Lin Le gathered firewood and cooked, putting all the meat and rice on to boil.
Once the food was ready, Lin Le dug in with great mouthfuls. A drop of Blood Essence Treasure Liquid also fell from the lotus leaf.
The immense essence flowed along with his blood qi, transforming Lin Le's stomach and intestines.
As Lin Le kept eating, his belly began to swell without stop, until he looked as fat as a woman six or seven months pregnant.
"Burp!" Lin Le let out a full belch. The food on the stove, enough to feed a family of four for a week, had been devoured completely by him.
Sitting cross-legged on the ground, Lin Le accelerated the digestion of the food in his stomach. It was not until the sun slanted westward that his belly returned to normal.
Patting his stomach, Lin Le reckoned that he had made a preliminary start on cultivating the Viper Belly.
Looking within the Inner Vision Divine Ability's Inner Scenery, he saw another drop of Blood Essence Treasure Liquid take shape on the lotus leaf.
Lin Le used it again. This time, he practiced the Eagle Claw Technique. He already had the White Ape Spear, and the Five Tigers Severing Gate Saber overlapped somewhat with its role.
He was about to face a demon, so shoring up his weaknesses was naturally more important.
Besides, stronger finger strength would also benefit his spear use.
And so, he trained for an entire shichen.
Sure enough, the Viper Belly is of no small help to my martial training.
Lin Le finished his practice. Looking at his five fingers, now even more slender and refined, he could not help but sigh.
In the past, the Blood Essence Treasure Liquid accumulated in a day would only have been enough for him to practice the Tongbei Fist twice. Yet now, he had practiced the Eagle Claw Technique fifty times before fully digesting it.
Though this was partly because the Eagle Claw Technique was shallower than the Tongbei Fist, his appetite increasing more than tenfold had played no small part.
Lin Le picked up a piece of gravel and squeezed hard. The stone cracked into several pieces.
Tossing the gravel aside, Lin Le looked toward the woods the farmer had pointed out.
According to the farmer, that tiger was a tiger that had only just become a spirit. It possessed some intelligence and was equivalent to a martial artist with Blood Qi Gauze.
Before beasts of the Demon Race stepped into the Qi Refining Realm, there was another realm known as the Mortal Transformation Realm.
It was further divided into four minor stages: Intelligence Awakening, where one first gained intelligence; Speech Awakening, where one refined the transverse bone and could speak human words; Meridian Awakening, where one began to excavate Bloodline power. At this stage, ordinary beasts would generally enter the Qi Refining Realm and become members of the Demon Race.
The fourth minor stage was Form Transformation, where one's body drew closer to one's Bloodline Ancestor. Like the Fourth Limit of Body Refining Realm, only exceptional talents could enter it.
That was why, when the farmer said the tiger could not speak, Lin Le could determine that the spirit tiger was equivalent to a martial artist with Blood Qi Gauze.
And if it had been any stronger, it should have chosen to eat people every meal rather than once every seven days.
At the end of the day, it still feared that, once the villagers saw no hope of survival, they would fight with their lives and injure it.
If it had been equivalent to a martial artist with Blood Qi Wolf Smoke, then its hide alone would not have been something ordinary people could harm with weapons.
"A beast that has become a spirit is still a beast in the end. They still fear being injured."
Lin Le inexplicably recalled the Elegant Man's teachings.
As Lin Le watched the small woods, a pair of dim green eyes within those woods also gazed greedily in his direction.
The rich blood qi it could smell even from over a thousand meters away made its mouth water.
It prowled through the woods, but ultimately chose to suppress itself and remain still, because it wanted the human traitor it had selected to test him first.
It would not matter if the human traitor failed to tie him up. At worst, it could go intercept and kill him. If he succeeded in tying him up, that would naturally be best, saving it the risk.
It also knew that with such dense blood qi, that prey could not possibly be weak. It would avoid injury if it could, just as it had chosen two human traitors to guard a great mass of food for it.
Lin Le sat in the bedroom and began cultivating his soul, continuing until dawn.
After reaching Second Zen, entering meditation was much like light sleep. Occasionally using it in place of sleep would not leave him lacking in energy.
After lighting the fire and cooking, Lin Le ate another enormous meal, directly emptying out all the food in the household.
Afterward, he used the Great Devourer Art to digest it.
Once he had refined nearly all of it, Lin Le took his spear and left the house.
