Slime Immortal

"Lola! Wait!" Arno stretched out his hand to stop her.

"boom--!"

The door was slammed shut, and the loud noise caused dust to fall from the wall.

Arno's outstretched hand froze in mid-air. Listening to his wife's suppressed crying and the child's confused questions quickly fading away outside the door, he seemed to have been drained of all his strength. He leaned his back against the cold wall and slowly slid down to sit on the dirty floor.

He lowered his head and raised his right hand tremblingly.

In the dim light of the oil lamp, he saw that the skin at the joints of his little finger and ring finger was an unnatural grayish-white color, like inferior marble, and felt stiff and numb.

This is not dirt, it is the erosion of petrification.

It was like a demon lurking in his blood, gnawing away at his life bit by bit, and also gnawing away at his dignity as a husband, a father, and even as a "human being."

He clenched his fists tightly, and his stiff knuckles felt a pricking pain.

"…for you…I must go…"

He whispered hoarsely to the empty, cold room, to the demonic spreading speckle.

A suffocating feeling of darkness and dampness came over me.

The picture suddenly shattered!

"Uh...ho..."

Arno Belmonte suddenly opened his eyes, gasped, and a roar like a broken bellows came from his throat.

The blinding white light instantly made him burst into tears, and he subconsciously raised his hands to block them.

"Damn sunshine!"

He cursed in his heart, feeling that the light was like countless needles piercing his sore eyeballs.

Every time I woke up from that nightmare of broken separation, it was accompanied by this disgusting physical reaction and deeper mental exhaustion.

This nightmare, along with the damn curse in his body, harassed him more and more frequently, like a maggot in his tarsal bones.

Feeling the familiar stiffness in my knuckles.

He turned his wrist with difficulty, and the grayish-white spots were clearly visible at the base of his fingers, like an ugly brand.

The "glory" of the Belmont family - petrification.

A slow and cruel death sentence that first deprives the freedom of movement, then freezes the breath, and finally turns a person into a silent tombstone.

The "statues" in his family history, covered with white cloth and with strange postures, were his deepest fear in childhood.

And now, this fear is happening to him.

He, Arno Belmont, once a knight's squire, a devout believer in the god Cardos, a warrior who wielded a sword to guard the border... but now he was like a lowly thief, huddled in the rotten leaves and cold mud of the swamp forest, emitting the stench of mud and fear.

All this was done to abandon the "noble glory" that had long been worthless, and like the worst peddler, he bet all his belongings and the little life he had left, trying to cross the dangerous reed river bank to trade with those green-skinned and scaly subhumans.

Just so that he could leave enough money for Laura and the children to survive before he completely turned into stone, so that they could stay away from poverty and the children might have the opportunity to receive a decent education instead of bearing the double shame of being a bankrupt noble and a descendant of a "stone man".

"What a... irony..."

He pulled the corners of his mouth in self-mockery, moving the dried mud on his face, then struggled to sit up, leaning his back against a huge dead tree that exuded a rotten smell.

Looking around, the dense treetops blocked most of the sky, casting mottled and strange light and shadows.

The air was so humid that you could squeeze water out of it, mixed with the faint sweet and fishy smell of rotting plants, fermenting mud, and some kind of animal corpse, which was nauseating.

Silence, a voyeuristic silence enveloped everything, with only the occasional short and sharp chirping of unknown insects.

Even though they managed to escape from the fight with the Lizardman tribe, they were lost and could only flee here in a panic.

The once respectable businessman's coat was torn and tattered, covered in mud and dark brown stains.

The expensive leather boots were stuck in the mud and one of them was missing.

He felt around his waist; the purse containing his hopes was still there, but there were only a few cold silver coins and a few copper coins inside.

As for the pack animals loaded with grain and salt?

Long gone.

Those damned, demon-worshipping grey-scale bastards!

They were like evil spirits crawling out from the depths of a swamp, incredibly strong, with gray scales so hard that they could deflect swords!

The veteran adventurers he hired from Ironshoe Town, who boasted so much on a daily basis, were torn to pieces like paper by the sharp claws of those corrupted monsters!

The shrill screams, the muffled sound of bones breaking, the touch of warm blood splashing on the face... and those turbid, crazy, and irrational dark red eyes!

Fear coiled around his heart like an icy snake.

How did he escape? I can't remember.

I only remember that before the captain of the guard died, he pushed him and yelled, "Run!"

Then, relying on his remaining warrior instincts, he crawled into the even more deadly jungle.

Heavy rain... yes, that damn heavy rain that lasted for two days and seemed to be drowning the whole world!

