Legacy of Hatred-Chapter 142: Disbelief

Liam remained in his position, alternating smoking with meditation to ease his core back to health.

The frailty caused by the Primal Urge couldn’t heal on the spot, but Liam eventually regained enough strength to cross his legs and delve for longer stretches of time in the circulation technique.

By the time the second hour passed, Liam felt strong enough to interrupt his hastened recovery. He was still exhausted and weak, but that was no safe place, so he had to deal with other pressing issues now that he could.

The auditory hallucination had just waned, and Liam’s hands had finally stopped shaking. So, he began to address his body, differentiating between the broken and merely wounded parts, taking care of each differently.

Liam buddy-taped his injured fingers where possible and splinted the others with some of the sturdier wood around him. Luckily, his left shoulder and legs didn’t seem to have suffered anything serious. They only hurt, but his right elbow was different.

After wrapping the elbow in tight layers of cloth, Liam ended up half-naked. He had turned most of his robe into bandages, leaving his entire torso and left leg in the open.

Naturally, Liam didn’t care for appearances. Once he was done, he lit up the pipe again, breathing in some revitalizing smoke while finally glancing at the corpse at his side.

There was no happiness about the victory. Killing was killing, and the lack of superfluous emotions allowed Liam’s thoughts to delve into a review of the battle immediately.

The first certainty that stood out was that Liam had been lucky. Cecilia had been incredibly strong, but she had lacked weapons that could express the full extent of her superiority.

If Cecilia had a combat-oriented rank 2 martial art, that whole battle would have ended in a couple of exchanges or less. Despite Liam using everything in his arsenal, his death would have been pretty much certain.

But the clash had also shown Liam how effective his methods were against superior cultivators, specifically rooting experts, which was priceless for him since he could still improve on much.

The Primal Urge was indeed powerful, incredibly so, but it was no reliable fighting method. It wasn’t something that Liam could whip out whenever things got tough.

Abusing the Demonic Art would only make permanent, debilitating injuries a certainty.

Things also promised to worsen once Liam became a rooting expert and could make full use of the Primal Urge. Higher power meant harsher drawbacks that Liam’s body and cultivation might be unable to endure, especially if he unleashed the art before his new stage was complete and firm.

And Liam had no misconceptions about his so-called divine talent. He needed at least as much to hope to face the Dragon King one day. Anything less would turn his desire for revenge into a delusion more than it already was.

So, Liam needed trump cards that didn’t risk ruining the very advantage he had to rely upon to survive, and his focus obviously went to his poison.

The Poisonous Cloud Pill had finally shown its limits. If it weren’t for the huge number Liam had used simultaneously and that ideal environment, Cecilia would have managed to ignore those attacks altogether, only suffering minor setbacks at most.

Liam might be nothing more than an apprentice, but he remained an alchemist. He obviously knew what the problem was when it came to his creations.

The Poisonous Cloud Pill wasn’t deadly. It was easy to make and use. It wasn’t too expensive in terms of ingredients, and its effects were great. Yet, its purpose was to destabilize rather than to kill.

Of course, that was enough against foundation experts, but rooting experts required far more to take them out of commission. Still, Liam saw no easy solutions for that.

Smoke was by its very nature indirect. Even if Liam improved the recipe or concocted something properly deadly, rooting experts would still have enough innate resistance to get out of any cloud before it could take effect.

Since Liam couldn’t create a rank 2 poison at his current level, changing the method of injection was the only solution. He had to deliver it directly into his opponents’ bodies.

Basically, Liam had to switch from poison to venom.

’But how am I supposed to inject someone stronger and faster than me?’ Liam wondered.

Weapons could work. Arrows and blades coated in poison could be far more direct than smoke. Yet, they had to hit first, and Liam recalled how he had been unable to do anything with the wooden knife for most of the battle.

’Maybe the Disciplinary Elder can teach me how to fight with a knife,’ Liam considered. ’Though getting a bow is still a priority.’

Liam obviously didn’t forget the martial arts. Cecilia’s cloaking technique had exposed his overreliance on his incredible senses, but cultivators needed more than that. The same went for the actual fight, highlighting what he should prioritize.

’I need perception and movement techniques at the very least,’ Liam concluded. ’A defensive martial art would help, too, but it’s not a priority considering my fighting style.’

Since Liam’s thoughts moved to magical items next, he recovered his knife and pouch, checking their state. The weapon was mostly fine, only a shallow crack ruining its blade, but the wetness he had found earlier didn’t bode well for the other item.

As Liam had suspected, between the fall and the multiple clashes, many flasks had broken. Seven of the twelve elixirs were gone, but that destruction luckily only involved the rank 1 ones.

Everything else was safe and intact, but Liam emptied his pouch anyway. It was unusable in its current state, and Cecilia had another he could take.

’I really need to make healing pills next,’ Liam decided, knowing that his foundation was still too weak to process elixirs, almost experiencing a headache at the thought of that new, troublesome project.

However, before Liam could move to Cecilia’s corpse, his ears caught movement upstairs. He summoned what little strength he had to stand up, wielding his knife with both hands due to the few usable fingers, until a familiar face peeked out of the vast hole in the ceiling.

"Liam?" Mitchell hesitantly called, incredulous about what he was seeing, before smiling and raising his voice. "Liam!"

Mitchell hurriedly jumped down, landing in the basement and drawing four pouches from his cramped back, wanting to show them to Liam, only for him to finally notice the corpse on the floor, which made his eyes go wide in disbelief.