The instant he stepped outside, he noticed several gazes fall upon him. Lin Le paid them no mind and walked toward the woods.
Behind him, when the villagers saw Lin Le heading toward the woods, their mouths fell slightly open. Their eyes held surprise, contempt, and hope.
Before Lin Le reached the small woods and could issue a challenge, a Striped Great Worm slowly emerged from among the trees. Without counting its tail, it was already a zhang long.
The moment it came out, it fixed its gaze tightly on Lin Le, as though looking at a rare delicacy.
Last night, from so far away, it had only sensed him vaguely. Now that he stood before it, it finally understood just how delicious this blood food was.
If it ate him, it would surely undergo a great transformation!
For no reason at all, this thought appeared in the Striped Great Worm's mind.
Once the thought arose, greed followed. The Striped Great Worm no longer hesitated. Today, it had to eat Lin Le, even if it would be injured.
The Striped Great Worm lightly pressed its two forepaws against the ground, then leaped with its entire body and pounced down from midair.
Lin Le calmly watched the tiger pouncing at him.
In the blink of an eye, as the tiger lunged, Lin Le flashed aside and slipped behind the Striped Great Worm.
A tiger had the hardest time seeing behind itself, so it planted its forepaws on the ground, twisted its waist, and tried to overturn Lin Le with its hind paws.
Lin Le nimbly evaded it again.
Seeing that it could not flip him over, the tiger roared. Its voice was like thunder exploding beneath a clear sky, making the woods tremble.
Then, the tiger raised its iron-rod-like tail and swept it fiercely. Lin Le once again dodged with agility.
A tiger only had three moves for attacking people: pouncing, flipping, and shearing. If all three failed, its momentum would already be halved.
Seeing that it could not shear Lin Le, the tiger roared again, turned around, and pounced once more.
As the tiger lunged again, Lin Le swung his spear with both hands, mobilized all the blood qi in his body, and hacked down fiercely from midair.
The instant he struck, it was a killing move: White Ape Cleaves the Sun!
Bang!
Lin Le's timing was perfect. This spear strike landed solidly and squarely on the Striped Great Worm's forehead.
Crack! Yet after that blow, Lin Le's spear snapped apart.
It had ultimately been made of wood. Though it was excellent wood, it was still ordinary wood in the end.
This tiger had become a spirit. Saying that its sinews and bones were harder than refined iron would be a slight exaggeration, but they were no less hard than crude iron.
Moreover, Lin Le's strength was already extraordinary. With one spear strike, the two collided, and it was hardly surprising that the spear shaft broke.
The tiger roared and pounced again like a mad thing.
Lin Le swiftly leaped back another ten steps.
Though the broken shaft had been unexpected, the damage it caused was remarkable. The spearhead forged from refined iron had already embedded itself in the tiger's forehead.
And with this pounce, the tiger had placed both forepaws right in front of Lin Le.
How could Lin Le let such a good opportunity go? He threw the half-broken shaft aside, grabbed the hide atop the tiger's head with both hands, flipped onto its neck, and forced its head down with all his strength.
The tiger struggled desperately, but the spear strike had left it somewhat dazed, and its body could not muster any strength at all.
Lin Le held the tiger down with all his strength, refusing to relax in the slightest. Then he kicked the spear blade in the tiger's head.
The spear blade flew out, but it also widened the wound on the tiger's head.
The tiger howled in pain. Its claws beneath it involuntarily raked at the ground, clawing out a pit in the earth.
Lin Le exerted more force with both arms and directly pressed the tiger's mouth into the dirt pit it had clawed out.
The two began to wrestle, but in a contest of endurance?
Lin Le glanced at the divine ability Inner Scenery. The Blood Essence Treasure Liquid he had just refined immediately flowed into his body, restoring his blood qi and physical strength.
In the end, Lin Le subdued the tiger until it had no strength left.
Lin Le tightly pinned down the tiger's head with his left hand, then pulled his right hand free. Raising a fist like iron and stone, he used all his strength to hammer the wound on the tiger's head.
After fifty or seventy punches, the tiger's skull had been smashed apart. Blood sprayed from its eyes, mouth, nose, and ears.
Only after confirming that both karmic sin and merit had arrived did Lin Le release the tiger. He let out a long breath, and his body actually went a little limp.
There would be another chapter this afternoon.
Before you continue