The rain was icy cold, washing away the blood stains on his body, bringing with it a biting chill and excruciating pain that nearly paralyzed him—every time the petrification occurred on a rainstorm with active magic, the erosion would be accelerated.

He trudged through the mud and despair like a zombie, and finally collapsed here exhausted, without being discovered and eaten by the monsters in the forest.

Perhaps those monsters also find a "thing" that exudes the smell of death and stone unattractive?

Two days... He was lost like a headless fly in this damn swamp forest full of green-skinned barbarians and unknown dangers for two days!

"Kardos, above..."

Arno panted, trying to muster a bit of warrior's courage.

He fumbled around and pulled out a dagger that was barely intact from the lining of his tattered coat.

The touch of cold metal brings a slight sense of security.

He must find a way out, find the way back to Iron Boot Town, or... find any chance of survival.

For Lola's sake, for the children's sake, he couldn't die here and become a pile of unclaimed bones in the swamp... or stones.

He spat out the fishy taste of mud in his mouth in disgust and was struggling to stand up when he heard the mournful cry of prey being shot in the dark forest.

It's those damn scaly beasts again!

Arno cursed, but was extremely frightened in his heart. He frantically looked for a direction, chose to leave his fate to the god of luck, and plunged into the dark forest.

Chapter 28: Mud Demon

First this, then this, then this...

Chen Yu put down the talisman brush and picked up the ghost-painted talisman with the cinnabar ink still wet on the table.

Very good, so we get a failed talisman.

"Sure enough, drawing talismans is not that easy."

This failed talisman, which cost ten broken souls, was balled up and thrown onto the ground. It rolled a few times and stayed in the same corner with its yellow paper ball predecessor.

These failed products alone were worth five or six spirit stones, but now they have all become waste.

No wonder there are still so few cultivators who practice drawing talismans, which is the easiest to get started with among the four arts of cultivating immortals.

If I can't finish this painting, how long will it take me to finish it?

Never mind, I have money anyway.

Chen Yu held his breath and concentrated, took out the yellow talisman paper and pressed it under the stone, ground the cinnabar ink, picked up the pen, dipped it in the ink, and started writing.

After failing several times in succession, seeing that the yellow talisman paper was about to run out, the talisman under his pen suddenly glowed with spiritual light, and the spiritual ink writing completely merged with the yellow talisman paper, and a rock talisman was formed.

【Talisman Drawing Skill Level 1】

"Huh, I didn't expect I have a talent for drawing talismans."

Chen Yu picked up the rock talisman and looked at it again and again, feeling very satisfied.

Although the quality of the talisman was quite average, it was undoubtedly a good start.

Chen Yu flipped through the book of talismans.

There are not many talismans recorded in the talisman book, only two, the rock and the pile of stones. One can be used to resist attacks from swords, sticks and Taoist magic, and the other is simply to throw stones, plain and unpretentious.

The art of drawing talismans is only related to the skill of drawing talismans. When drawing different talismans, one also needs to practice the talisman diagrams. He currently only knows how to draw the rock talisman. As for the stone stacking talisman, he still needs practice to master it.

The talisman drawing technique was already completed, and Chen Yu couldn't wait to immerse his consciousness back into the swamp forest.

In the central tree area, the slime that had been standing still for a long time blinked, and its body rebounded and became three-dimensional.

He walked around the little ones playing and fighting and came to an open space.

Two stinging bees grabbed a broad leaf and flew down from the tree, landing steadily in front of Chen Yu.

Before, he had thought about what he could use to replace the necessary materials for drawing talismans in Zeyarila.

Talisman pen?

The stinger of the stinging bee can barely be replaced, but the resulting talisman is not aesthetically pleasing and has a higher failure rate.

Talisman paper?

Theoretically, it is not impossible to use leaves, but the prerequisite is that he has to use spiritual power to process them, so that the leaves can barely be used as talisman paper.

As for Fu Mo... he really couldn't think of anything here that could replace Fu Mo.

Talisman ink is not something you can just pick up any ink to use; it needs to be made from rare and precious materials.

Does Ziarella have any rare treasures?

do not know.

Anyway, he hasn't seen it.

With such thin spiritual energy, it is difficult to even practice cultivation, let alone grow spiritual herbs in the fields.

If he had hands, Chen Yu would really like to pat his troubled gel head.

As expected, drawing talismans in Zeyarila is not as easy as I thought. I can’t even get all the materials together.

If the talisman cannot be drawn, it can only be put on hold for the time being.