Chapter 238: The Incarnation of Poisonous Scorpion, A Fantasy of Demonic Cultivation
Translator: Transn Editor: Transn
“Damn! How arrogant he is! To wipe out our Cool Breeze Gang? Now I do expect to see how he is going to wipe us out!” A heavy growl reverberated through a small yard which was located in an unimpressive small city of southern Zhonghe Prefecture near Qianzhou. It was a common yard with nothing special. However, it was exactly where the headquarter of the terrible killer organization Cool Breeze Gang was.
The Cool Breeze Gang was a killer organization, which could be crowned as the most successful one in the past 300 years in Jianghu. That was not for their powerful strength but for their long history.
A killer was always an annoying profession. In the martial arts world, there used to be countless killer organizations. However, they were all passers-by no matter how powerful they were, and they would be replaced by new killer organizations after a short prosperity.
It wasn’t because of their lack of strength but the innumerable enemies they had made.
It was said that one would finally encounter a ghost if he always walked at night!
Similarly, one would definitely be killed by others in the end if he had killed too many people.
However, the Cool Breeze Gang had been in Jianghu for more than 300 years. There was also a sign that it would be existing further ahead, which could be deemed as a minor miracle. Of course, people who were familiar with it knew that it was all due to the principle that Cool Breeze Gang stuck to.
It was carefulness and caution!
They would never accept business which would bring them misery. What’s more, they even had an independent department of business evaluation whose members weren’t killers but were proficient in evaluating business risk. The Cool Breeze Gang would only take the business that had passed their evaluation. This department was also responsible for the ability evaluation of their targets.
It was exactly this caution that made the Cool Breeze Gang endure safe and sound for more than 300 years.
The business of killing Junior Leopard this time had also been evaluated by the department, but it was absolutely unexpected that the killers would suffer a great failure in that.
To say the least, it was still acceptable for them to suffer the great failure. What made them even more frustrated was that the killers served as a megaphone in the end and delivered such an unexpected message to them.
The growl heard a moment ago was from Lan Wu, master of the Cool Breeze Gang and a veteran killer at Level Six.
There were eight members sitting inside with Lan Wu as the leader. Besides him, there were three experts at Level Seven and one at Level Eight. They were the bluff for the Cool Breeze Gang, and only when Cool Breeze Gang’s business involved strong experts would they be dispatched.
Among the remaining three members, one was the killer who was sent to Junior Leopard and returned crestfallen to the headquarter after his arm was broken. The other two were in charge of the risk and ability evaluation in Cool Breeze Gang.
Kneeling down on the ground, that killer was pale and morose. He couldn’t be more awkward at that moment.
Although Lan Wu’s growl was loud enough, it still couldn’t frighten the people present. They needn’t be frightened either. Those four experts obviously enjoyed a high status so that they wouldn’t be restrained by Lan Wu, the master of the Cool Breeze Gang. As for the killer who had lost his arm, his heart was like dead ashes, and he had no violent mood swings at all. The two members in charge of business evaluation were shrewd and deep so how could they be afraid of Lan Wu’s growl?
The room became silent after Lan Wu’s growl. After a while, the man in blue, one of the two members responsible for business evaluation, finally said something. “Master, please calm down. We need to give it further thought and discussion. It seems that we have underestimated Zhou Bao’s strength!”
“Underestimated? I don’t think so!” another guy responded. He was in a grey robe with a pale face. He again said coldly, “In my opinion, it’s his good luck this time. We have already overestimated his strength a lot. We have deemed him as a Level Eight expert so that we sent Kui Hai as the killer. Kui Hai’s five green-scaled poisonous creatures are among the most wizardly poisons in the world, and even if Zhou Bao is really a Level Eight expert, without an antidote, he would definitely die when bitten by them. We also have made a complete and thorough plan. This time is definitely his good luck. He just noticed our plan in advance!”
“That isn’t necessarily his good luck!” The man in blue shook his head. “Kui Hai has told us just now that he was bitten by his own Green-scaled Poisonous Tarantula and lost his one arm as a result. As a disciple of the Poisonous Insects Sect, he is proficient in training these poisonous insects, and the Green-scaled Poisonous Tarantula has been trained for years so how could it bite his trainer all of a sudden if it wasn’t Zhou Bao’s trick? Is there any other explanation?”
