The Thing Trapped In The Tree

Yuan Ming connected the furry hand with the stump on his body, hoping that it'd somehow latch on. It was kind of an Illogical move, but it didn't hurt to try, right?

He was pleasantly surprised when his stump started to convulse after it touched the hand. A slimy black liquid leaked from the edges of the stump and connected with the hand, effectively making it latch onto his stump like a parasite.

His new furry hand started to tremble as he gained control of its nerves; to test it out he swung it left and right and marveled at its length. Unfortunately, he lacked his dagger-like fingers on his new arm.

Suddenly, his arm started to rot. He felt no other changes to it except that, he didn't even feel pain of discomfort. Instead he felt pleasure as a dark rot fully devoured his arm; the fur on the arm fell to the ground while the skin was peeled off. The red muscles on the arm turned bluish-red as the metamorphosis finished.

The unfamiliar bony fingers at the end of the hand angered Yuan Ming. That cultivator…

'I swear I will kill that b***ch and feed him to maggots!! How dare he destroy my claws!'

Day by day, his hatred of humans were intensifying. He lost his claw to one and his life to another.

Now, Yuan Ming looked like an anomaly. Not that he looked normal before, but now he looked like a weird creäture born out of a mistake. One of his arms looked human and was a bit too long, while the other hand had claws and didn't look like it belonged to a human. Which was all due to that arrogant bi***tch cultivator!

He decided to ignore his anger and walked towards the Steelhead Gorilla's corpse. From afar it looked like a two-meter tall mountain of muscle.

'Hmm, what an honorable death. To look as if you're having periods on your death…'

The blood gushing out from its nether regions formed a small puddle as Yuan Ming pondered about what he'd do. Should he turn it into an undead or eat it?

'Of course, I can use him to climb that mountain…gorillas are good at that, right? But, what kind of power will I gain if I eat him? '

Greed overtook Yuan Ming as he growled in a lowered tone and bit into its back. The strong steel-like muscles blocked his teeth as he bounced off. He maneuvered and tried to eat its stomach, which was surprisingly springy and durable.

But after many slashes and bites, the muscles on the stomach broke as entrails gushed out. Fiery-hot blood containing life-essence and spiritual essence jetted out and hit Yuan Ming in his face; he ignored it and ecstatically drank the blood and swallowed its guts.

Since he couldn't eat it from the outside, he'd eat it from the inside. Once the stomach was empty and nothing but a husk of flesh, he entered inside and began devouring the flesh. The meat was surprisingly tender and tasted like…pheasant?

Yuan Ming left nothing behind — the fur, the bones, the skeleton were all eaten by him. After finishing eating, he felt something change inside him as he closed his eyes and sat on the ground.

As soon as he closed his eyes, he sensed a huge amount of spiritual essence floating around the marsh. His perception and senses suddenly blew through the roof as spiritual essence began to fly into him.

A ridiculous amount of colorful essence tried to enter his body but was rejected. Among them, only a certain type of black-colored essence was able to enter.

However once the essence entered his body they stopped moving, meaning they now had to be moved manually. Yuan Ming could draw life-essence from his core, but otherwise he was basically inept in terms of manipulating spiritual essence.

Just like that, a torrential flood of black-essence swept Yuan Ming. His body was like an endless tank that swallowed all the essence coming near him. Lamentably, after a few hours of such essence absorption, the air was left devoid of any black-colored essence.

Yuan Ming tried to take the essence to his core, but his core rejected it. Instead of the black-essence, the life-essence he got from eating the gorilla was being absorbed by the core.

It was truly confusing, what would he do with the black-essence then? When he needs help, the core distributes life-essence to his body. Furthermore he could also manipulate the life-essence, unlike the black-essence which was hard to move.

'Forget it. I'll find a way to cultivate later; eating a few monsters here and there is enough for me.'

When he opened his eyes, he felt his bones shift and his muscles throb. Even though every inch of his body was rotten, he could still feel and sense through it

Yuan Ming quickly looked at his body and discovered the distance between him and the ground lengthen. His eyes from above scanned his legs and discovered them to be longer and bulkier than before. They didn't turn into gorilla legs however.

His lean chest was wider and covered with more muscle than before, while his arms bent a bit forward and turned muscular. Unlike before, Yuan Ming wasn't lean anymore.

Yuan Ming was tall, but he was even more tall now. He estimated his height to be over six feet!

'Is this all? Looks like that gorilla didn't have any special abilities…Oh well. '

Yuan Ming shook his head and tried out his new-found strength. He opened his right hand's palm and bashed it on the water beside the puddle of blood. A feet-tall wave of water rose up from the water and fell on the trees.

'Woah…that's like three times the power I had before. '

Yet Yuan Ming was still in the early stages of Rank 2. Whatever.

Yuan Ming leaped at one of the trees and focused on his next objective; the monkeys. One by one, he drenched them in his acidic spit. Once he was finished, he saw their skin begin to rot off.

It was a slow process, but it was different from when he killed the cultivators and subdued the village. He felt his soul register new connections as the undead monkeys rose up from the dead. He didn't even need to command them!

"Grr…oohwaa…"

Their voices were high-pitched like children, and matched well with their short stature. Unfortunately they didn't resemble monkeys anymore as they lacked their fur.

Sitting on top of a tree, Yuan Ming coolly glared at the mountain piercing the sky. The fog surrounding it was intense and blocked bystanders from seeing its top. He felt that the fog wasn't as simple as it looked like.

Rather than sacrifice his new-found twelve monkey-slaves, he'd go up there himself. But he wasn't that dumb anymore.

Suddenly,

"Caw, caw. Caw, ca-!"

Yuan Ming grabbed the crow that was trying to bite his neck thinking he was a dead body and scarred it using his claws. It stopped struggling as soon its eyes turned brown. Yuan Ming felt a new connection in his soul.

He willed the crow to become alive, and it suddenly started flapping its feather-less wings.

‹Go, go to that mountain. I want to see what's on top of it!›

He didn't really understand how a bird would understand the language of the dead, but who cared?

The bird cleaved through the air while he transferred his consciousness into the it. His vision switched from the calm marsh to the treacherous sky — it was nauseating change.

The bird swiftly entered the mist revolving around the mountain and flew upwards; the wind couldn't slow it down as it reached the top.

It wasn't really visible from the bottom, mostly due to the mist, but at the top of the mountain was a flat ground. It looked as if God himself cleaved the mountain horizontally.

Yuan Ming's suspicions were true. There was a tree up there.

The tree had its branches lifted to the sky as if its very presence was enough to beat back the darkness and command the daylight to fall on its golden leaves. Its ethereal bark shone in the night. It's intoxicating leaves held the power to charm others to the point of arousing intense emotions.

Yuan Ming pulled himself out of the bird and felt that…this matter was a bit over his level. The tree was important, yes, but he felt like something was wrong with it…like something dead was there, waiting for someone to come and revive it.

Yuan Ming was an undead, as such he had the great ability to sense the dead.

‹Come on, follow me. We won't stay here another minute!› He roared at his underlings and stared at the mountain. At that moment, he felt like something was staring at him too.

Yuan Ming burned the marsh into his memory, but that wasn't enough. What if he forgets? That's why he wanted to leave something that'd help him remember this place.

Amongst the memory of the spiritual formations he inherent, most of them were summoning formations for structures. However there were a few unique ones…

That'd be kind of idiotic. The mountain was tall, way too tall. He'd probably be able to see it from a dozen li away.

'Misty Mountain Rage…hm'