Chapter 123: Scavenging Once Feels Great, But Scavenging Again and Again Is Pure Bliss
Yu Xian instinctively gulped. Can I drink it?
He decisively put the Heaven-Mourning Sword into his spatial ring. When the sword entered the ring, an overwhelming sense of weakness spread through him. However, he didn't notice it, focused entirely on the pool of blood on the ground.
Yu Xian crouched down and cupped the blood in his hands, as if he were holding gold. Ever since he had been transported to this world, his sense of smell had been unreliable, working only intermittently. However, when he picked up the blood, his nose sharpened once more. He detected a peculiar scent within it. Through that scent, he saw countless people kneeling before a giant serpent and worshiping it as a god.
This was the first time Yu Xian had encountered such extraordinary blood. It was likely the highest-grade blood he had acquired to date. "Should I drink it?"
Even the Blood of Pangu paled in comparison to the giant serpent's blood. After all, the so-called Pangu he knew was merely an imitation created by the Forbidden Fruit, worlds apart from the true Pangu of legend.
After hesitating for only a second, he decisively chose to drink it. Since heaven had handed him such an opportunity, he had to make the most of it. Otherwise, heaven itself would grab him by the hair and beat him senseless while screaming, "I handed you an opportunity on a silver platter, and you still couldn't make use of it!"
He revealed his fangs and gently sank them into the giant serpent's blood. Then he sucked with all his strength. The blood contained not a single impurity, but it was terrifyingly viscous. Drinking it felt like trying to suck up a mouthful of snot.
After completely draining the blood, he shuddered. Dense cracks spread across his skin, as though something beneath his flesh were about to burst free. He was stuffed. The blood was simply too nourishing, and he had reached his absolute limit!
Suddenly, the skin on his shoulder split open, and a fleshy lump grew from the wound. A crack soon appeared across its surface, revealing a restless eye beneath. Then his spine bulged outward. Another fissure opened along his back, forming an enormous eye that covered nearly its entire surface.
Just as he began to mutate, the Dragon Shield core within him started absorbing his blood. It rapidly consumed the strange energy originating from the giant serpent, gradually restoring him to normal.
After some time, Yu Xian gasped for breath. Aside from his torn school uniform, everything that had just happened seemed almost like an illusion.
Yu Xian touched his shoulder, his heart still hammering. What was that? Divine power?
The giant serpent's blood was only one or two ranks higher than the blood of a Perfect Lifeform. However, it contained a special energy. This energy was something he could not digest, so it acted directly on his body, nearly turning him into a monster covered with eyes.
Fortunately, although he could not digest the strange energy, the Dragon Shield core could. The moment the energy reached it, the core automatically absorbed it. The core, once crimson, had now taken on a dreamlike quality.
With a thought, Yu Xian summoned dragon scales across him. Unlike before, when they had appeared entirely solid, the scales now seemed both tangible and illusory, as though they were veiled in a thin layer of hazy mist.
He raised his hand and poked at a dragon scale, but his finger passed straight through, as the scale did not exist. He changed his thought process. When he poked the scale again, it became completely real and solid.
Yu Xian came to a sudden understanding. "Divine power of deceit! Truth and falsehood, illusion and reality, shifting at will, impossible to predict."
He pinched one dragon scale between his fingers, and the scale turned into a flower petal. With another thought, the petal turned into a gold coin. He smiled and flicked the coin. A crisp sound rang out, and the coin rapidly spun through the air before turning into foam and disappearing.
The giant serpent had two Divine Cores. Its primary one was that of a Fire God, while its secondary one was the Divine Core of Deceit. The former focused on offense, while the latter focused on defense.
From beginning to end, the Supreme Martial Zombie King had never truly harmed the giant serpent, as the giant serpent's shattered scales were never real to begin with. The moment the battle ended, the giant serpent only needed to use a little of its divine power to refresh them. Only Asonis had truly seen through the giant serpent's deception and easily taken hold of it.
The giant serpent was actually covered in a Cloak of Deception. Any attack that failed to break through it could not reach the giant serpent's true body and, naturally, inflict any real harm.
Only now did Yu Xian understand the true meaning of the phrase "Only those with a steadfast mind can perceive the user's true form" in Appraisal's summary for the giant serpent.
The Dragon Shield had acquired the same Cloak of Deception. Unless an enemy's strength surpassed the limits of the giant serpent's divine power of deceit, they couldn't truly harm either the Dragon Shield or Yu Xian himself.
After fully understanding the changes to the Dragon Shield, Yu Xian could no longer suppress the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. "I hit the jackpot!"
If he gave his defense before drinking the giant serpent's blood a value of 100 units, then his defense now was 1,000 units. And the increase of those 900 units came from a special defense that could only be worn down under specific conditions. If one's mind was not firm enough, then attacking Yu Xian would be no different from attacking empty air. Sure enough, when heaven practically handed him an opportunity on a silver platter, he had to make good use of it.
Yu Xian cheerfully whistled as he continued searching for more of the giant serpent's blood. When the serpent had coughed up blood, the blood had scattered across the land like petals tossed by a celestial maiden, so there was bound to be more nearby.
This precious blood was something he would never complain about having too much of. In fact, he almost wished the giant serpent had coughed out all the blood in its body.
Scavenging once feels great, but scavenging again and again is pure bliss!
It didn't take long for him to find another pool of blood. Unmarred by dust and incredibly dense, the blood did not sink into the ground, which made it exceptionally easy to spot.
He quickly stepped forward, scooped up the blood, and without another word, opened his mouth and drank. Delicious! As expected, a vampire has to drink blood.
The next instant, Yu Xian's body went out of control. Cracks spread across it, but he did not panic. Instead, he observed the body parts that were mutating with great interest. For example, an eye had grown out of his knee. Soon, the Dragon Shield core once again absorbed the giant serpent's divine power, and the abnormalities in his body rapidly disappeared.
An insight dawned on Yu Xian. Moving on impulse, he extracted a trace of illusory power from the Dragon Shield core and injected it into himself. His body instantly ballooned outward according to his thoughts, swelling into a three-meter-tall, one-eyed monster.
But this was only an illusion. He had not undergone any physical transformation. A Cloak of Deception had covered the surface of his body with this illusion. And as long as that cloak could not be seen through, the illusion could also be real.
Yu Xian pinched his one-eyed face. "So that's how it is. Belief is the core of this power. I was terrified earlier, and that's why the first bodily mutation felt genuine. Just now, because I was confident nothing would happen to me, it didn't feel nearly as real."
Divine power of deceit could also be infused with belief. When belief grew to a certain level, the false could become real, and the real could become false.
It was only from the feeling he sensed when the abnormalities in his body disappeared that he noticed another attribute of the divine power of deceit. Clearly, this divine power was even more incredible than he had imagined.
The divine power of deceit possesses the attributes of grotesqueness, terror, dreams, evil, and bewitchment!
Yu Xian reverted from his monstrous form to his original appearance. He ran his hand over his clothes, and the school uniform torn apart by his body's expansion quickly returned to its original state.
He had gained some understanding of how to use this power of grotesqueness. As for terror, dreams, evil, and bewitchment, he would still need to figure them out slowly.