I have spent a great deal of time readjusting. It has been trying at times adapting to a living serpent body.At first, I had no desire to eat or drink. It was mind over body. I have never had need for traditional food before. Soul, miasma, and qi have been what I have sustained myself on. I never felt hungry when eating the worms, or other corpses. A seed, and an undead snake had little need to consume flesh if not for the qi.
This did not affect my bodies" need to eat or drink though. I feel hungry in the living body, and I eat. I take no joy in eating. The stronger my body becomes, the more I must consume.
The semi-aquatic snakes have taken care of my needs. Lilac only needs to look them in the eye and they obey. The now purple snake has proven useful in making my life more comfortable. The shedding of skin has been a struggle as this snake develops. I have shed three times as this snake has grown, but it had not caused dissatisfaction with this body.
My eyesight did not improve with this new body as I had hoped. I am still blind visually, but heat sense has proven rather a unique experience. I have sight greater then before, the lost of my sight through eyes has not bothered me.
My corpse snake and living snake are similar in body, but dead creatures are less resource-dependent. A corpse does not feel hunger, or thirst. A corpse does not feel pain. When the queen threw me like a rag doll, it did not cause me pain. Internal injuries, she caused many. My insides looked like a fine china shop after a bull ran through in my second body.
My main body took no physical damage though. My seed body had a dead snake shield. I have never felt true pain in this new life. When I bit into hemlock"s bone. I felt no pain. When growing as a tiny snake, I felt small amounts of pain, but never true pain.
Imaginen my shock when a rock falls from the ceiling hitting my third body, I felt true pain for the first time. It did not harm my body much. My new living body has a strong defense given its age, but that did not dampen the pain I felt as a tiny snake. It was if someone had taken an iron pan, and bashed it against my skull. I writhed in pain while my second, and main body cultivated.
The pain I felt did not affect my soul in other bodies I found out. I just sensed my third body was in distress. My bodies outside of my main body are disposable I guess. As long as the main body remains safe, the effects on my other bodies are negligible on me. It"s like losing an arm, or leg I guess. They are still very much part of me, but are not sentient. I could live if I lost them. It only caused me to lose focus momentarily at the new sensation of pain.
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I was easily able to dampen the pain"s effect on my main body, and my second.The sum of this new experience is my new body is now a small black snake that is writhing in pain on the ground. It"s almost humorous watching if it was not my body. My third body"s scales darkened with each skin shed, but it appears very healthy.
I have not made much progress in studying the hemlock"s arts recently. I feel as if something is missing. I keep absorbing qi, but the effects have been limited. I can not control qi outside of my body either. The water attack for example my third body uses. The qi is inside of my body, and then expelled with fource. I can not control water outside of my body. I can only swallow water, imbue it with my own qi, and expel it.
My third body then starts to practice the snake cultivation art after the rock hit its face. It does not absorb death energy. It absorbs qi, and the uses the qi to speed up the healing of the bruised area on its face. The process is slower, and causes me to hunger again often.
I guess I must make up for energy used in the healing process. The cave has proven to be a safe base. Lilac has also grown larger, and so has the power of her eyes. She is the one who provides me food.
I only need to to call her forth. She commands the snakes to bring more than enough food for me to consume. She and the others then leave via the pool of water. Fish and herbs that are rich in qi are my diets. I only eat to satisfy hunger.
I have the pool of water at the entrance when I thirst. I have plenty of food, and lots of qi to absorb. The location is safe, but lacks the necessary materials to help me grow, and evolve. This has not hindered my cultivation much, but the death energy has been an issue. The limited death energy is drawn from my third body towards my second body when I cultivate my third body.
My second, and main body combine their talents to do this. My main body has a much stronger soul now. The five deaths poison has had time to grow stronger, while my main body has been tempering itself within it. This seed body can now handle a great amount of soul despite its size now.
The corpse serpent is sensitive to death energy like a dowsing rod to water. I use my soul to control the death energy in the air, and find the death energy in my third body. I then use my soul to draw this death enery into my second body This is like water in a dry well. I have noticed the weak death energy in this underground cave has made my second body sluggish.
This also slowed down the healing process of the undead snake. I have had to sneak my second body near the surface to replenish the death energy in its body. My body would not fail me for lack of death energy, but might fall into hibernation to avoid true death due to lack of it. There is nothing perfect I guess. There must be a price for living after death.
The process removes death energy from third my body. I have seen death energy slowly chip away at vitality if left untreated. The similarity to poison is not lost to me, but handling it tires me out, but is too risky to avoid. That"s not the only thing on my mind.
I know the fire zombies are still alive, but something else feels off. I can"t shake the feeling that there is still some other greater danger present. The levels of miasma had been steadily increasing. I first noticed this when trying to purify the qi I absorbed in my new body. The task has become more difficult as time pa.s.ses.
The surface level of miasma has grown fives times as dense. This has been a gift and a curse. I left my bonefish near the shallow edges of the water. They have grown stronger after having access to such strong miasma. There have been more creatures becoming braver attacking the snakes. My bonefish have been well fed.
I have not directly intervened. Stronger creatures feed my bonefish, while weaker snakes temper themselves. The bonefish have grown stronger with constant fource of blood, flesh, qi, and miasma.The losses have been minimal, and this has not hampered the food gathering. As long as I am fed, the loss of snakes does not bother me.
The undead types that attack have been growing in variety. The Snakes have brought their new queen all types of different corpses. I have had lilac refrains from eating anything not similar to her manna type. I remember the corpse spider eating all those poisons, causing its body to be in chaos. I do not want a repeat of this with lilac.
I have grown fond of her. I have trained her as well as my own bodies. She has grown strong quickly. I think only my main body could resist her eyes. The purple snake has taught me a lot and proven useful. In truth, the seal on her soul does not affect her mind.
