Five Poisons Heart-Seizing Palm

The best choice, of course, would have been to cultivate the Five Poisons Palm to the "mastery" stage before attempting a breakthrough.

But the problem was...

Five Poisons Palm (Proficient), Progress: 75%

Glancing at the panel, Zou Feng was rather speechless.

The Five Poisons Palm's cultivation progress had been stuck at 75% for several days now.

He had clearly cultivated the Five Poisons Palm just now, yet the progress had not increased by even one percent.

In truth, ever since the Five Poisons Palm had entered the "proficient" realm, its progress had become exceptionally slow.

It no longer matched the defining trait of evil arts—rapid cultivation.

Naturally, this was not because Zou Feng had failed to work hard enough.

Yang Ling had supported him before; now he had been replaced by the more durable Yang Yanpeng. No matter who it was, Zou Feng pushed the intensity to the limit during cultivation and never let either big brother slack off.

So the issue could only lie with the venom used for cultivation.

Yet even after Zou Feng used more potent poisonous creatures to concoct a new venom, the results were still far from ideal.

"It's still not poisonous enough..."

As for the poisonous creatures in the outskirts around Yuan Guang County, Zou Feng believed he had searched nearly all of them out.

There truly were no particularly powerful ones.

Although he still had poisonous creatures like the Red Flower Scorpion, with its passion-chaos venom, he had never been able to make the venom used for cultivation undergo a qualitative transformation.

Poison arts were simply like that. Cultivation generally required the aid of external substances.

After all, people themselves were not poisonous.

Fortunately, Zou Feng had not failed to make preparations for this problem in advance...

Next, he pulled another chamber pot out from beneath the bed.

The instant he removed the lid, the pungent stench was enough to fumigate a person to death.

The pot was coated in thick, multicolored sludge, mixed with countless severed limbs and mangled remains of insects.

Just as Zou Feng lowered his head to inspect it closely, a green gleam flickered. Something abruptly sprang up and shot toward his face.

"Don't mess around!"

Zou Feng was not the least bit surprised by the sudden attack.

With a casual pinch between his Passion-Chaos Finger and index finger, he caught the green poisonous creature that had leaped out.

The poisonous creature between Zou Feng's fingers was exceedingly bizarre.

It resembled a centipede, yet possessed a scorpion-like venomous stinger for a tail.

Its head even had an extra pair of pincer-like venom fangs.

There was no record of such a strange insect even in the Herbal Compendium.

In fact, this thing no longer really counted as an insect.

It was a gu!

A few days ago, Zou Feng had once again used listening to music at a pleasure house as a pretext to visit the ghost market.

His purpose had been to buy a method for raising gu, as well as the "seed" required to raise it.

For Zou Feng, raising gu was not difficult.

After all, as a humanoid poisonous creature, he could keenly sense the presence of other poisonous creatures nearby. When capturing them, he also had a high chance of being immune to their venom.

Thus, Zou Feng basically lacked none of the vast quantities of materials needed to raise gu.

But this was, after all, merely an unnamed gu he had randomly bred by tossing in vast amounts of poisonous creatures using the crudest possible method.

Using this gu venom to concoct the venom needed to cultivate the Five Poisons Palm was risky as hell—practically courting death.

But it did not matter. He was only responsible for going all out with the "courting"; Yang Yanpeng would be the one responsible for the "death."

In any case, he had already decided during the day to fleece Yang Yanpeng bald first.

Next, Zou Feng grabbed hold of "Little Green" and squeezed the venom from its mouth and tail hook into another chamber pot.

This chamber pot had originally contained the specially prepared venom Zou Feng used to cultivate the Five Poisons Palm.

Now that the gu venom had been added, it immediately began bubbling incessantly like boiling water.

Even Zou Feng clicked his tongue inwardly at the sight.

But the next moment, he still circulated his cultivation and raised his hands, plunging both into the chamber pot.

"Third Young Master, you have to hold on!"

At midnight, it was Zou Feng's turn to patrol again.

After briskly putting away the chamber pot, Zou Feng prepared to leave the woodshed.

When he glanced at the panel again, however, disappointment was impossible to hide from his face.

Five Poisons Palm (Proficient), Progress: 76%

What was going on? Even after adding gu venom, it had only risen by one percent?

It seemed the gu he had raised at random was not very impressive.

If only he had more powerful poisonous creatures to feed Little Green...

Yet there was no solution to this problem for the time being.

The poisonous creatures around Yuan Guang County were all mediocre, and he had already browsed the ghost market. There had been no good goods there either.

Was this forcing him to use three "proficient" evil arts to attain rank?

Once he left the woodshed, Zou Feng temporarily stopped thinking about all that.

He still had to keep his wits about him while patrolling.

Not to protect Yang Estate, but for his own safety.

Although it was unlikely that the Blood-Handed Butcher would sneak into Yang Estate to carry out an assassination at such a sensitive time, it was not entirely impossible.

What if the man had lost his beloved son, stewed over it until he grew angrier and angrier, and lost his usual reason?

The servants would certainly not patrol alone.

At the very least, they worked in pairs.

And Zou Feng's patrol partner was Xu Haoran most of the time.

Come to think of it, Xu Haoran used to take the initiative to come to the woodshed ahead of time and familiarly try to ingratiate himself with Zou Feng.

But over the past few days, perhaps because the brat had also made some progress in the Five-Beasts Stance Exercise and gotten cocky, the way he spoke was entirely different from before.

When he saw Zou Feng, he no longer called him "Brother Feng." He even seemed to be deliberately distancing himself.

Of course, none of that mattered. What Zou Feng was truly curious about was why Xu Haoran, who clearly had no talent for martial arts, had suddenly found his backbone...

"Haoran, time to patrol!"

Seeing that it was time and Xu Haoran still had not emerged from his room, Zou Feng called out.

There was no response from inside. Instead, Xu Haoran's voice came from the latrine. "Coming!"

When Xu Haoran emerged, he wore an attitude that said he did not want to bother with Zou Feng at all. "Then let's go..."

With that, he lifted his lantern and took the lead forward.

Zou Feng followed behind Xu Haoran. After only two steps, he laughed in a teasing tone. "Haoran, why did you come out from the latrine, yet smell so fragrant?"

Xu Haoran froze at those words, then answered with blatant perfunctoriness, "I... I have a scented sachet on me..."

Before he could finish, Zou Feng flashed around in front of Xu Haoran. His expression turned vicious as he lowered his voice and barked, "Tell me. Have you been practicing poison arts?"

"Ah!" Xu Haoran had never expected this. His face instantly drained of color as he staggered back five steps, frantically waving his hands. "No... I haven't, I didn't... Don't spout nonsense..."

With a cold snort, Zou Feng wasted no more words and stepped forward with a palm strike.

Palm wind howled, and a sweet fragrance spread through the air.

Xu Haoran's eyes widened at the sight. Then, almost instinctively, he struck out with a palm in the exact same motion.

Moreover, the surface of his palm had already turned pitch-black.

With a smack, their palms collided as they exchanged a move.

Zou Feng did not budge an inch, while Xu Haoran let out a miserable cry and fell backward onto the ground.

"Oh-ho, what a textbook Five Poisons Heart-Seizing Palm!"

"And you still dare say you haven't practiced poison arts?" Zou Feng sneered repeatedly, though he was not surprised by the result.