easy feat. He was more likely to suspect a trap than to believe Liam acted alone, making him wary of exposing himself.

More eye-catching investigations also risked exposing the news, which Daniel reasonably wanted to keep hidden, at least until he was ready to bear the consequences. The Aetacia region could turn its hungry gaze on his Tribe otherwise.

Politics hardly mattered for Liam at the moment. His senses and conjectures gave the all-clear, so he resumed hunting, doing far more than bringing it up a notch.

Everything was alchemy, and Liam only had one way of approaching it. Only one way was allowed. Liam might not be using cauldrons, but he would still walk the more wasteful and longer path leading to utmost perfection.

During an actual concoction, Liam would fail on purpose every time he made a minor mistake so that his eventual success would imply complete mastery in that specific recipe.

Applying the same theory to the hunts was hardly a challenge. The price was the only issue. Rather than burning through far more batches of ingredients, Liam burned himself.

The scorpions were a solved equation. Once their tails were out, killing them was only a matter of time, but Liam didn’t leave it at that. He couldn’t.

Sacrificial plays were the perfect strategy to get rid of the tails. However, those body parts were also the scorpions’ best weapons. They were faster than Liam, let alone faster than his weapon, and he couldn’t let that inferiority stand.

Training didn’t solve that inferiority, not in the strict sense. Liam’s arms, shoulders, and back weren’t built to match those whip-like weapons, especially not with the greatsword’s added weight.

The difference was structural, down to the very purpose of those limbs. A cultivator could only close that gap through martial arts or by improving his cultivation.

Yet, Liam’s goal wasn’t to achieve unachievable physical features. He had to maximize himself, meaning working within his natural limits, meaning relying on technique to compensate for unavoidable shortcomings.

Swinging faster than the tails was impossible, but blocking and deflecting them was not only feasible. It was the preferred approach.

It turned out such a bulky piece of metal made for quite a good shield. It even deflected pretty well, allowing Liam to redirect the impossibly fast aculei, exposing the tail to a cleaving swing the scorpions had no way of avoiding.

Once that part of the training was done, the scorpions had run out of things to teach Liam. He still hunted them day and night, but eventually moved to his next target.

The forbidden zone had three known predators that used poison. The scorpions were the weakest, but the one ranking above them wasn’t exactly stronger. It was just far, far deadlier.

Liam was on his knees, or at least he believed he was. Colors that shouldn’t exist had filled his vision, and any shape that entered it was twisted almost beyond recognition. He was drenched in sweat, blood vessels pulsating all over him, seemingly on the verge of bursting.

As often happened with poisons, far worse was unfolding inside Liam. His chest hurt. His heart beat so fast he was worried it would tear, and each of its beats slammed so heavily on his eardrums he failed to hear anything else.

Truth be told, Liam hadn’t planned on getting hit. He had actually been very wary of that since he knew the poison’s deadliness would have spiked.

However, using magical beasts as training dummies carried risks, especially when fighting them without the tools that made cultivators superior.

There was so much going on inside Liam’s body that he almost didn’t feel the hit to his side. Still, even his twisted, strangely colored vision noticed the change in scenery.

Liam wasn’t on the ground anymore. He was flying toward a giant mouth, dragged into it by an extremely sticky tongue attached to his skin.

The magical beast in question was a bulky toad, a level three. It was one and a half meters tall, with glistening, wet yellow-green skin with black patterns.

A long cut was on the creature’s right side, dripping with red blood, but the wound wasn’t deep. It was hardly debilitating despite Liam striking by surprise and with all the strength his body could muster.

That had been Liam’s mistake. Toads weren’t tough, and that magical beast was no exception. It had simply deployed a defensive ability, creating the opportunity for a body slam, exposing Liam to the toxic secretion on its skin.

Liam had been on the other side many times. Poisoning once often meant victory, or at least it created the opportunity for the winning move, and that was exactly what the toad was doing.

Luckily, Liam wasn’t paralyzed. Despite his unreliable vision and his bursting body, he could still move. He also hadn’t let go of the greatsword.

The tongue retracted unfathomably fast, too quick to unleash any swing. Liam could only lift his weapon before he could enter the toad’s mouth, using it as a barrier that kept him outside.

While the weapon was sturdy enough not to bend under the tongue’s pull, Liam’s body wasn’t, not in his current state. He didn’t dare risk touching that wet skin again, but pushing against his weapon to keep himself away finally brought his blood vessels to the breaking point.

Blood spurted everywhere. Many of Liam’s blood vessels burst apart, tainting his shirtless figure. Even his face fell prey to that trend, but a hidden benefit followed.

Less blood meant lower blood pressure, and branching experts didn’t really need too much of it to function in the first place. Liam’s heart finally began to calm down, and he used that newfound agency to swing the greasword sideways.

The frog released a high-pitched cry as the weapon severed its tongue. Liam jumped back, one chunk of that sticky organ still attached to his side, blood leaking profusely from his injuries, but ready to start round two.