My Journey to Immortality Begins with Hunting-Chapter 611 – Reincarnation - Part 2

With others blazing a trail ahead, neither Li Yuan nor Meng Xingxian made a move. They simply followed, hidden in silence.

Step by step, the two trailed the three sword-riding figures deeper into the mist.

Eventually, voices drifted back through the haze.

“This fog is seriously messed up. I can’t see a damn thing,” the fifth rank male cultivator muttered.

“We’re probably dealing with the Toad King,” the fifth rank female replied. “It’s known for creating illusion mazes, though it’s timid by nature, doesn’t like direct confrontation.”

“Even if it avoids fights, it’s still a third rank demonic beast,” the man added grimly. “Way out of our league.”

Both of them turned to look at the fourth rank cultivator beside them.

The man remained calm. “Let’s find a concealed spot and rest for now. The Toad King’s maze can be entered, but not exited. If we charge around blindly, we’ll not only alert it, but wear ourselves out.”

“If we’re gone all night, Immortal Spring City will definitely file a report. Who knows? Maybe one of the third rank elders nearby will come looking for us.”

“When the time comes, we can work with the elder to take down the Toad King.”

The two fifth rank cultivators nodded repeatedly, then found a concealed spot to sit cross-legged and quietly wait.

It wasn’t long before the air was pierced by a strange and unsettling croak.

“Ribbit! Ribbit! RIIIBBIT!”

The frog cries were chilling, less like the call of an animal and more like the screams of something being tortured alive. It clawed at the nerves.

Meng Xingxian crouched behind a gnarled old tree, whispering, “Father, something’s not right. This doesn’t sound like a sentient Toad King. It sounds mad. Completely unhinged.”

Though she remained wary, there was a glint of excitement in her eyes.

Abnormal signs often meant opportunity.

Her sharp gaze swept across the forest. Then, she spotted several panicked spotted deer bolting through the trees. With a flick of her fingers, she cast a subtle spell.

The deer instantly calmed. Their previously frightened eyes glazed over and turned eerily lucid, as if their minds had been swapped with something...human.

Controlling low ranked demonic beasts was child’s play for Meng Xingxian, no more difficult than sipping tea. If it had been Li Yuan, he’d have needed a moment or two to wrangle them properly. His limit, after all, was sixth rank demonic beasts. But Meng Xingxian? She could go as high as fifth, even fourth rank, depending on her condition.

The deer slowly approached her. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

She leaned in close, conversing with them in gentle, musical murmurs, like a child cooing to a pet. After a moment, she said, “It saw the Toad King by the lake not far from here. There were lots of tadpoles too, looked like they were newly spawned.”

Another deer stepped forward.

Meng Xingxian bent down, listening to more soft murmurs, then added, “It says the big frog went insane...and the tadpoles are terrifying.”

Li Yuan raised an eyebrow. “Terrifying tadpoles? What does that even mean?”

She communed a bit longer, then turned to him with a strange look. “They don’t know how to explain it. But from what the deer saw, the tadpoles were devouring other demonic beasts. Vicious little things.”

“...” Li Yuan narrowed his eyes.

That was enough for him. He no longer bothered to stay hidden. Emerging from her hair, he transformed back into his full form and said, “I’m going to take a look.”

Meng Xingxian knew how formidable her father-in-law was. Without hesitation, she swung herself onto the back of one of the controlled deer and led a small herd eastward, following his lead.

On their way, more and more demonic beasts fled past them, wild-eyed and frenzied. Meng Xingxian casually waved her hand, and several of them stopped in their tracks, falling under her control. But her strength still hadn’t fully recovered. She could only manage sixth rank beasts for now.

One incense stick’s time later, they reached the scene of the disturbance.

The fog was thick here, painting the entire world in bleak grayish hues. Cold, oppressive.

In the center of it all lay a massive frog, at least ten feet long, a hulking, skeletal thing. It wasn’t quite dead, but it looked close. The giant frog writhed in agony, its body covered in squirming black specks.

On closer inspection, those black dots weren’t markings.

They were tadpoles.

And they were eating it alive.

Some of the tadpoles had already left the body, drifting through the misty air and latching onto anything nearby, devouring whatever they touched.

Soil? Eaten.

Trees? Stripped bare.

Any animal too slow to escape? Reduced to shriveled husks.

To these monstrous tadpoles, the world was nothing but a buffet of soft, squishy jelly. One touch, one suck, and everything shriveled and died.

Soil turned to dust. Trees withered to brittle husks. Animals and demonic beasts alike were drained of their flesh and blood, left as piles of stark white bones.

The tadpoles were utterly deranged, swarming outward in a frenzy of consumption.

