Beast-Taming Cultivator from Two Realms

Chapter 15: The Foolish Beast

Faced with the cry for help, Chen Beiwu hesitated for a moment and did not choose to rush forward immediately, but carefully circled around, closely examining the details of the surrounding footprints.

He squatted down, brushed aside the dead grass covering the footprints, reached out with his right hand to pick up a lump of reddish-brown mud at the edge of the imprint, crushed it, and sniffed it before his nose.

‘It's dried blood from a beast creature, and the scent is different.’ Chen Beiwu's eyes flickered slightly, his gaze turning toward the direction from which the sound came.

The setting sun was like blood; beneath an ancient tree, a young girl curled up, letting out weak, whimpering cries for help.

Perhaps too impoverished, the coarse hemp skirt she wore barely covered the vital areas, revealing somewhat tanned limbs.

Her right leg was caught in a rusty beast trap, gripped tightly by the iron teeth and unable to move.

Dark red blood continuously dripped from the wound, dyeing the soil beneath the tree a reddish-brown hue.

The herb basket she carried on her back had also fallen to the side, scattering over a dozen stalks of threadgrass messily on the ground.

At that moment, the girl seemed to sense something and slowly looked up, revealing hair clumped with cold sweat, her gaze meeting Chen Beiwu's directly.

"Help... help me!" The girl seemed to have no strength left to struggle, her cry for help gradually fading to a whisper.

Chen Beiwu's expression was cold as he silently watched the girl whimper.

Seeing this, the girl's eyes gradually turned despairing.

After a moment of hesitation, she bit her lip and slowly twisted her body, reaching her rough hand under the herb basket and retrieving a spirit herb—paired leaves, many-folded, with small serrated edges and red sparse hairs on both sides.

It was a hundred-year-old second-tier spirit herb: Blood-Faced Vine.

"Please save me, good sir. I have a treasure to offer in return."

"Fear not, young lady. I shall help you."

Chen Beiwu revealed a greedy look and quickly walked toward the Blood-Faced Vine.

"Swish!"

Just as Chen Beiwu was about to touch the Blood-Faced Vine, a yellow-brown beast tail suddenly darted out from behind the girl, carrying a stench of beastly aura and striking toward his chest.

"Why not keep pretending?"

Chen Beiwu retreated three zhang in a flash. While dodging the tail, he flicked his fingers, releasing a fine crystal needle empowered by the pure spiritual force within his body. It pierced through the beast aura at high speed and left a green pinpoint wound on the girl's body.

"How did you find out?"

The girl grinned eerily, the pale skin on her face melting like snow to reveal the hideous head of a weasel. The trap on her right leg also transformed into a thorn-covered poison vine snare.

"But it doesn't matter anymore. With your Seventh Level of Qi Refining cultivation, there's no way you can escape from the palm of my hand." The Illusory Weasel-Wolf grinned savagely, and a vast wave of spiritual pressure instantly surged toward Chen Beiwu.

It had cultivated painstakingly for three hundred years and consumed vast amounts of blood food to accumulate its cultivation to forty-nine years.

If it could devour the body of this human cultivator with a clear and pure constitution, it might break through its bloodline shackles and ascend to the Second-Tier Spirit Beast. Its long-stagnant cultivation could finally take a leap forward.

[Species]: Illusory Weasel-Wolf (commonly known as Illusion-Attribute Wolf)

[Attribute]: Water, Poison

[Bloodline]: First-Tier High Grade (Exotic Beast)

[Cultivation Years]: Under Fifty Years

[Talent]: Eye-Bewitching Illusion (Illusory Weasel-Wolf's illusions can deceive the five senses)

Seeing the opponent tear off its disguise, Chen Beiwu's face showed no surprise.

A beast was still a beast. Even if it absorbed the essence of sun and moon and inhaled the spirit of heaven and earth to gain intelligence, it could never outplay a scheming human.

“Zzz!”

At that moment, the Illusory Weasel-Wolf's savage grin abruptly halted, replaced by a look of horror.

"Keep laughing—why stop now?" Chen Beiwu said coldly.

