Chapter 409 — The Fierce Beast's Wooden Box
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
When Shen Mu had used the Three Breaks Powder he had refined himself to poison Lord Huanlong, it had merely caused him no small trouble without taking his life, so poison was by no means the best policy. What was more, Xing'an was himself skilled in medicine and able to swap out his own body parts; his attainments in the medical arts ranked among the very few in the world, and any poison would easily be seen through by him.
To a physician of Shen Mu's aspirations, poisoning one's opponent was an art, and it did not necessarily require poison. Xing'an was unbelievably strong, yet his flaw was plain for all to see: every part of his body had been taken from other masters, and none of it belonged to one whole body with his original flesh, so they were prone to rejecting one another.
The Elixir Master had once taught Shen Mu that the human body possesses a self-defense system, an immune defense mechanism, and that when the organs of another are transplanted in, the original body tends to regard them as invaders from outside and is sure to destroy them.
This was the reason for the mutual rejection among Xing'an's body parts. The Elixir Master had also taught Shen Mu that many illnesses arise from a weakened self-defense system, such as colds and plagues, and can be eliminated by strengthening the constitution and thereby the self-defense system.
Combining these two points, Shen Mu's method against Xing'an was to refine a supreme tonic that would magnify the rejection reaction between every part of his body, driving that rejection to its absolute extreme! As the only youth in Yincan Village, Shen Mu had endured the strictest upbringing from childhood, tormented by the Nine Elders of Yincan Village; his family discipline had been severe and upright, engraving every elder's teachings and fine traditions deep in his heart until they became his own rules of conduct.
The Elixir Master, a man of lofty character, held that elixir-making was an art, and that no fixed boundary existed between tonics and poisons: a poison could be a life-saving remedy, and a tonic could be a deadly toxin.
When Shen Mu had earlier refined elixirs to heal those flood dragons, this was the very tonic he had made, taking the dragon-kirin's dragon saliva as its base ingredient and supplementing it with all manner of potent tonics for the flood dragons to swallow. After those flood dragons took the spirit elixirs, their wounds healed with incredible speed, their flesh regrew itself, and their broken bones and severed tendons rapidly knitted anew.
Shen Mu had come charging in with the Dragon-Riding Art, bringing the flood dragons with him; when Xing'an's flying arm struck those flood dragons one after another, the enormously potent tonic seized the chance to invade his arm, passing through the arm into his body, and then through his heart into every part of him. What Shen Mu had administered was the fiercest medicine of all, one that could restore even the injured bodies of flood dragons at incredible speed; once the tonic entered Xing'an's body and its medicinal power took effect, it magnified his rejection reactions countless times over!
Poison could not kill him, but a tonic tore him apart—this was the medical art the Elixir Master had passed down to Shen Mu. Yu Zhaoging, the Empress Dowager, and the others likewise suppressed their injuries and came charging in, and Xing'an's body split into pieces in four directions.
Several heads rose from the ground, crying fiercely, "You think that is enough to kill me? You are far too naive!