Chapter Ninety-Six: Eleven Golden Cores

The giant python had swallowed who knew how many Seven-Color Begonias; by now it had already become a first-rate spirit beast, and its intelligence was no less than that of an adult human.

Naturally, it understood what submission meant, and what it meant to become prey on a chopping block.

But understanding was one thing; making it submit was another.

Accustomed to roaming free, and with a pride all its own, how could it possibly yield to a human so easily?

So its vertical pupils swayed faintly, and it let out a low hiss.

"Oh? You're willing to submit?" Lin Yi said with a light laugh.

The giant snake happily flicked out its tongue again, looking for all the world like a puppy that had just been praised by its master.

If it had not been unable to move, it might have lunged straight at Lin Yi to ask for a hug.

A trace of amusement flashed in Lin Yi's eyes. He abruptly withdrew the spiritual sense pressing down upon it, and the giant snake hurriedly shook its head.

"Open your mind now. I will draw out a wisp of your soul," Lin Yi said.

There were many ways to make a spirit beast submit. The simplest was to tame it from youth.

Some spirit beasts were timid and fearful of death; if force was applied, they would submit on their own.

The method Lin Yi chose was the coercive one: directly extracting a sliver of the beast's soul and establishing a one-sided connection.

In other words, the spirit beast's life would be entirely in his hands. If the master died, the beast would die as well.

But this method did have some effect on spirit beasts. The soul was immensely important, for both humans and beasts alike.

Lose even a little, and the spirit beast's path of advancement might be broken.

Lin Yi, however, was not worried. He had Healing Soul Herb in his possession, and in the future he could simply refine Soul-Nourishing Pills. If he fed one to the giant python, it might even help it transform into a flood dragon.

The giant python fixed its vertical pupils on Lin Yi and leaned its head forward, looking almost affectionate.

But in the next instant, its great mouth opened wide, and it spat out a plume of black mist.

The mist carried a deadly corrosive force. As soon as it touched the ground, the earth was immediately eaten away into pits of varying sizes, while a ring of white frost spread across the inside and edges of each crater.

Clearly, the black mist did not only corrode; it also had a freezing effect.

A thin layer of protective force rose around Lin Yi, blocking the black mist completely.

Seeing this, the giant python immediately spat out several more bursts of black mist, but the result was the same.

That seemingly fragile protective aura remained as immovable as steel.

Lin Yi's eyes cooled. "I offered you a way out, and you refused."

"Hiss, hiss, hiss!"

With a sharp hiss, the giant python turned and prepared to flee.

But its body was more than ten meters long; before its head had even turned fully, Lin Yi's fist had already struck like a shadow, finally exploding into a cannon-like blow that slammed into its abdomen.

Boom.

A thunderous impact rang out.

A large patch of scales on the giant python's belly was instantly blasted off, leaving a mass of mangled flesh and blood.

That was already Lin Yi holding back; otherwise, the blow just now would have been enough to turn this serpent king into a burst of fireworks.

The giant python was sent flying backward, but Lin Yi had no intention of letting it off so easily.

He seized its tail with one hand and swung hard.

With a deafening crash, even the ground shook violently, and the birds and beasts by the lake scattered in every direction.

Lin Yi smashed it down more than a dozen times in succession. Wherever the giant python was hurled, deep gullies and trenches appeared, some as much as ten meters deep.

Little Red had long since hidden off in the distance, covering its eyes with its tiny paws, unable to bear the sight.

As for the giant python, which had once looked so terrifying, it now became utterly miserable.

More than half of its black scales had been knocked away. There was not a single place on its body that was intact, and even the pair of small deer-like horns had been shattered in many places.

The giant snake let out pitiful cries of surrender.

This human, though he looked so weak, had such terrifying strength. If this went on, it would surely be the first spirit beast ever beaten to death by pure torment.

Lin Yi stopped, tossed aside the tail in his hand, and said in a deep voice, "Open your mind. If you dare try anything else, I don't mind having a serpent feast tonight."

The giant python now did not dare harbor the slightest trick. It was terrified of Lin Yi to the core.

How could this be a human? He was clearly a primordial beast wearing human skin.

The giant python opened its mind. Lin Yi pointed a finger at its brow, and with ease extracted a strand of black soul essence as fine as a hair.

On close inspection, that wisp of soul was exactly the same as the giant python itself.

Lin Yi directly refined the python's soul essence, and in his perception, there was now an additional fragile life.

Having lost a sliver of its soul, and with its body riddled with wounds besides, the giant python looked utterly dispirited.

Lin Yi took out a handful of Blood Qi Pills and said, "Eat them."

These Blood Qi Pills had been refined from Red Ginseng and Black Tortoise meat. Their medicinal potency far surpassed that of ordinary Blood Qi Pills made from common century-old herbs.

The giant python was itself a spirit beast, and its sensitivity to blood energy was extremely sharp.

In truth, Lin Yi did not even need to say much. The python was already eyeing the pills in his hand with unmistakable longing.

But since Lin Yi said nothing, it could only stare helplessly.

"Hiss, hiss, hiss."

With a hiss, the giant python flicked its long tongue and swallowed all of the pills in one gulp.

Its digestion was astonishing. Almost as soon as the Blood Qi Pills were swallowed, the bleeding wounds on its body began recovering at visible speed.

