Mouth-and-Stomach Secret Sword, Fur-Shedding Skin-Changing

Fang Shu removed the yellow-skinned gourd from his waist and began collecting the monsters' hearts from the cliff.

With practiced ease, he cut open the organs, drew out the essence blood within, and dripped it into the gourd.

He had risked his life and disguised himself this time for the few drops of heart's blood at the tips of these monsters' hearts.

As he drew the blood,

although he had already withdrawn the Long-Tongue Sword into his mouth and stomach, his mouth still flooded with saliva. Hunger and thirst were unbearable, and greed surged within him.

After bustling about for quite a while and sparing not a single monster, he finally filled the yellow-skinned gourd.

Fang Shu shook the heavy gourd, then could not help rubbing his belly, joy written across his face.

"Now that there's food and drink, I finally won't have to suffer the exploitation and harsh treatment of this thing for the time being."

He was not truly one of the immortals. At present, he was merely a mortal who had mastered a spell.

The spell he had mastered was called the Mouth-and-Stomach Secret Sword Technique. It could cultivate a person's long tongue into a Long-Tongue Sword that could lengthen or shorten, harden or soften.

When used, it could spit out the tongue like a ghostly specter to kill enemies, or remove the long tongue and wield it against foes like a longsword or a long whip.

Yet cultivating this spell involved considerable suffering.

Ordinarily, one first had to cut out the cultivator's tongue and process it according to the method before it could be cultivated as a magical implement. The process was not only painful, but also carried no small risk of failure.

One slight mistake, and one could easily end up with a dead tongue that could not be reattached.

Of course, Fang Shu had not gone through that brutal process.

He had a second uncle in the immortal cultivation world, and his second uncle had directly given him a demon tongue for cultivation.

But even after the Long-Tongue Sword had been successfully refined and taken into the body, it would draw upon the cultivator's essence blood every moment thereafter to nourish itself.

If it was not satisfied for a day, it would not spare the cultivator for a day.

This thing would also make the cultivator seem possessed by a starving ghost, their throat narrowed to a needle's eye, able only to drink water.

Anything that entered the mouth would first be intercepted and devoured by the Long-Tongue Sword. Not a grain of rice remained, not a drop of blood was spared. It demanded without restraint—the more it ate, the hungrier it became.

Fang Shu had not even officially mastered the spell for a full month. Yet he, a young man in the full vigor of his blood and vitality, had already been drained until his essence blood was depleted and his limbs withered and thin. He could endure no more.

Fearing that he might die in the mortal world before entering the immortal cultivation world and finding his second uncle,

he had no choice but to risk searching everywhere for demons and monsters, hoping to take their heart's blood containing demonic qi and feed it to his Long-Tongue Sword.

Fortunately, his luck was good this time.

Not only had he come across a whole nest of monsters, he had also dealt with them all without incident. It could be called a perfect harvest.

"With this gourd of heart's blood, I presumably won't have to fear for my life again before entering the market." His eyes flickered as he secretly thought,

"Perhaps, if I feed this sword till it is full, it might even nourish me in return and help me enter the Dao!"

Although raising the Long-Tongue Sword harmed the body, once it had drunk its fill of demon blood, the sword would also return threads of blood and vitality to Fang Shu.

It was not much, but better than nothing.

Especially after the sword devoured bloody food imbued with demonic qi or spiritual qi, the blood and vitality it returned would nourish and strengthen Fang Shu's body.

For a moment, Fang Shu's imagination ran wild, his mind filled with hopes for his future path of immortality.

But he quickly suppressed these stray thoughts.

He was currently only a mortal who had not even set foot upon the immortal path. At most, he could strut his might before a group of ordinary demons and monsters.

Now that the hidden danger within his body had been temporarily eased, the urgent matter was to hurry into an immortal market and live off his second uncle!

If he continued lingering in the mortal world, then one day he would either be sucked dry into a human husk by the Long-Tongue Sword, or encounter a more powerful monster and end up as demon shit.

Fang Shu immediately took stock of his belongings and prepared to leave.

But at that moment, where the inn's main hall had originally stood, two living creatures were still wriggling and whimpering, trying to draw his attention.

Fang Shu immediately walked over.

Those two creatures were the skinny dog and white pig tied to two dead trees.

But now, stained by demon blood, they had already transformed into the human forms of a man and a woman.

Both were streaming tears, gazing at Fang Shu with eager expectation.

Yet when Fang Shu approached, he did not spare the pair so much as a glance. Instead, he squatted down and inspected the tiger skin and fox corpse on the ground with great interest.

"After leaving them out for so long, there shouldn't be any further tricks left, right?" he murmured.

Fang Shu picked up a hand bone and carefully prodded the old fox's corpse, then peeled back the tiger skin.

There was nothing unusual about the fox corpse, but the inside of the tattered tiger skin was unexpectedly covered in writing, immediately drawing Fang Shu's attention.

The content on the tiger skin appeared to be a spell!

