Chapter 409 — The Fierce Beast's Wooden Box

"A restorative?

" Xing'an was briefly stunned. His chest cavity burst open in an instant, rib after rib drilling out of his flesh; his own flesh seemed to be rejecting his ribs, a horrifying sight.

At the same time, the divine blood within him flowed outward, and then one of his legs abruptly tore loose from his body, beyond all control!

"The medicine you gave me was a restorative?

Not poison?

" Panic finally showed on his face, but at once another head dropped to the ground, its eyeballs, ears, and nose all tumbling off together.

Scattered across the ground, eyes, noses, and tongues hopped and darted about, trying to return to the head, but no sooner did they stick back on than they fell off again, unable to grow together. Emperor Yanfeng, the Blind Old Man, and the others saw hope and charged him at once.

Xing'an raised a hand to catch the Longtuo Divine Spear as the Blind Old Man thrust it at him; the very moment he gripped the shaft, his whole arm flew off along with the spear!

He blocked one of Emperor Yanfeng's punches, and his spine suddenly slid out of his body; his spine was not his own either, but a divine bone.

"It can't be a restorative.

It can't be a restorative!

" As Xing'an panicked, Granny Zhu suddenly pressed a palm to his chest, using precisely Fan Xuanshu's Great Luo Celestial Star Palm force, and punched a hole clean through his chest.

His heart leaped out of his chest cavity, struck the ground, and bounced twice.

"How could this possibly be a restorative?

" Xing'an still did not die; he fought desperately to withstand the crowd's assault, growing more terrified by the moment.

A restorative should only have made him stronger, so how could it make his body come apart? Bang, bang, bang—his body suddenly burst open in every direction, blood spurting in all directions, gushing like a fountain.

His divine blood had come from another master; it belonged to no part of the same body as his heart and flesh, and so that blood rejected every part of him, even as every part rejected it.

"What kind of poison did you give me? " The head that had fallen to the ground flew up and lunged at Shen Mu.

Shen Mu had no time to dodge, but just then the Lame Old Man came racing over, hands flying like the wind, and suddenly leaped up and wrapped himself around the head, crying fiercely, "Give me back my leg!

" The head let out a great roar that blasted the Lame Old Man away, but the next moment he came flying back and grappled with the head again. A leg went racing across the ground, charging at Shen Mu; the Deaf Old Man flung the brush in his hand with all his strength, and the great brush swept past in front of Shen Mu, sweeping that leg into a painted scroll.

The Deaf Old Man fell flat on his back, gasping, having spent every ounce of his strength painting a single picture: a tiger.

In the painting, a tiger with uplifted eyes and a white brow, that leg clamped in its jaws, raced along inside the scroll.

Shen Mu let out a breath.

The medicine he had given Xing'an was indeed a restorative, a true and mighty tonic through and through. To poison Xing'an to death was all but impossible; whether even the Elixir Master possessed the skill was another question, and Shen Mu was certainly in no position to refine such a rare poison.

Xing'an had beaten the Blind Old Man, the Deaf Old Man, the Lame Old Man, Fan Xuanshu, Emperor Yanfeng, and that whole host of incomparably mighty beings until they could not even fight back; the Empress Dowager and other masters of the age had not lasted a single exchange before falling and being unable to rise. He was surely stronger than Lord Huanlong by an unknowable margin.

When Shen Mu had used the Three Breaks Powder he had refined himself to poison Lord Huanlong, it had merely caused him no small trouble without taking his life, so poison was by no means the best policy. What was more, Xing'an was himself skilled in medicine and able to swap out his own body parts; his attainments in the medical arts ranked among the very few in the world, and any poison would easily be seen through by him.

To a physician of Shen Mu's aspirations, poisoning one's opponent was an art, and it did not necessarily require poison. Xing'an was unbelievably strong, yet his flaw was plain for all to see: every part of his body had been taken from other masters, and none of it belonged to one whole body with his original flesh, so they were prone to rejecting one another.

The Elixir Master had once taught Shen Mu that the human body possesses a self-defense system, an immune defense mechanism, and that when the organs of another are transplanted in, the original body tends to regard them as invaders from outside and is sure to destroy them.

This was the reason for the mutual rejection among Xing'an's body parts. The Elixir Master had also taught Shen Mu that many illnesses arise from a weakened self-defense system, such as colds and plagues, and can be eliminated by strengthening the constitution and thereby the self-defense system.

Combining these two points, Shen Mu's method against Xing'an was to refine a supreme tonic that would magnify the rejection reaction between every part of his body, driving that rejection to its absolute extreme! As the only youth in Yincan Village, Shen Mu had endured the strictest upbringing from childhood, tormented by the Nine Elders of Yincan Village; his family discipline had been severe and upright, engraving every elder's teachings and fine traditions deep in his heart until they became his own rules of conduct.

The Elixir Master, a man of lofty character, held that elixir-making was an art, and that no fixed boundary existed between tonics and poisons: a poison could be a life-saving remedy, and a tonic could be a deadly toxin.

When Shen Mu had earlier refined elixirs to heal those flood dragons, this was the very tonic he had made, taking the dragon-kirin's dragon saliva as its base ingredient and supplementing it with all manner of potent tonics for the flood dragons to swallow. After those flood dragons took the spirit elixirs, their wounds healed with incredible speed, their flesh regrew itself, and their broken bones and severed tendons rapidly knitted anew.

Shen Mu had come charging in with the Dragon-Riding Art, bringing the flood dragons with him; when Xing'an's flying arm struck those flood dragons one after another, the enormously potent tonic seized the chance to invade his arm, passing through the arm into his body, and then through his heart into every part of him. What Shen Mu had administered was the fiercest medicine of all, one that could restore even the injured bodies of flood dragons at incredible speed; once the tonic entered Xing'an's body and its medicinal power took effect, it magnified his rejection reactions countless times over!

Poison could not kill him, but a tonic tore him apart—this was the medical art the Elixir Master had passed down to Shen Mu. Yu Zhaoging, the Empress Dowager, and the others likewise suppressed their injuries and came charging in, and Xing'an's body split into pieces in four directions.

Several heads rose from the ground, crying fiercely, "You think that is enough to kill me? You are far too naive!

" His scattered body suddenly turned on the crowd with deadly intent, but without the support of a whole physical form his magic power was nothing like what it had been; his divine treasury, too, had been seized from another, and now that even the divine treasury had been stripped from his flesh, his magic power was dispersed, and none of his attacks carried the might they once had. Even so, his strength remained formidable, and the heads, legs, and eyeballs flying through the sky were truly ghastly, enough to make one's blood run cold.

Suddenly, several legs raced forward and positioned themselves beneath that box of his; the legs exerted their strength and leaped into the air.