The Tree of Transfiguration gave another shudder and pelted its fruits at Chu Xun. The golden Fruits of Transfiguration hurtled through the air, each of them as powerful as a C4 bomb.
With a wave of his hand, Chu Xun fired waves of rippling Hong Meng Immortal Qi, detonating the Fruits before they came near.
Chu Xun swung his fists furiously in quick succession, firing a barrage of fist-like energy bolt so thick that the bolts appeared to overlap. The salvo of energy bolts smashed into the Tree, chipping off piece by piece of the bark until one of the bolts finally left a clear imprint of a fist.
“Enough, you brute! Stop it!” the same ancient voice bellowed, the Tree radiating a golden radiance.
The corners of Chu Xun’s lips twitched. A tree?! Calling him a brute?!
“Take them!” the Tree, learning firsthand how irascible and difficult Chu Xun was, shook its boughs and dropped six golden fruits.
“Give me some more,” said Chu Xun telepathically.
“You’re a greedy one, aren’t you? Bear in mind, the fruits lose their power once they get beyond a thousand meters from me,” responded the Tree.
Not believing a word at all, Chu Xun spun around and confirmed what he learned with the white elephant.
“It could be true,” said the white elephant, “Most Beast Lords would choose to consume the Fruits and transform directly near the Trees.”
Chu Xun would have to take the Tree’s word for now.
Only a handful of Jiu You’s Beast Lords survived the battle of Wildfox Ridge.
Chu Xun gave the Fruits to each of them.
The golden-maned lion was the first to eat the Fruit. Resplendent and bright many-hued lights burst all around him with such radiance that blinded everyone.
By the time the lights faded after a long time, the lion was gone, replaced by a wild, burly, and sinewy man clad in a brown-chestnut outfit. With large round eyes and a wide grin, his thick mane-like hair bobbed in the wind whenever he moved.
“I’ve transformed,” said the lion Beast Lord excitedly, now a mutant.
Chu Xun’s lips curled wryly, however, feeling that the lion looked very much better as an animal than a man.
The tiger too transformed into a lumbering and bulky man with a square jaw and a stern glance.
Meanwhile, the white elephant changed into a tall and lean man with looks so handsome but yet of mild and mellow temperament.
The two Tibetan Mastiffs both underwent a similar transformation to the lion. They emerged a pair of men both brawny and large and with large, gibbous eyes and commodious mouths but with mohawk-like hair standing on ends that only made them no less intimidating than the rest of the Beast Lords.
The eagle too assumed his new human form: a young man clothed in gray with faintly protruding mouth and bulging eyes. Nothing good could come from one look at him for he looked more like a swindler or a fraud than an honest streetside peddler.
Every one of them was so excited to have their first transformation into human forms.
The lion mutant strode over to the eagle mutant and patted on his shoulder, although he nearly pounded the poor bird mutant into the ground instead.
“Damn, you look so feeble. If I don’t know better, I might have thought your original form is a chicken instead of an eagle. And damn, you look hideous,” grimaced the lion mutant wryly.
The eagle mutant wore a face full of smiles. But down inside, he was scowling with disgust at the lion, thinking, “And you think you look very handsome, do you? Just wait till someone sees you in the dark. I’m sure they would think that they’d stumbled upon a monster!”
“All right. That’s enough chit-chat. On to Mount Lu now,” said Chu Xun.
The eagle’s transformation into a human barely lasted minutes. He turned back into its original form and ferried everyone on his back at Chu Xun’s behest. As he flapped his wings furiously, the eagle grumbled quietly to himself, “You’re all in human forms now, yet how come I don’t feel you’re anymore lighter than before!? Damn you lazy pricks!”
Mount Lu was tens of thousands of miles away. That prompted the party to make several stops along the way for the eagle to rest as he could never have made it there without any respite.
During their stops, they encountered many human warriors. Despite the wary tension between everyone, no altercation took place yet.
On one time, they stopped by a river for a rest.
The tiger trotted off into the jungle and came back after a successful hunt that yielded a huge wild boar carcass and several more hares the size of millstones.
Once accustomed to eating meat raw, spending time with Chu Xun had now seen Jiu You’s mutant Beast Lords now falling in love with roasted meat.