“He did train the Green-scaled Poisonous Tarantula, but you should also know that the Green-scaled Poisonous Tarantula was found already by Zhou Bao at an earlier time, which was the reason why it became dead when he came back, as he mentioned just now. The Green-scaled Poisonous Tarantula’s backfiring might be its instinct anyway. I don’t think Zhou Bao could control the Green-scaled Poisonous Tarantula in so short a period, and if he could, he would be too horrible! Wait, if so, it wouldn’t be the matter of that, it would be the overall fault of our evaluation. We need to re-evaluate his strength, or we’d better send him the head of our client!”
“For what?” Lan Wu raised his head and asked fiercely. He fell into a rage soon after he heard that.
“As a member of Wu Sect, Zhou Bao is skilled in punching and hammering skills, and he has practiced the Nine Dragons Heavenly Fire Technique. Currently, he has built a strong Hammer Spirit and a Fire Dragon Internal Qi. He also has a set of smart celestial devices. His cultivation has reached Level Seven. At Level Four he killed a Level Seven expert and at Level Five a Level Eight expert. At Level Six, he successfully rescued Wang She from Dark Lord Mie Chen’s hunting and, as rumor has it, he even inflicted a serious injury on Mie Chen. As that rumor has not been verified yet, we won’t take it into consideration. The above is what we know about Zhou Bao!” The man in blue broke in and said calmly. After a glance at that old man at Level Eight, he then started his analysis gradually. “Judging from the above information, we infer that Zhou Bao enjoys a strength as formidable as that of a Level Eight expert, which makes it pointless to compete with him in cultivation. Therefore we sent Kui Hai who, though only at Level Four, is adept at Yin Killing and could even be deemed as the Grandmaster of poisons. We haven’t heard that Zhou Bao knows about poisons, let alone the control of poisonous creatures, so we guessed that his Achilles’ heel might be the poison! ”
“That’s our analysis of his strength. He comes from the Wu Family and now is their Outer Core Elder, but in our opinion, the Wu Family wouldn’t fight with our Cool Breeze Gang for his death. Because they couldn’t rival us and couldn’t find the evidence of our business if we do it secretly and leave no sign. Nor would the Tian Long Taoism. Under the same condition, although the Tian Long Taoism has a close relation with Wang She, they still wouldn’t set themselves against us for Zhou Bao, almost a stranger to them. That was the reason why we could take the business!” The man in grey robe added. “I hope it’s his good luck this time; otherwise, the reality might be that he controlled the Green-scaled Poisonous Tarantula in a very short time, which means our information about him is shallow, and all we see and hear about him in Jianghu is on the surface. He acquired another master and identification secretly. If that’s the reality, our best choice is to give him head of the client!”
“No way! Over my dead body! If we do that, Cool Breeze Gang would lose its reputation forever. We definitely won’t let it happen! This Zhou Bao is just a boy of seventeen and isn’t that tough enough as you mentioned in my opinion. Let’s do it this way: why not four Elders join hands in hunting him down? I don’t believe that Zhou Bao could survive the killing of three Level Seven experts and one Level Eight expert no matter how highly cultivated he is!”
“It means that we will definitely turn the Wu Family into our enemy and offend Wang She from the Tian Long Taoism as well. Apart from that, Zhou Bao isn’t just an ordinary martial arts practitioner. He has been offered a high post in the imperial court for rendering outstanding service in Northern Yuan’s destruction. If we kill him openly and wantonly, we then clearly set ourselves against the imperial court, which is simply a chance for them to suppress us!”
the man in blue said refuting Lan Wu’s suggestion.
“Then launch one more killing action. He gave us one month, didn’t he? If we fail again, then what about his family? Doesn’t he leave all his family members in Yunzhou? Humph, how arrogant he is to believe that he is invincible now only by killing several experts. Now that he shows contempt for us, I would like to see what he got to tread down my Cool Breeze Gang!” said Lan Wu. He turned ferocious, his eyes filled with anger. “If he does come here, in the end, The Elders present can just fight with him. At that time, I believe the Wu Family, the Tian Long Taoism, and the imperial court will all have nothing to say about it!”
The whole room fell into silence again.
“Since the Mansion Master has made the decision, my suggestion is to send the strongest killers in our Cool Breeze Gang to kill Zhou Bao’s family. In this way, he will definitely be infuriated. Then we can launch a tight dragnet at the headquarter waiting for him!” said the man in the grey robe insidiously with a light flashing in his eyes.
“All right. Then it’s settled. Send out all the killers who have no tasks in Tianzi Group right now!” said the Mansion Master. “Is there anyone who has questions about it?”
No one replied, which meant that they all agreed to the arrangement.
“Okay, let’s show that arrogant fellow the strongest muscles of our Cool Breeze Gang!”
