Book 8: Chapter 180: Bronzed (3)

A battle erupted in the middle of the dense forest. Dyon watched on as King, Queen and Jack pincered an opponent from all sides.The creature was grotesque. It stood at about a meter and a half tall, but the length of its body was easily over 3 meters. Its skin was covered in the bumps and warts of a muddied toad, while its eyes took up more than 50% of its flattened face.It could only be described as a cross between a frog, toad and fish. In reality, most of its body was formed of the former two animals, while it was just its face that resembled a fish, especially the vertical slits of its oversized eyes.Much like one might expect, its jumping ability was exceptional. After springing itself down to its 1.5 meter height, it could explode from its hind legs with such force that even the ground Dyon found impossible to penetrate splintered.Luckily, the four bronzed – a name Dyon gave them because it felt inappropriate to continue calling them bull-birds – were already stronger than their mother.Whether she was injured or not, their mother had the ability to send Dyon’s billion jin body flying tens of meters. That strength was on the threshold of a dao expert. So, for her children to already be stronger in what amounts to about 10 years was highly impressive and could be pegged to be a result of their evolution.Their strength in combination with Dyon’s intelligence made it difficult for any creatures to match their combined power.This was another one of Dyon’s advantages in this world. In this sort of environment, body refinement was highly incentivized, but qi cultivation was nigh impossible, especially with the low intelligence of these beasts. By extension, soul cultivation was practically mythos in this place, at least in the area Dyon was currently in.In order to soul cultivate, one had to remember that it was necessary to make use of your cultivation technique to convert conventional qi into soul qi. However, in a place where it was already difficult to gather up conventional qi, how much more impossible would it be to create soul qi?This reality made the beasts Dyon came across incredibly susceptible to his soul strength. As long as they were subdued, even with how much more difficult it was for Dyon to use his techniques, sealing them and bringing them under his wings was simple.However, even though Dyon could likely wantonly do so, he had yet to subdue any creatures other than the four bronzed. What he wanted as a group of creatures as strong as these four, not a collection of the mediocre. So, he wanted beasts with the capacity for evolution.Why? Because Dyon remembered very clearly that he had sensed human settlements in this place. And from what he knew… Humans were the far more dangerous creatures. If he wanted to make his constitution’s world his own, he had to be prepared before he even thought of approaching those settlements.Still, hunting this fish-frog creature wasn’t useless to him. Much like their mother, the bronzed grew stronger based on what they ate.They weren’t the only ones either. Dyon pushed down his disgust and ate the meat of these grotesque creatures as well. As he did so, he felt his stagnant body cultivation steadily growing. It all looked the same inside his body anyway, who cared if what he ate looked gross. Its nutritional value was even higher than the Blue Whales he had subdued.King, Queen and Jack turned into streaks of bronze, unfurling their wings to block off the fish-frog’s ascent.The trees of this forest were incredibly sturdy, they hadn’t broken even after the bronzed’s mother kicked his billion jin body into one. So, Dyon knew it would be too dangerous to allow the fish-frog to begin to use them as a springboard.The bronzed didn’t have the ability to fly, likely because they were too heavy and their wings weren’t strong enough yet. However, they could use jump and glide techniques under Dyon’s control.Just like all the others, the fish-frog fell under the sharp teeth, horns and wings of the bronzed.Dyon gave the four of them over 90% of the corpse, taking only what he could digest before their next battle. He was known for being a great eater, but much like the meat of the Embryonic Infernal Beasts, this meat was also difficult for Dyon to digest.But, that was when he began to observe the bronzed and his eyebrows perked upward with interest.‘They’re circulating their blood on instinct to make digestion faster. It seems Queen has additional paths… If my guess is correct, those additional paths help during pregnancy. It allows her to store and compress the energy to be excreted instead of diffusing it into her own body like her mother once did for her.’Other than being interested, Dyon didn’t feel anything else. After all, beasts and humans didn’t share the same blood vessel paths. Dyon likely didn’t have the ability to replicate the feat.In his mind, he was solely focused on reaching 500 000 000 jin. When that happened, he could finally start using Orcus’ divine grade body refinement technique. But, that was when he froze and looked down at his own body.He had only just been observing the four bronzed, but the meat he had eaten was digested before he even realized what happened. It most definitely shouldn’t have been that fast.That was when Dyon realized… The Titan path was meant to turn the weak human form into the strong beast form. It seemed he hadn’t taken that as literally as he should have.