From Swamp Dog to Crocodile Ancestor

After a moment of silence, Li Yi felt a warm, moist power and a tremendous vitality erupting within his body, causing the inch-long, charred wound inside him to show signs of healing. He immediately tensed his body.

In Li Yi's perception, its charred flesh fell off and quickly grew new flesh in the wound inside its body, filling it up.

Soon, the purple fragments were firmly stuck in their current position, and many of them were pulled out.

As his internal injuries gradually subsided and the excruciating pain lessened, Li Yi slowly moved one half of his body.

The burning pain continued, but it no longer affected its normal activities. Except for a reduction of about 20% in the power it could exert during hand-to-hand combat, it was otherwise unharmed.

Li Yi slowly twisted his body and came to the insect nest not far away, looking at it up close.

A sense of awareness enveloped him.

A buzzing sound rang out the next moment, and about three hundred spirit insects flew out from the insect nest full of holes, buzzing around Li Yi.

The tiny insect's body was completely covered by a silver carapace, and its back was covered with black and yellow stripes.

These are the descendants of Li Yi who successfully survived the first cultivation process using swampy water.

After generations of reproduction, the population has finally reached about five hundred.

The new generation of spirit insects are much larger in size, and their intelligence has visibly increased. Li Yi can now easily control their movements based on his understanding of them.

However, perhaps due to the extreme toxicity of the swamp water, their reproduction rate has slowed down by more than half, and a large number of offspring die prematurely.

Even after a year of nurturing, the spirit insects recovered very slowly.

Li Yi carefully observed the black patterns on the back of their carapaces; some of them looked incomplete and naturally twisted.

It is speculated that the reason is that the culture was not sufficiently carried out in the marshland water phase.

Now, a year has passed, and with about five hundred spirit insects, Li Yi is preparing to continue his experiment.

With a thought, wisps of black water emerged from the surrounding dark swamp mud, their color even deeper and more clearly visible than the swamp mud itself.

These black liquids, like swarms of snakes, climb upwards along the surface of the insect nest, eventually drilling completely into it through the dense holes on top.

buzzing~

The spirit insects seemed to sense this aura and actively returned to their nests to devour this pure poison.

In their simple instincts, the swampy aquatic environment is a rare evolutionary opportunity, and although they are likely to die, they will not refuse this temptation.

Like moths drawn to a flame.

He sensed that some of the spirit insects died quickly after coming into contact with the swamp's water, but Li Yi remained motionless. Only after confirming that they would not be completely wiped out did he slowly leave.

As night fell, dark clouds filled the sky, casting an ominous glow through the veil of darkness. The moon was obscured, and no moonlight shone through.

In the pitch-black environment, Li Yi slowly left the area around the big willow tree and headed towards the cedar tree.

Li Yi's cultivation path has now hit a bottleneck, and it feels that the problem still lies in the chaotic swampy energy.

After a year of absorbing and expelling the moonlight, the moonlight within Li Yi's body had grown considerably stronger, but he was still confused inside.

The so-called balance of purity and turbidity did not bring it any foundational awareness; all that lay ahead was still chaos.

After much deliberation, Li Yi realized that he had made some mistakes in cultivating the swamp energy, and prepared to obtain some more brown crystal ore to continue his study of the swamp energy.

The problem might not be with the balance of clear and turbid qi itself, but rather with the turbid qi not being complete enough, lacking some crucial element.

Under the cover of night, Li Yi moved silently out of his territory and approached the cedar tree at top speed.

Just then, a large patch of dark clouds was blown away by the wind, revealing a waning moon. The pale moonlight fell from the sky, casting dappled shadows through the cedar trees and illuminating a patch of dark red fur.

Li Yi paused, stopping near the cedar tree, emerging from the mud, and opening his brownish-yellow eyes to look at the fur.

It was a red fox, its carcass emanating a faint spiritual aura, indicating it possessed cultivation; its fur was also a treasure.

It was reduced to skin and fur, its body devoid of bones, lying sprawled on a low branch, swaying slightly from time to time.

Upon seeing this scene, Li Yi immediately became alert to his surroundings. In his memory, the only thing that could leave such a mark was probably the Demon Ancient Tree.

The old devil tree near the cedar tree has died. Could there be another one wandering around?

But upon closer examination, Li Yi ruled out this possibility.

With the help of the moonlight, it saw two or three more such pelts under the cedar tree, all distributed within the cedar tree's protective area.

The Demon Tree detests the power of the Spirit Tree that can dispel poisonous barriers, and usually avoids approaching the Spirit Tree.

All the red foxes died under the tree.

Unless the ancient devil tree used its branches to fling the dead red fox's pelt under the cedar tree, but that would be too far-fetched.

After observing the cedar tree for a while, Li Yi suddenly discovered that apart from a few dead red foxes with intact pelts hanging around, all the red foxes had disappeared.

Did they leave?

Li Yi knew that this group of red-haired foxes was only a small branch of the Flame Breath Fox Clan, and they had come to avoid disaster.

They seem to have encountered something nearby, resulting in heavy casualties.

At least all the fur that Li Yi saw was left behind by red-haired foxes with cultivation.

After thinking for a moment, Li Yi slowly emerged from the mud. The moonlight illuminated the dark scales on its back, making them shimmer, and it approached the cedar tree.

Soon, it stepped onto solid ground and lingered under the tree, carefully observing each piece of fur.

They were perfectly intact, as if the flesh and blood inside had simply vanished, with almost no signs of fighting or wounds on their surfaces.

However, as he looked around, Li Yi noticed two small round holes on the back of a carcass hanging upside down on a tree branch.

It looks like it was caused by some kind of giant venomous snake.

Just as Li Yi was thinking, it suddenly realized that its right hind leg seemed to have been bitten, and it immediately turned its head to look.

The area under the tree was empty, and his scales had not been bitten through; there were only two small white spots on his black scales.

But soon, the white spots quickly corroded two larger pits on the surface of the black scales, seemingly some kind of venom.

Li Yi cautiously stared at the area ahead, then suddenly spat out a poison bullet.

boom!

The poison bomb exploded, and the black, viscous venom flowed out, revealing an outline.

It was a coiled snake with a vaguely triangular head. It wasn't very big and was tilting its head back towards it.

As the venom rapidly flowed across its transparent surface, it vanished again, completely invisible and undetectable.