Mist Beast

Biodata

Power Progression

Hierarchy

• Rank depends on strength: becoming a superior life-form grants control over the lives of lesser members of the brood 736.
• Lesser beasts are strongly attracted to a dead Higher Mist Beast’s Inner Core. Winged beasts recognize its energy and laws as a possible route to higher status and the legendary Path of the Great Sage 736.
• A tide’s combined power weakens without its higher-ranking commander to organize it 736.

Background and History

Rise in the Land of Exile

The Land of Exile lacks stable worldly rules, the Heavenly Dao, and reincarnation. Powerful cultivators’ corpses consequently remain intact rather than quickly dissolving into spiritual energy. Mist Beasts exploited this condition by laying eggs on the bodies and absorbing the power and understanding preserved within them 718.

The resulting intelligent leaders expanded their population and overturned the balance of power against cultivators. Once cultivators discovered the method, they began removing corpses after battles to deny the beasts new hosts. By then, the Mist Beasts had already become strong enough to seek cultivators out directly 718 719.

Their pressure helped drive scattered cultivators to gather into defended settlements. Blackwater City’s world-containing energy core was created by primordial great gods to unify the city’s defenses and resist Eternity Ice Mist 719 722.

Cooperation with the Heaven Patroler

The Heaven Patroler subdued the Mist Beast clans and used them to suppress the descendants of the primordial people. He allowed them to devour cultivators’ corpses and increase their numbers, intending the two sides to exhaust one another rather than permitting either to become a threat 795 825.

This cooperation made a gathering beast tide doubly feared: cultivators believed that the Heaven Patroler would follow it and destroy their city. Nevertheless, he regarded the Mist Beasts as expendable and preferred that they perish alongside his other enemies 795.

Appearance

• Basic form: Huge pythons covered in cyan or green scales, with green eyes and forked tongues 716 736 788.
• Winged forms: A pair of slender, translucent fleshy wings emerges beneath the ribs or scales. Despite their light appearance, the wings generate fierce winds 716 736.
• Human Pythons: Combine serpentine bodies with humanoid features. Powerful specimens can reproduce the appearance of the cultivator whose body sustained them 718 735.
• Two-headed variant: Pavilion Master Xu’s transformed body has two human figures rising from a submerged serpentine body 794.

Abilities & Skills

Eternity Ice Mist

The race’s defining innate ability is a blue-green mist that freezes what it envelops; the pythons that inhale and exhale it are named Mist Beasts 718.

• Turns cultivators and Desolate Beasts into ice sculptures, leaving them available as hosts 720 763.
• Invades meridians, slows Magic Power circulation, and can begin freezing that power directly 789.
• Can be combined across a tide into a raging azure dragon under a Higher Mist Beast’s direction 735 736.
• Can freeze wounds and suppress sword qi within a beast’s body. One Higher Mist Beast also froze its exterior until it was as hard as a divine weapon 789 790.
• Is countered by Xu Long’s Heaven-Burning Sacred Fire; Blackwater City’s energy core also greatly reduced its effectiveness 722 735 789.

Parasitic Assimilation

Mist Beasts acquire more than nourishment from their hosts: they seize Magic Power, energy, comprehension of laws, and even physical appearance 718 735.

• Eggs take root on preserved cultivator corpses and absorb what their hosts retained from life 718.
• The host’s corpse withers completely and disappears once the eggs hatch 718.
• Higher beasts seek exceptional bodies as new parasitic vessels. The Daoist nun Human Python targeted Xu Long because surviving lightning tribulation made his body especially valuable 734 735.
• The grown beast is not the original cultivator, even when it retains that cultivator’s appearance 735.

Poison Curse

Higher Mist Beasts use a Poison Curse to mark victims and support attacks that extend beyond direct combat 731 780.

• The curse on Xu Long’s arm drew the surrounding Mist Beast tide toward him 731.
• Killing the Human Python responsible ended Xu Long’s curse 736.
• A curse placed on Pavilion Master Xu enabled an internal outbreak in Phoenix City while the external tides occupied its Earth Immortals 780 781.
• Under normal conditions, an Earth Immortal could kill an afflicted cultivator before the curse caused a major disturbance 781.

