Puji Island had many frogs.
For example, there was the white-beaked, fish-tailed "Xiupi," whose cry resembled a kite hawk's and whose flesh could cure ringworm; then there was the "Guzhao," which had horns on its head and vermilion script on its jaw—if caught at noon on the fifth day of the fifth month and dried in the shade, it could ward off a hundred weapons; and there was the "Xiamo," two meters long, which spat red mist and devoured birds, insects, snakes, and rats, transforming into red rock when still. And so on.
Of course, the most common were still those yellow-green amphibians with their irritating croaks, crawling between puddles and swamps. There was also the little frog Iseni kept, which could climb through midair and dart back and forth, serving as its messenger.
Yet none of them could compare to the one before Zheng Qing.
It crouched upon a reef at the end of the river bend, a full five meters tall. It had a broad mouth, giant eyes, and a bulging belly, its entire body covered in short black down that slowly stirred in the cold wind.
In truth, calling it a frog was inaccurate—at most, it possessed certain frog-like traits. Yet from another perspective, both the low rumble issuing from its abdominal cavity and its seemingly hibernating nature made it somewhat closer to a frog.
"Stay where you are. Don't move!"
Old Man Shaw's lips barely moved, but his voice rang clearly beside the two young wizards' ears. "Descendant of Sato Guya prefers stillness to movement, whether for itself or its prey... so the two of you would do best to stand there obediently and not move."
Descendant of Sato Guya was presumably the monster's name.
The two, who had originally planned to sneak back into the