The Mansion Master’s bold voice resounded through the whole yard.
“What’s your purpose exactly? Do you really want to bring the Cool Breeze Gang to perdition?” asked the man in blue in a whisper. He buttonholed the man in the grey robe as soon as they left the yard.
“Why haven’t you stopped it just now?” the man in grey replied with a sneer throwing off his arm. “Kui Hai’s failure told us obviously that our evaluation was totally mistaken. Since it is so, we’d better take the wrong and make the best of it!”
“Take the wrong? It’s easier said than done. What if Zhou Bao…”
“There is no ‘what if’ at all. Don’t you realize that the Mansion Master would never accept Zhou Bao’s requirements? In this case, we could only fight back recklessly, which may help us win the initiative. Isn’t it what you reckoned just now? Otherwise, you would have stopped it already!”
“It sounds reasonable, but…”
“It has been decided already. It’s unreasonable to regret, nor is it meaningful. The past 300 years have witnessed the ups and downs of the Cool Breeze Gang. Even if we did underestimate his strength and fail to kill him, with four experts sitting, I bet he dare not risk breaking in!” said the man in grey coldly.
“That’s right. Zhou Bao’s great performance relied on his celestial device. It seems that the First Elder also has one!”
“Definitely. If not so, I wouldn’t egg the Mansion Master on!” the man in grey said. He nodded and smiled insidiously. “By the way, it’s time for the two of us to get prepared!”
“To prepare for what?”
“The failure in killing Zhou Bao may just be a beginning. Haven’t you noticed that the Cool Breeze Gang has been too conspicuous in recent years? To be a well-known killer organization couldn’t be regarded as a success!” the man in the grey robe replied.
“Then you mean…”
“We’d better well prepare a way out of this matter!” The man in grey raised his hand and lightly touched his forehead. “My upper eyelids have been flickering frequently recently. I feel that something bad may happen in the coming days. We both are sensible, Lingfeng. Do you get what I mean?”
“Of course I know. A tall tree catches the wind!” Lingfeng, the man in blue, responded. He shook his head with a wry smile. “But it isn’t easy to defeat the Cool Breeze Gang considering its strength nowadays.”
“Yeah, it isn’t. However, if the same incident happens repeatedly, the strength of the Cool Breeze Gang would be weakened step by step. It’s heard that in this action what Kui Hai lost is not just his palm and the Green-scaled Poisonous Tarantula but also the Green-scaled Poisonous Scorpion caught by him after innumerable hardships. What a heavy cost!”
…
…
“A killer organization, which has been existing for 300 years, is now known by a rookie in Jianghu. Don’t you feel that their good days shall come to an end?” Either talking to himself or to the scorpion, Junior Leopard sat in the carriage and played with a green scorpion in his hands.
This green scorpion was found in the residence of the killer who was thrown out straightway by Junior Lepard. How poor he was that he even couldn’t take his belongings away.
As a killer, his belongings were not much, and he didn’t even bring a change of clothes. He had only a small parcel and a bamboo tube.
There was nothing valuable in that small parcel. The antidotes and the like were carried within his clothes including that bamboo tube which dropped out of him during a thrashing by Junior Leopard.
The bamboo tube contained this Green-scaled Poisonous Scorpion, which was a little bigger than the Green-scaled Poisonous Tarantula. It was unbelievable that its body fits Junior Leopard’s thought properly after he took its soul out.
Then to what degree did they fit?
It was after a period of practicing, Junior Leopard felt that he had been familiar with this body totally.
And for that reason, his interest surged afterward. These days, he tried to keep controlling its body by his thought through which he may find a more suitable controlling method. It wasn’t sensible to leave his own body motionless whenever he controlled the Green-scaled Poisonous Scorpion. That was both inconvenient and pointless.
Anyway, from the practices over the past several days, Junior Leopard also gained some experience. He didn’t need to treat the Green-scaled Poisonous Scorpion as his body from the start. His thought was separated from his divine thoughts, and what he only needed to do was to send his divine thoughts some orders, which the Green-scaled Poisonous Scorpion would naturally follow like a set program.
Soon afterward he found another thing—the instinct!
Yes, it was the instinct!
All living things had their instincts such as eating, drinking, excreting, sleeping, and even breathing even if it was a human vegetable whose brain was dead. So did the Green-scaled Poisonous Scorpion whose soul was taken out. It was because those instincts came from the body instead of the soul. Thus, after integrating Junior Leopard’s soul into its body, it could move like other ordinary scorpions, and with only Junior Leopard’s divine thoughts, the Green-scaled Poisonous Scorpion would completely do what Junior Leopard wanted.
