Chapter 325 — Heroes Admire Heroes
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
From his Taotie Pouch he took several spirit elixirs, of varying sizes and colors. Swiftly he cut them into pieces large and small, took a portion of each by weight, and sent a ball of flame leaping from his palm; in an instant the medicinal powers of the different elixirs merged and were catalyzed, transforming into a different elixir altogether.
Shen Mu opened his mouth and swallowed the pill, roused its power, and pulled back the cloth on his arm.
The mosquito, now red and wreathed in flame, flew in and settled on his arm to bite and drink. Shen Mu's face suddenly turned crimson; the flesh and bone of his face warped and shifted, becoming a red visage with jutting fangs, brows slanting upward, a pair of upturned eyes — like a vengeful ghost. Having drunk his blood, the mosquito returned to its original color and wobbled back into the air, flying toward Mu Yingxue.
Mu Yingxue sneered.
"You didn't poison it? " Shen Mu's nose suddenly grew a good deal longer, its nostrils flaring upward, hideous beyond words.
He laughed aloud.
"If I hadn't poisoned it, why would the mosquito smell you out and fly straight at you? " Mu Yingxue frowned slightly, fixing her eyes on the approaching mosquito, trying to tell what poison Shen Mu had used. After a moment the woman drew several medicinal ingredients from her sleeve, deftly compounded an antidote, and smeared it on her arm, letting the mosquito bite.
The mosquito bit her once, and Mu Yingxue's hair suddenly grew wild; in the blink of an eye it spread in every direction like the quills of a porcupine.
Pfft.
A soft sound came, and Mu Yingxue felt an itch at her backside; a thick, sturdy tail grew out from behind her, bursting through her trousers and dragging on the ground. Mu Yingxue's face went somewhat green.
The mosquito, having drunk her blood, found the poison within it altered, and promptly lost interest in her; buzzing, it rose and flew toward Shen Mu.
Shen Mu's expression shifted. He hurriedly took several dozen kinds of spirit elixirs from his Taotie Pouch, cutting and compounding them, and by the time the mosquito arrived he had his mixture ready.
This time, when he swallowed the elixir, the fiery flush left his face at once and his features returned to normal. The mosquito bit him once and flew off again, and from within Shen Mu's body came a great thudding like thunder; then lightning flashed and thunder rolled in the sky, and bolt after bolt came crashing down on him, in the blink of an eye scorching him black.
Mu Yingxue, too, was refining an antidote; she finished a small bottle of liquid, tipped back her head and drank it, and at once the wild, splayed black hair fell away, not a strand left, and the tail behind her dropped off as well.
The girl hitched up her trousers, her face livid, and bared her arm for the mosquito to bite. Mu Yingxue gave a stifled grunt and fell on her back, and from beneath her came a crackling sound as eight legs sprouted from head to foot, until she was like a great hairy spider.
"Your poison is vicious! " Mu Yingxue was choking with fury.
"Then try one of mine! " she cried shrilly.
The mosquito flew at Shen Mu again.
His face changed drastically; he hastily compounded an antidote, first purging the yin poison in his own body, and said sternly, "As if I fear you! " The two of them dueling with poisons made for a novel spectacle indeed; Xiong Xiyu, Xiong Qi'er and the rest watched with mouths agape. Their first exchange had been the poison laid on the jade bottle; then Shen Mu had used the three-legged toad to neutralize the poison while altering its nature.
Influenced by the virulent poison, the three-legged toad took Mu Yingxue for something delicious and, steeped in that poison, went bounding toward her. Mu Yingxue turned her primal energy into a flying insect, and within that insect she carried another deadly poison; the toad ate the insect, and the poison within it changed once more.