Toad

When the police officers were talking to each other, Zhang Lisheng had walked quite some distance into the dense jungle while pulling the mule with him.

The trees were dense in the deep jungle. It should be difficult for the mule with a big body frame to move around in the jungle, but Zhang Lisheng climbed onto the mule's back and chanted an incantation from his mouth while tightly holding the reins to control its direction.

Meanwhile, he used his other hand to hit on the young mule's back just to force it to move forward in big steps, without bothering the scratches on its body while bashing into things. Its speed was not slow at all.

However, such an inconsiderate way of using the animal's strength had made the incredibly tamed, domesticated young mule to slowly become irritated and lose control.

Before his ride lost its control, Zhang Lisheng pulled the rein tight with all of his strength.

The pulling of the rein had caused the mule to barely stopped on its four hoofs while rubbing its moving body against a huge tree. Its nostrils expanded while it panted hard with a 'pfttt' sound.

Zhang Lisheng, who was riding on the mule's back got down onto the ground while panting as well. He was juggling between watching the way and taking control of the young mule's running direction, which had lost its vision throughout the journey as he was riding on the mule that was going fast. At the same time, he had to be cautious and prepared to be attacked by beasts. It was indeed much tiring than him walking on his feet.

He might have gotten into accidents since the beginning if he did not chant his magical instinct incantation, by which it would allow him to keep misfortunes away.

After finally catching his breath, Zhang Lisheng who was located deep in the dense jungle did not dare to impede any more time. Taking advantage of the minimal moonlight in the extremely dark jungle, he looked around. He then eventually picked a big, black tree with the thickness of a wide mouth bowl and pulled the mule as he tied it into the tree.

He flipped his clothes up and took out the boning knife that he pinned on his waist. He clenched his teeth as he swung his hand hard and stabbed the metal knife into the mule's neck.

The mule cried due to the intense pain as it struggled, because of the quivered knife that stabbed in its artery. The mule almost bust opened the brank on its mouth as it began to run and jumped on the surrounding big, black tree with a crazy amount of fresh blood that was spurting out.

Zhang Lisheng stepped back immediately while quietly hiding aside. After a while of watching the young mule running around madly, it fell onto the ground with blood all over it.

He then slowly walked towards the young mule and removed the basket on his back and took out the rough porcelain jar that was filled with medicine powder from the bamboo basket.

After opening the porcelain jar, Zhang Lisheng grabbed a handful of medicine powder that he carefully mixed into one handful after another, and scattered it on the young mule's body.

After the medicine powder integrated with the fresh blood on the young mule's body, the smell had an absurd change and an unknown sweet fishy smell was created.

Although the mule had not died yet after the medicine powder was scattered, it was barely living and had lost its strength to move.

At that moment, Zhang Lisheng only removed the brank on its mouth and took out the 10 red-banded snakes at the bottom of the porcelain jar. He rubbed them against each other and they were all lighted up. He then tossed them onto the mule's body.

The red-banded snakes did not burn with bright flame but the dimmed fire continued to burn. It was burning the young mule's skin that was a combination of fresh blood and medicine powder which heightened the sweet fishy smell to over 10 times more.

At the same time, the mule mustered all the strength that it had left and let out a low groan on and off, as it suffered the intense pain.

With the temptation of the sweet fishy smell and groaning sound, the 'pstt shh…' noise that was barely there in the dense jungle began to reverberate louder progressively.

Hearing the change of sound in the surrounding, Zhang Lisheng could finally be relieved from his concern. He walked to a small, dead tree in the jungle carefully and watched the young mule that had fallen nearby without blinking his eyes at all.

Under the dimmed light, a strange snake with a yellow circle on its head slithered from top of the big, black tree and descended on following the tree. Its long body extended all of the sudden, as it bit the mule's neck. It then ended the mule's life that was suffering in pain.

Just when the strange snake was ready to feast on its prey, who did not put any effort towards its surroundings, a jade green lizard came out of the jungle all of the sudden. It opened its mouth that was filled with wide sharp teeth and attacked the strange snake by biting its head.

Under the immense pain, the strange snake strangled its body tightly on the lizard. It used all of its strength to tightly strangle it, while the lizard shook its head hard with its best attempt to break the snake's head that was in its mouth with its sharp teeth.

Just when the snake and the lizard were fighting intensely, a huge centipede with a body that was over thirty centimeters long crawled out of the shallow ground soil and climbed onto the young mule's carcass.

Noticing that there was a third party joining the food competition, the strange snake and green lizard disregarded their lives and stopped fighting together. They then began to attack the huge centipede.

Just like that, the young mule was like bait in the fish pond that attracted numerous venomous gus who were continuously present in the dense jungle. It had also converged all of them into a chaotic battle.

The venomous gu that temporarily won in the messy fight would devour the young mule's flesh to replenish their body and recover their energy. They would begin a new round of fight after the new gus had gathered.

The crescent moon that was like a curvy fish hook moved slowly in the Miaowei land's sky. As time passed by, the young mule's carcass in the dense jungle became a pile of white bones that were left without flesh, after being eaten by a bunch of venomous gus.

As that mule's carcass was only left with a heart that was drenched in reddish-black blood, the gus had gone through tens of rounds of gory eliminations involving killings and devouring. In the end, the venomous gu that remained was a small tree lizard, who was able to expand the skin on its head into the size of an umbrella.