Moreover, Junior Leopard found one more amazing thing that the scorpion could absorb the Sun and Moon Essence for practicing!
When Junior Leopard concentrated his consciousness on the scorpion, he found that its body could automatically absorb the essence of the world around and turn it into energy like the Internal Qi.
It was an unexpected and also surprising discovery.
And this discovery enlightened him. In a sense, the Green-scaled Poisonous Scorpion could now be regarded as one of his incarnations, a live one. Currently, he had two External Elixirs, both of which could practice by themselves, and if the Green-scaled Poisonous Scorpion could also do that, it would probably grow into an evil beast in the future. For Junior Leopard, an evil beast incarnation meant another strong bluff.
And if so, what he got would be more than one evil beast incarnation.
“The more thoughts I separate from my divine thoughts, the more incarnations I will have. And if all of those incarnations can practice by themselves like the External Elixirs…”
That idea made him tremble with excitement!
However, he became a little disappointed after he tried. He could indeed make the Green-scaled Poisonous Scorpion self-practice by absorbing the Sun and Moon Essence, which in fact was very easy for him as well. He only needed to deliver an order like a computer program to his divine thoughts about how to absorb the Sun and Moon Essence, how long it should take, and how to convert the pneuma it absorbed.
It was the same process as he refined External Elixirs, which could practice by themselves. However, a problem came soon afterward. On the third day, the Internal Qi had already filled the Green-scaled Poisonous Scorpion’s body, which would blow up if it continued to practice. He then realized that the practice should be based on the balance the inner and outside cycle.
Human beings had spent countless years exploring their Body and Qi Strengthening Method before they attained such a fruitful achievement right now. As for the evil beasts, they could only practice by instinct. Even if some evil beasts could finally develop their spiritual intelligence and practice successfully, they needed more time in practice. Unlike human beings who had all the knowledge of acupoints, tendons, and meridians in the body, and who knew how to make the Internal Qi move within the body, evil beasts found all this knowledge, easy for human cultivators, very difficult.
“Shit, let alone nine incarnations, I can’t even be sure when this one will be successfully practiced.” Having thought that, Junior Leopard smiled wryly. “Should I go and find some Demonic Cultivation methods recorded in the legend?”
Demonic Cultivator was short for the evil beasts that had an appearance of human beings after their successful practice. However, this living creature hadn’t appeared since the medieval period, and as for the Demonic Cultivation method, it was more like a legend because the Demonic Cultivation method was totally useless to human beings. For humans, if they practiced the Demonic Cultivation method, they would either die or turn into a monster. In the end, no one collected this useless while dangerous method.
“Well, it was said that the Demonic Cultivators could only practice by instinct. Even if there was a Demonic Cultivation method, it would be exclusively designed for the evil beast that wrote the method and beasts of its kind. Then where could I find a method for scorpions?” Thinking this, Junior Leopard was a little disappointed. “But I also heard that the Demonic Cultivation was all by the instinct, and if an evil beast’s spiritual intelligence was developed with no Kalpas, it wouldn’t practice in a wrong way. So now my control of it was a little excessive and hurried!”
Realizing that, Junior Leopard then become relieved and decided to let nature take its course.
Under the circumstances, the relation between the Green-scaled Poisonous Scorpion and him went smoothly like a fish in water. After his thought was totally integrated into the Poisonous Scorpion’s body, its intelligence raised fiercely as if its spiritual intelligence was developed. When facing some incidents, the Scorpion could follow Junior Leopard’s thought even without his control.
“His Excellency, emergency from Yunzhou!” Outside the carriage, an anxious voice raised. It was Zhu Ba. “There were eighteen killers slipping into Yunzhou. It seemed that they would do something bad to the Elderly Master!”
“That damned Cool Breeze Gang!” Junior Leopard cursed. But he was not that worried. The night he threw the killer out, he went to the branch of the Immortal Palace in Songjiang City. As Songjiang was a small city, there was only one person in charge—a street vendor.
One person was totally enough if he was competent. It didn’t take Junior Leopard much time to find this vendor who then helped him to send a letter of entrustment. The Immortal Palace enjoyed its own efficient delivery system so that Junior Leopard got the response the very next day. His entrustment had been accepted, and experts sent to protect his family had taken action. Besides, there was a detailed address of the headquarter of the Cool Breeze Gang.
And the price Junior Leopard paid for that was the prescription of Tendon-Changing Pill.