The giant python was overjoyed, its tail swaying and kicking up a cloud of dust.

Lin Yi waved a hand, dispersing the dust, and said, "Go bring me all those Seven-Color Begonias."

The giant python did not hesitate. Its life was already in Lin Yi's hands.

With a splash, it plunged into the water and sped swiftly to the center of the lake.

Opening its mouth, it swept up all the Seven-Color Begonias and quickly returned to shore.

Lin Yi lifted the vaporizing spell and took out more than a dozen medicinal herbs. Using the Seven-Color Begonias as the main ingredient and the others as auxiliaries, he refined more than fifty Bloodline Pills.

Bloodline Pills could purify the bloodline within a spirit beast, and their effect was more than twice as strong as simply consuming the Seven-Color Begonias alone.

The giant python's vertical pupils lit up, and its large head affectionately rubbed against Lin Yi.

"Don't worry. They're all yours," Lin Yi said.

He divided the Bloodline Pills equally between the giant python and Little Red. After a moment's thought, he touched a finger to the python's brow.

At once, the giant python felt a great deal of information surge into its mind: transformation arts and cultivation methods among them.

The flood of information made it dizzy, and it promptly fainted.

Lin Yi shook his head at the sight. "It can't even withstand a weakened set of cultivation methods. As expected, this world still resists immortial cultivation."

Little Red bounced over and sat down beside him. Lin Yi stroked its silky fur, then sat cross-legged.

He took out a top-grade spirit stone and began cultivating.

The energy contained within a top-grade spirit stone was unimaginably rich; a single one was worth tens of thousands of grams of middle-grade spirit stones.

Time flew. In the blink of an eye, a week passed.

Lin Yi's eyes narrowed, and black light flickered in his pupils, making his already profound gaze seem even more all-seeing.

The top-grade spirit stone in his hand had long since turned into an ordinary rock.

Inside his body, another golden core had formed. He now possessed eleven golden cores in total.

An abundant surge of energy coursed through every part of his body, leaving him itching for a good release.

Rumble, rumble, rumble.

Dark clouds had already gathered overhead, and streaks of purple lightning flashed within them.

"Good!" Lin Yi roared.

As if provoked, the lightning in the sky poured down like rain. Each bolt was as thick as an adult's arm, and they looked extraordinarily terrifying.

The nearby creatures had long since been driven off by the giant python and the three-tailed red fox, and not even a bird could be seen.

Rumble, rumble, rumble.

The tribulation lasted a full eight hours before gradually dispersing.

The ground below had long since been pitted and battered by lightning. Many of the trees were still burning with fierce flames, everything blackened by smoke and fire.

Then, after the tribulation came rain, cascading down to bring life in its wake.

Lin Yi exhaled a long breath of white vapor. With the aid of the lightning tribulation, his body had become even stronger, and the eleventh golden core had also been stabilized considerably.

At that moment, the giant python and the three-tailed red fox ran over.

During this time, the giant python had gradually digested the information Lin Yi had imparted to it.

Even in weakened form, it was enough for the python to spend its entire life mastering.

Moreover, the giant python had already barely learned the transformation art; at most, it could now shrink its body to about a meter long and as thick as a wrist.

Compared with its former size of more than ten meters and a body as thick as a water barrel, this change was already decent.

"All right, it's time to leave," Lin Yi murmured. He had already stayed here for several days.

The giant python shrank into a one-meter-long little snake and wrapped itself around his arm.

"Little Red, are you coming with me too?" Lin Yi asked.

Little Red nodded, then sprang up and landed on his shoulder to sit there.

Lin Yi smiled faintly. In his heart, he thought that it was about time to refine a spirit beast pouch. Otherwise, it would draw too much attention from others.

One spirit beast had already attracted three grandmasters. If Lin Yi were to openly bring the three-tailed red fox back to the city, there would likely be no end to the trouble that followed.

"That Grandmaster Ye should already have returned to the Blood Pact Alliance," Lin Yi said with a slight curl of his lips.

...

Shan Province, Blood Pact Alliance branch.

At that moment, Grandmaster Ye was lounging on a sofa with a woman on each side of him, while a dozen black-clad men stood before him.

All of them were at the half-step grandmaster level, yet at this moment they stood like bodyguards, not daring to move a muscle.

"You useless things, all of you! I told you to capture a little girl, and you couldn't even do that!" Grandmaster Ye roared, his hand squeezing hard at the beauty in his arms.

The woman winced in pain, but she did not dare say a word, only biting back the tears in silence.

"Grandmaster Ye, that little girl is strange. She's only fifteen, but her strength has already reached the half-step grandmaster level, and she has protective artifacts. We simply could not beat her," one of the black-clad men said in a low voice.

Grandmaster Ye's expression darkened. With a sweep of his hand, he sent a slap through the air. Though he was still three meters away from the black-clad man, the man was instantly sent flying, his face swelling red and swollen.

Ever since his miserable return last time, he had mobilized all the resources of Shan Province to investigate Lin Yi.

In the end, he discovered that Lin Yi was only in his twenties and had a younger sister.

At first, Grandmaster Ye had intended to use Lin Doudou to directly threaten Lin Yi.

But who could have guessed that the little girl was only fifteen years old and already possessed half-step grandmaster strength? Good heavens, what kind of siblings were these? One was more monstrous than the other.