It was fighting against a toad with a rifle green skin all over its body, which was normally the size of an adult fist but could expand into the size of a basketball when it blew up its body like a rubber balloon.

Both of them faced each other and did not move at all.

A helmeted iguana and a spring water toad, Zhang Lisheng was a little surprised that the venomous gus that he put a lot of effort in selection, came from these two very common species.

However, he felt a little relieved in him when he thought about it since Albert Einstein's brain defeated ten thousand ordinary people, so there might be an extraordinarily powerful individual among those common species.

He silently moved his stiffened joint then rubbed his eyes hard and made his last preparation, while forcefully lifted his spirit.

The moonlight bids farewell to the upcoming dawn…

During the break of dawn, when the first gleam of sunlight appeared from the sun at a distant mountain horizon, the spring water toad 'croak', as it forcefully took a breath in, so that it can hold its body to its maximum capacity. Then 'zoop', as the sound that was produced by its tongue collided towards the helmeted iguana at a high speed.

The toad's tongue was filled with elasticity, while there was sticky fluid all over it. There was also a sharp flesh hook at the tip of its tongue which pulled the helmeted iguana into the air after the tongue was stuck on the helmeted iguana.

The helmeted iguana which was in midair did not fight back. Instead, it retreated its skin that was open and allowed the toad to swallow it into its stomach.

After the toad swallowed the lizard like a giant snake swallowing an elephant, the toad squatted on top of the young mule's white bones and could not move anymore with its stomach that was so full, that it felt like it was going to explode.

As its body would shrink when it did not blow enough air into its body, it would have to breathe in forcefully again to maintain its huge body size. Otherwise, the lizard might not have to struggle and break out of its stomach, just by its big body.

Right at that moment, the helmeted iguana that was in the spring water toad's stomach expanded the skin on its head all of the sudden.

At an instant, the toad's body transformed into a funny shape of UV umbrella. If not for the two 'googly' eyes that were rolling around out of its eye sockets on its head, one could not determine which was its head and which was its back.

However, the spring water toad did not burst open as it rolled down of the young mule's carcass. It then continuously breathed through its mouth with an attempt to expand its body just to regain balance.

It was clear that the helmeted iguana did not expect its opponent's toad skin to be this tough. The burning of gastric acid in the spring water toad had brought intense suffering to the helmeted iguana in a long course of time. It began to wholeheartedly struggle with all its might.

As the lizard was struggling at all cost, the toad occasionally expanded. For a second there was a clear lizard head on its back and for another second there were four limbs with claws, crawling clumsily from its stomach.

However, although the spring water toad was being tortured until it was exhausted to the point where it did not have any strength to stop the helmeted iguana from messing around in its stomach, it did not burst and neither did it turned into a lump of mushy flesh eventually.

After over ten minutes, the lizard that was tricked by its own intelligence was slowly reaping the consequences. Its struggling strength became lesser and lesser, it was even slowly disappearing.

As the chaos in its stomach disappeared, the spring water toad did not rest for a second and continued to breathe just to expand its body once again.

After it had finally recovered to the biggest size that it could possibly have, it crawled next to the young mule's carcass immediately and stuck out its long tongue and swallowed the reddish-black mule's heart into its stomach.

Seeing that the opportunity had arrived, Zhang Lisheng walked to the toad in big steps and chanted an incantation that went 'psh shh…' then spat a mouthful of black blood while shouted 'assimilate'.

The spring water toad was a common species but since it stood out among thousands of venomous gus, naturally, it had significant intelligence. Moreover, it was different from the first wizard gu, Qing Hong, that Zhang Lisheng refined which was fed with his blood since young and had been tamed since the beginning.

That said, seeing the black blood coming near to it, the toad's intuition told it that something was not right. Surprisingly, it forcefully broke away from the spell's restriction and attempted to hop away as it curled its back legs.

Unfortunately, the spring water toad's sweet dream had to be dismissed due to its full stomach and could not even jump forty to fifty centimeters away with all its strength. Its body remained within the range of the black blood coverage.

Just like that, the black blood that Zhang Lisheng spat covered the toad and from the refining of blood, the spring water toad's body was growing fast. Eventually, it safely turned into a gigantic being that was half the size of a human.

Zhang Lisheng was overjoyed that he managed to refine the venomous gu into a wizard gu successfully using the refining method.

However, at the same time, the toad's final and failed escape made him secretly cautious that a wild intelligent venomous gu could fight witchcraft spell.

Apart from that, the wizard power in his flesh that almost disappeared completely after that one time of refining, made him realize that the consumption of wizard power to refine and maintain a wizard gu was not fixed. Instead, it would change depending on each individual venomous gus.

For instance, following the consumption to refine Qing Hong, Zhang Lisheng should be able to refine four wizard gus consecutively now. Apart from that, he could rely on the wizard power that was naturally released from his body to maintain the wizard gu without having to feed more blood.

However, just by standing next to the wizard gu, which was the spring water toad that he had just refined, he felt that his body had released all of his wizard power. The toad had been quietly devouring his wizard power without anything left.

In that case, if Zhang Lisheng was to maintain two wizard gus that were like this spring water toad, then he would have to use his blood to feed them. However, it would significantly delay his promotion to a Rank-2 Wizard and it might even impede his improvement.