Command and Strategy

Higher Mist Beasts coordinate lesser members through hisses and roars, directing both their movements and combined innate abilities 736 788 789.

• Exploit cultivator infighting, conceal their strength, and close encirclements only after their prey becomes vulnerable 738.
• Deliberately open escape routes that lead fleeing cultivators into mist 738.
• Adjust tactics against bronze war chariots, slowing their momentum so superior numbers can overwhelm them 787 788.
• Conduct simultaneous internal and external operations, as demonstrated during the Phoenix City siege 780 781.

Physical Strength and Vitality

Higher specimens possess powerful coils, crushing tails, fast aerial movement, and exceptional resilience 735 789 790.

• The Daoist nun Human Python regenerated a severed tail; Xu Long destroyed its body with sustained sword qi to prevent further regeneration 736.
• A Higher Mist Beast broke Xu Long’s barriers and attempted to crush and swallow him within its coils 790.
• One specimen compressed energy within its coiled body so intensely that nearby spatial barriers began collapsing 790.
• The Alien Mist Beast sacrificed part of its body to escape Chen Yuping 792.

Reproduction and Vulnerabilities

• Restricted reproduction: Only the strongest members of egg-laying clans can produce offspring 729.
• Inherited power: A parent invests its own energy and insights into each embryo, preparing the offspring to become another powerful combatant 734.
• Prolonged weakness: Higher Mist Beasts weaken before and after laying eggs. Their innate abilities diminish, and the weakness can persist after hatching 729 736.
• Egg protection: Parents remain near their eggs for an extended period. Other Mist Beasts do not dare approach a guarding Human Python 729.
• Vulnerable eggs: Deng Shouchong identifies the eggs as the Blackwater City beast’s vital point and warns Xu Long to flee immediately after attacking them 716.
• Fear of overwhelming power: Lesser beasts hesitate before forces such as Divine Punishment Lightning Tribulation and Xu Long’s heaven-defying sword light 734.

Inner Cores

Xu Long interprets the cores as a reversal of parasitism: beasts that use cultivators as vessels can themselves become vessels whose accumulated power is harvested by cultivators 736.

Story Role / Major Arcs

Blackwater City Expedition

A winged Human Python guards eggs and frozen cultivators within Blackwater City’s barrier. Its presence accounts for disappearances among the expedition and the Spirit-Seeking Armadillo’s death by freezing 716 720.

After the expedition leaves, the Human Python’s Poison Curse concentrates the beast tide on Xu Long. He ultimately kills the weakened beast, ends the curse, and takes its Inner Core while lesser beasts swarm toward it. The tide then engulfs Blackwater City 731 735 736.

Siege of Phoenix City

The tides intercept arriving cultivators and consume the City Lord’s Manor’s defensive strength. Each frozen victim supplies another potential host, allowing the siege force to grow while Phoenix City loses cultivators and resources 763 764.

A Higher Mist Beast’s Poison Curse turns Pavilion Master Xu into an internal threat. While the external tides draw the Earth Immortals away, he gathers lesser beasts in the Rogue Cultivators Association’s treasury. Xu Long disrupts the operation and enables witnesses to escape 780 781.

Four major tides eventually surround all eight city gates. Phoenix City sends out its bronze war chariots, and Xu Long kills another Higher Mist Beast with his Dharma Body and takes its Inner Core 785 788 791.

After the cultivators withdraw into the Eight Trigrams Formation Diagram, the beasts occupy the undefended city. Pavilion Master Xu’s two-headed form joins the Higher Mist Beasts surrounding the fading diagram before the Heaven Patroler arrives 794.

Revolt Against the Heaven Patroler

Repeated campaigns strengthen the clans until they are no longer satisfied with remaining in the Land of Exile. Their new aim is to spread their bloodlines throughout the myriad worlds 825.

At the Heaven Patroler’s seal, the horde’s combined Poison Curse briefly checks him while the Higher Mist Beasts help Xu Long create an opening for the Ancestral Spirit’s escape. Their support is strategic: freeing the Ancestral Spirit could end the Heaven Patroler’s unchecked dominance and open a route beyond their confinement 825.

The Heaven Patroler retaliates with his bronze sword, slaughtering beasts and cutting through their Eternity Ice Mist despite Pavilion Master Xu’s efforts to strengthen it 826.