Fang Shu did not examine it closely. He immediately covered the tiger skin again and cautiously surveyed his surroundings.

There was nothing unusual nearby. Only then did Fang Shu marvel inwardly, This old fox was actually a literate monster?

According to his second uncle, once a monster could speak human language and recognize human writing, it was no different from a human. Such creatures could be called "demonfolk" and could easily embark on the immortal path.

Could this old fox have already set foot on the immortal path, rather than being an ordinary demon? Fang Shu muttered inwardly, his mind immediately tightening.

Just then, sounds continued from beside him. "Wuwu, wuwuwu!"

It was the pig-and-dog man and woman. They were still struggling, trying to draw Fang Shu's attention.

Without betraying any emotion, Fang Shu tucked away the tiger skin and fox head, while fastening the old fox's body to his waist.

Because he had seemingly discovered a "spell," Fang Shu carefully searched the cliff again, digging three feet into the ground and knocking bones to inspect their marrow, afraid that he might miss some further opportunity.

Sure enough, he found some hidden objects.

Unfortunately, they were all mundane things and inconvenient to carry. Only two or three taels of gold and two pearl-sized luminous pearls caught his eye.

After confirming again and again that nothing had been overlooked, Fang Shu packed up once more and prepared to depart.

"Immortal, Immortal!"

At that moment, louder sobbing rang out across the cliff.

It was the pig-and-dog man and woman. Seeing that Fang Shu was about to leave, they struggled desperately and finally broke free of the hemp ropes around their mouths.

The man and woman wailed without cease.

"Immortal, save us! Immortal, see clearly! This concubine has never fornicated with a dog—I was wronged, wronged!"

"This humble student was wronged as well. Please save me, Immortal. This humble student is willing to cultivate immortality alongside you."

Hearing their words, Fang Shu halted.

"Immortal? Cultivating immortality?" He looked at the pig-and-dog pair with a faint laugh and shook his head. "Read fewer storybooks. They're all dreams spoken by fools."

As his words fell,

Jingle, jingle!

He turned and leapt, the bronze bell at his waist swaying as he shot out beyond the vast white cliff.

His body was like a falling leaf, as though riding the void on the wind, treading clouds as he walked.

Only the pig-and-dog man and woman remained tied to the cliff, staring blankly at his vanishing silhouette.

"I too am a fool."

Fang Shu nimbly darted through the mountains. With a light sway, he could scale cliffs and walls, cross mountains and ridges.

He did not travel far. After crossing only a few mountaintops, he spotted a cave halfway up a cliff face. He immediately sprang up and slipped into it.

The reason he had used a Lightness Talisman just now was not to show off before others, nor because he was too lazy to walk down the mountain, but to quickly find somewhere to shelter.

The cave before him had sheer walls above and below. It was nearly a hundred zhang from both the cliff top and the cliff bottom, making it an ideal choice.

After entering the cave, Fang Shu first sounded out its depth, then swept it clean and killed the insects and bats. Only after confirming that there was no problem did he sit down cross-legged.

The instant he sat, he could no longer restrain himself. He took out the tiger skin and carefully studied the writing upon it.

At first glance, his expression stirred, and great delight emerged on his face.

What was written on the tiger skin was indeed a spell, called the Fur-Shedding Skin-Changing Technique.

Once comprehended and cultivated, it allowed one to strip demon skin or human skin and refine it into a skin-pouch magical implement. One could then don the skin and transform, gaining one or two abilities.

The old fox had not only copied the entire spell onto the tiger skin, but had also transcribed many of its own insights on cultivating it. It seemed to have used the tiger skin as a cultivation notebook.

Yet amid his joy, a deep look of regret quickly surfaced on Fang Shu's face.

Upon inspection, he found that while the spell's contents on the tiger skin were largely intact, especially the corresponding secret script, which had no omissions,

the tiger skin itself had already been corroded beyond repair by venomous bee poison and poisoned wine, turning into a ruined hide and ragged coat.

Otherwise, once he mastered this spell, he could immediately don the tiger skin and transform with a shake into a ferocious tiger as well.

A tiger transformed through donning skin was unlike the Livestock Transformation Technique or illusion talismans, which failed upon touching water. It would not fade in water or break in fire, and could even grant a human body tiger strength, perhaps even a few abilities to conjure illusions through tiger ghosts.

This was likely why the old fox had been able to create an illusionary landscape in the mountains.

Unfortunately, the tiger skin was already ruined. If Fang Shu wanted to cultivate this spell, he could only find a fine demon hide himself and refine it anew.

Then his regretful gaze slowly shifted, finally settling upon the old fox's corpse. A smile appeared on his face.

Was this fox itself not excellent material for making skin?

Fang Shu immediately removed the fox corpse from his waist, feeling it all over with his hands and tugging it left and right to inspect the quality of its hide.

But suddenly, with a plop!

A tablet neither metal nor wood fell from the headless opening of the fox corpse's neck...