In a real head-on fight, he would have had difficulty killing an exotic beast whose aura rivaled that of a cultivator at the Ninth Level of Qi Refining, and he might have needed to use talismans to retreat safely.

But alas, the enemy had made a foolish mistake, overly confident in its own talent and attempting to trap and kill him without injury. Instead, it handed him a perfect opportunity to counterattack.

‘Damn it!’

Feeling the poison invading its beastly energy, the Illusory Weasel-Wolf trembled inwardly. Without thinking, it raised its backside and spewed out a cloud of foul stench to obscure its trail.

Although its cultivation was high, its racial nature made it unsuited for close combat.

Losing its usual reliance on illusion, and now suffering the effects of poison, it was very likely to fall into the hands of a Qi Refining cultivator.

If not now, then when to flee?

Picking up the Blood-Faced Vine from the ground, Chen Beiwu did not pursue directly but maintained a deliberate distance from the Illusory Weasel-Wolf.

He neither gave the beast a chance for a desperate strike nor gave it time to find herbs to detoxify.

An hour later, the Illusory Weasel-Wolf suddenly stopped fleeing and, using the blind spot of the shrubbery, turned around intending to ambush. But before it could spew another cloud of foul gas, Chen Beiwu once again retreated three zhang, widening the distance completely.

After repeated maneuvers like this, as time passed, the Illusory Weasel-Wolf's eyes gradually became dull and lifeless.

Perhaps realizing it had no escape, the Illusory Weasel-Wolf began to change direction and flee rapidly.

‘That’s the territory of the Azure Rock Lion!’

Chen Beiwu's expression shifted. With heartache, he pulled out a First-Tier High Grade Water Blade Talisman.

His no-injury strategy to kill the Illusory Weasel-Wolf was safe, but if this continued, the beast might end up in the Azure Rock Lion's jaws.

"Whoosh!"

"Whoosh!"

"Whoosh!"

As Chen Beiwu channeled spiritual power, the surface of the talisman rippled, then shattered midair, transforming into hundreds of hair-thin water threads.

These threads wove into a net, and in the blink of an eye, three water blades as thin as cicada wings condensed and caught up with the fleeing Illusory Weasel-Wolf.

In an instant, its head flew into the air.

Perhaps it died too quickly, for the Illusory Weasel-Wolf's eyes still held an expression of disbelief and terror.

Chen Beiwu rushed forward eagerly, approaching the Illusory Weasel-Wolf’s corpse, picked up a bone blade, and first extracted its essence blood, then skinned it and collected its tail fur.

The pelt of the Illusory Weasel-Wolf could be processed into excellent talisman paper, and its tail fur could be made into wolf-hair brushes—both of which could fetch a high price.

Including the Blood-Faced Vine it used as bait, Chen Beiwu had made a hefty profit.

‘This is the flesh of a great spirit—it’d be a waste to throw it away.’ Chen Beiwu hesitated for a moment, then separated and stored the Illusory Weasel-Wolf’s meat.

Human cultivators could not eat the flesh of an Illusory Weasel-Wolf, but that didn’t mean Iron Egg couldn’t.

Exotic beasts could devour each other to accumulate cultivation years, but few cultivators used blood food to enhance their companion beast’s cultivation.

Feeding a little blood food was fine, but too much would make the companion beast more ferocious, and the primal wildness deep within its bloodline harder to erase, potentially leading to rebellion.

Iron Egg was a fire-element exotic beast with awakened intelligence, able to ignore the residual poison in Illusory Weasel-Wolf meat. Feeding it a small amount of blood food to enhance its cultivation should be harmless and wouldn’t make it lose rationality.

But to ensure Iron Egg wouldn’t lose control, Chen Beiwu still decided to roast the Illusory Weasel-Wolf meat before feeding it.

However, doing so would cause most of the beastly energy in the meat to dissipate, greatly reducing its effect on cultivation.

Back in the cultivation room.

Chen Beiwu weighed the heavy package in his hand, his eyes revealing barely concealed excitement.

‘Dead things can be carried across dimensions through touch. But what about living creatures?’ He looked expectantly at another jar.