There was something deeply wrong with them. Whether it was the result of devouring too much raw flesh or simply their natural state, these tadpoles looked like writhing, boiling blobs. They were spherical bodies bubbling from the inside out, as though something trapped within was struggling to tear free of its skin.

Even Meng Xingxian, seasoned as she was, stood frozen in shock.

Her gaze landed first on the Toad King.

As a third rank demonic beast, the Toad King should’ve had terrifying vitality. That was probably why the tadpoles were chewing on it again and again.

But now, its life force was clearly at its end.

Just a few more bites, and the mighty beast shriveled to a bare skeleton. Then, with a few more nibbles, even the bones crumbled into powder, scattering across the ground like bone dust.

“The Toad King... died just like that? Eaten by its own tadpoles?” Meng Xingxian stared in disbelief. “Wait, what if that wasn’t the real Toad King?”

But there was no time to speculate.

In the next instant, a large number of tadpoles suddenly noticed her and Li Yuan. As if possessed by a hive mind, they all turned in perfect sync, those soulless little eyes locking onto them, and without warning, they surged forward like lightning.

Demonic beasts that stood in their way were overtaken in seconds, reduced to skeletons before they even had a chance to scream.

Li Yuan’s thoughts moved like lightning. Without hesitation, he spun around, grabbed Meng Xingxian, and bolted.

There was a reason for his urgency. In those brief seconds, he had seen something bizarre, numbers floating above the tadpoles.

Each of them displayed a range. The lowest was zero.

But the upper limit...was over 800; some even surpassed a million.

What kind of demonic abomination was this?!

He hadn’t even imagined something this ridiculous in his nightmares. Faced with hundreds, possibly thousands, of these freakish things, there was no hesitation. He turned and ran like hell.

But he hadn’t gotten far when loud popping sounds rang out behind him.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Still being carried, Meng Xingxian’s eyes bulged round. “Father! The tadpoles are exploding! They can’t chase us!”

Li Yuan slowed, then turned his head. Sure enough, those black specks were detonating one by one, each explosion releasing a puff of gray mist. And within it, a sharp, alien shriek that didn’t sound remotely human.

The shrieks faded into the distance, until at last, silence returned.

Li Yuan scanned the area. Every single one of those million combat power tadpoles had blown themselves apart, leaving behind a trail of death. The demonic beasts that hadn’t escaped in time? Most were now piles of bones.

Meng Xingxian let out a long breath. “Thank the heavens you were here.”

Li Yuan’s face was grim. “Those things were terrifying. If I’d gotten entangled by them, I might’ve barely been able to defend myself.”

She blinked, stunned. Then fear finally dawned across her face, real, soul-deep dread, and she muttered, “I’ve never seen or even heard of anything like that.”

A bitter smile curled her lips. “The world’s ending...all kinds of monsters and freakish things are crawling out of the woodwork. It’s just like 30,000 years ago, when the spiritual tide collapsed, and the world went dark. Or when the void shattered during the Age of the Ancient Gods.”

The collapse of the spiritual tide had wiped the ancient gods from existence.

And the shattering of the void? Most believed that was what caused the collapse in the first place.

The edges of the world were beginning to crumble.

Spiritual energy was either dissipating into nothing or vanishing to some unknown place. Over time, this slow unraveling gave rise to the great decline, a tide of spiritual energy retreating across the land.

But after that brief ebb, the spiritual energy had returned. The rate at which the void shattered began to slow. And now, at the ragged edge of the world, countless flame gods and ghosts were gathering like vultures on a battlefield.

“No matter what those tadpoles were,” Meng Xingxian said with a bitter smile, “they’re just a symptom of Heaven and Earth falling further apart.” Her voice softened. “Father...I just want to live.”

Li Yuan’s gaze swept past the skeletal remains of the frog, then across the thick fog hanging in the air.

His soul felt like it stood in the middle of a funeral pyre, everything reeked of fire and burning. And then, just as suddenly, the sensation faded. From somewhere far away, in the unknown reaches beyond this world, came a mixture of distant, chaotic roars.

Li Yuan turned his eyes skyward, lifted a hand, and summoned a flock of birds. After a short while, he forged a spiritual connection with them. Then, holding them gently in his hands, he released them into the air, letting them scatter in all directions like scouts.

He watched the earth below, watched the numbers around him.

But the tadpoles never came back.

This was the first time Meng Xingxian had seen Li Yuan openly use beastmaster skills. She stared, slightly dazed because he was clearly using her method.

Her eyes grew strange, curiosity flickering behind them. She wanted to ask, Are we from the same sect? But she knew that couldn’t be. This beast taming skill was something she had invented herself. Was this truly just...coincidence?