Additionally, they even learned how to properly grill meat over a fire. They might need more practice before they became as good a cook as Chu Xun was, but the meat they grilled was still very, very good.
The fire burned heartily as droplets of fat from the burning meat on a spit dripped into it every down and then, eliciting sizzles and crackles from the excited flames.
Over another hearth were the skinned hares now roasting over another fire with the aroma of its meat wafting across the whole enclosure.
“Wow, that’s impressive,” said Jiu You suddenly, gazing up into the sky.
An ornately-furnished flying vessel, more than a hundred meters long, hovered in the air overhead, shining brightly with glittering lights.
“Damn… A ship that can fly… A spaceship!” breathed the Tibetan mastiff mutant dazedly.
Chu Xun looked up too, amazed. That must be a Sacred Relic capable of flying in the air. This was the first time he had seen one.
Activating and manipulating Sacred Relics of this sort required skill in psychic force. Somebody on that ship must be a proficient user of that power.
And Chu Xun only knew one sort of creature masterful enough in the use of psychic force: the Mustelid race.
Chu Xun’s eyes flared with covetousness. If the ship really did belong to the Mustelids, he could attack them and claim it for himself. Chu Xun never had any scruples in plundering his enemies of their belongings.
The ship moved very quickly, faster than even the eagle.
“Eagle,” called Chu Xun, “Go up and say hello. Let’s see who that is up there.”
Jiu You’s face contorted into a devious grin, “Are you thinking of taking that ship?”
The notion made everyone jerked their heads at Chu Xun.
Chu Xun feigned a cough and gave Jiu You an admonishing glare for her voicing out his thoughts so openly. Sternly, he said, “What are you talking about? I only want to see if there are friends up there who might be interested in giving us a ride.”
The mutant Beast Lords all stared at Chu Xun strangely.
Amazingly, the eagle had hardly even moved an inch when the ship began landing slowly.
Rumble!
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The ground trembled with waves of dust rolling across the meadows when the ship touched down.
The tiger fired a blast of energy, churning up enough winds to dispel the incoming waves of dust before they could dirty their food. The tiger appeared to be jealously protective of his food.
Men got off the ship. They shot contemptuous looks at Chu Xun and his companions and ignored them before going to the river to get some water.
“Whoever they are, they ain’t coming at us,” observed the elephant mutant quietly.
The men who got off the ship were low-tiered Beast Lords.
Chu Xun had instantly known what they were and he could not help suppressing a grin. They really were Mustelids who were weasel mutants.
The Mustelids fetched their water and headed back to their ship. But one of them, before stepping up the gangplank to board the ship, put down his bucket and marched up to them. He picked a roasted hare off the fire and strode right off.
Even Chu Xun was left utterly bewildered, never mind the lion and the rest of the mutants. “What on earth just happened?! Robbery in bright daylight?! To say nothing of his flippant and suave manner!”
As if to rub salt into their wound, the Mustelid paused halfway to look back. Seeing Chu Xun and his companions all frozen at their spots, he smirked with disdain before continuing his way back to the ship.
That was hardly the end of it. The Mustelid went back to rejoin his party and the rest of them put down their buckets and marched right over. Ignoring Chu Xun and the mutants, they each took a leg from the roasting boar meat and even took some of the roasted hares and trotted off, as bold as brass.
Chu Xun doubled down with laughter. “Interesting! Do these people really think we’re fools?!”
The tiger stared dazedly in silence for seconds before he could finally react and flared with rage. He had never been any more protective of his food and seeing how his food had been taken away, so freely and brazenly, left him livid.
“ROAR! STOP RIGHT THERE!”
The tiger rushed over in leaps and bounds and swatted at one of the mutants with such force that his bones and sinews were mangled as he was knocked off his feet.
Dealing with these low-tiered Mustelids was only a cakewalk for the Eighth-grade tiger Beast Lord. Right after swatting his target into the air, the tiger easily snatched back the roasted hare.
The lion mutant took that as his cue to spring into action as well. He stormed up to them with an imposing presence that petrified a Mustelid mutant, snatched back his food, before giving a roundhouse kick that split the Mustelid into two bloody pieces.
Horror and terror wiped across the faces of the Mustelids when they discovered that the tiger and the lion mutants were not to be trifled with.