I have not used the restrictive abilities of the seal I placed on her, the queen snake has treated me well. I almost feel guilty for placing the seal, but as it grows more dangerous to live in this underground world, I can not afford such luxuries as guilt. I need allies to survive the coming struggle. I can"t see into the future, but since I woke up in this world something has bugged me.
I don"t know what will happen, but I have no plans on dying anytime soon. I need to grow strong fast. I practice the two secret arts Cloud Blocking Moon, and Night Lotus Mantra. The three portions of my soul in all of my bodies focus on comprehending them.
The two arts give me some confidence in survival. Their ability to make less noticeable has proven vital. This is stealth. Hiding is a necessary trait of many creatures. It"s an ability that is not to be looked down on, but my true ace the Night Lotus Mantra"s offensive ability.
I practiced and made some progress. The night lotus mantra, and the Cloud blocking moon are both stealth-based arts with complementary offensive abilities. I only have low-level understanding, but the Night lotus mantra has allowed me to the ability to fire needles.
My main body can produce needles using the Night lotus mantra. I can make small hair-thin needles.The steps are complex and draining. They are condensed from my wood element qi mimicking the night lotus. They are slowly weaved into thin needles made from qi being compressed, and then they grow from my seed coat like a straight branch. My green runes glow as they appear. I have tested these needles. They are not very strong on their own but imbued with qi they can pierce the rock on the other surface of this den.
I have experimented with other types of non-qi woods in needle making. I have found they all explode when qi is injected into them. My needles are able to tolerate different types to varying degrees before exploding.
The herb stems I tried carving fared better, but still were not tolerant of much qi as my own needles. I had my third body craft them while cultivating with that calm I found. The results I found are excellent when cultivating with the clam. The story of why is still rather shocking.
I was purifying the death energy from my third body, when I remembered the death energy peal I had stored in my ring. I was curious to see what had become of that clam after the increase in death energy. Recently the water has had higher levels of this qi due to the increase in miasma, and corpse, and living being killed in its watery domain.
I found the clam was where I left it thankfully. It had a huge pearl this time. The other pearl I found had was much denser, and was not as misshapen as this one. I was curious if clam"s had the ability to expel pearls naturally. I was kinder this time, and healed the clam after I took its pearl. I had no desire to kill this creature. it benefited me too much to dod so.
I placed a new seal on the clam"s soul. It was very weak, but it was able to withstand my seal. I was curious how old this calm was, and if it was responsible for the life in this pool? There is much more life in this pool then the toad was here. I stopped my questions, and released it.
I hide my presence and observe the clam. It moved at a slow pace, and I follow it for a while. Then it tunnels into the sand. It seems to have a favorite place to hide. I see the clam enter a cave. The walls of its home, are a special type of rock. I am sure of it.
They are thin and draw death energry. The s.p.a.ce inside is filled with a familiar grey gas. The clam seems to inhale as soon as it enters the s.p.a.ce.
The death energy begins to fade. My soul is not immune to the effects of the energy, but after practicing purification of my third body, I have a slight resistance. The loss of the soul is only slightly impactful as my soul strength skyrockets. This has had a tempering effect if anything, but the most interesting thing is watching as this clam compresses the energy and then seals it with a coating of jet black lascar.
The ordinary appearing clam had an impressive ability, but the death energy was not very qi rich. I think maybe it must needs breaks, and maybe that"s why it leaves its den from time to time. I can"t say for certain, but the pearls underneath it were high in number, and quality. I could not force my soul to endure that high of a concentration of death energy.
I knew I needed something that could hold those pearls. I looked inside the ring, and found two large shelfs that were jet black. One shelf was marked by a faint trace of death energy, and the other shelf I checked had bone dust. The original shelf I threw the pearl in had aged ten years at least. I quickly tested the black shelfs. I thew a death pearl in each, and saw that the energy had no negative effect on either.
These shelves must be similar to the rock clam"s home is made of. I swam in with my second body, and after the claim has absorbed enough of the energy to do longer be a burden to my soul. I quickly used the ring to take the pearls into the black shelf with the faint trace of death energy like a thief in the night.
I could use those pearls, the rock from the cave, and the bones of the snake queen to make a much stronger fan. The pearls also could provide my second body with enough death energy when I leave this place.
I dug around the cave while checking inside my ring, the shelf had shown no effect, but the rest looked a tad bit worse for wear. The seeds, and anything else of vaule had already been taken out before I attempted this crazy idea.
I dug out the clams home, and used my zombie snake body along with some bonefish to move it towards the sh.o.r.e in an area I wish to escape to should this place become a death trap. The plan worked well from that point on. The clam could care less where it"s home is.
The death energy is drawn towards the clam"s home and the bonefish. Then I burry it"s home once more, and attempt hide it. The area will have lower death energy and thus less undead.
I also borrow the clam to dual cultivate with. I simply wrap my body around the clam. The clam gets to absorb more qi, and my third body is detoxified in the process. This has helped in my night lotus mantra practice. The needles I make now can be launched at a target.
The way I used art in the past was to mimic a scorpion using my tail as a needle. The new way I developed is use of hidden weapons. I use cloud blocking moon to channel water in my body, and expel it. This works better in my third body. My second body can use a different method with much deadlier results. I store needles I make in its stomach.
The poison the needles sit in posion and coat the needles well. I have my second body move me to its mouth when I wish to create unpoisoned needles. The needles do not last on their own. When inside of my third body, they last only half as long as in my second.
I waited while the miasma grew in strength. The needles are now always on hand, the bone fish ready for battle, and I begin to sleep at last. I allow my soul to rest while, lilac guards my bodies. My third body joins me in sleep, though this is a much more natural procces to it since it is living.