One of them barked fiercely, “Do you want to die so badly?! Do you know who we are!?”
“As if I’d even give a tinker’s cuss to whoever you are! Take my food and I’ll kill you! Simple as that!” bellowed the tiger mutant. He bounded forward like a cat, scaring the wits out of the Mustelids as he took another swipe at one of them before gripping both of the poor weasel mutant’s legs and brutally ripping him into halves.
They might have assumed human form, but their temperament remained very much animalistic and bestial. Taking a life was nothing to them.
“Not bad, eh?” Jiu You grinned proudly at Chu Xun, seemingly pleased with her subjects.
Chu Xun nodded. He found himself satisfied with the performance of these Beast Lords, especially the tiger and lion mutants in their fierce and unforgiving ways towards their enemies. Chu Xun hated people that were soft and meek, if not timid and indecisive. People needed to know that this was a time of strife and troubles they were living in and the way to survive was to be brutal and ruthless towards enemies.
And the derring-dos of the lion and the tiger mutants fitted his palate perfectly.
The rest of the Mustelids were so horrified that they threw away whatever it was in their hands and scarpered away.
That only incensed the tiger even more, “How could these idiots so wastefully throw food to the ground!?”
Roar!
A thunderous roar reverberated through the air as the tiger lunged and gave a vicious swipe of its claws at one of the fleeing Mustelids.
This particular Mustelid had only just got one foot on the ship when the tiger dragged him back off the flying vessel by his foot.
Bang!
The lion caught up a split second later, landing right on top of the Mustelid from a great leap with so great a force that split him into half waist down.
Immediately upon their deaths, these “people” immediately turned back into their original forms: a pack of oversized weasels more than three to four meters in length.
“Weasels! No wonder they’re such thieves!” the tiger mutant scowled nastily as it kicked the carcass into a distance.
The lion teased him, “Hey, you ate even humans in the past.”
That remark made the tiger shivered like a leaf all over before he hastily spun around to steal a look at Chu Xun. When he saw that Chu Xun was not looking this way, he breathed a sigh of relief.
“Are you trying to kill me, you fool?! Don’t you know how many man-eating predators Chu Xun had killed before!? I hadn’t gained any sapience then so surely I can’t be blamed for my animalistic urges then!”
The lion knew full well what he was talking about. It was indeed no joking matter. Most predators in the wild knew about the law that Chu Xun imposed to forbid wild beasts from entering human settlements. To drive his point home, Chu Xun had slain virtually every wild beast in many cities including Gujiang then – a point that all wild beasts remembered to this day.
Of the Mustelid entourage that disembarked the ship to gather water, only one made it back. Standing on the ship’s deck, he stared coldly at the lion and the tiger mutants.
“You’ve spilled the blood of members of the proud race of Mustelids. Nothing will save your wretched lives now.”
“What do you mean?” The tiger lunged up the boat.
The Mustelid mutant stared audaciously at the tiger charging at him, utterly serene and his face full of contempt.
Bang!
Right before the tiger could step on the deck, a golden sheet of gold rose up and the tiger slammed into it with a huge bang as if he had just hit a wall as he bounced backward, groaning with pain.
“Hey, are you all right?” teased the lion playfully at the tiger, who was getting up to his feet, groggy like a drunk.
“What on earth was that?!” moaned the tiger, shaking its head vainly as if the dizziness would ebb that way.
The door to the ship’s cabin opened and an elderly man stepped out. His eyes flared with rage when he saw the carcasses of the dead Mustelids.
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“What’s going on?”
“It’s those people, Ninth Elder. They killed them!” the Mustelid who made it back to the safety of the ship wailed anguishedly as he bemoaned to the old man.
The lion and tiger could have not been any more surprised by the Mustelid’s flair to transform from a cold and smug demeanor to a sad, caterwauling one in just a matter of seconds.
“Brazen. You dare hurt members of the Mustelid race?” the old man demanded fiercely.
Back then, Chu Xun had slain both the Tenth and Eighth Elders of the Mustelid race at Nether Mountain. This old man was the Ninth, a Mustelid mutant named Huang Yu. He should have emerged long together with Huang Sheng and the others, but something had held him back.