“What are you doing?” Li Qingshan’s pair of bull horns were even harder than fine steel. He felt as if the bones all over his body were vibrating when they were being carved. It felt both numb and itchy.

Halfmoon said, “Don’t move!”

So Li Qingshan moved as much as he could. He even stretched his arm and grabbed the top of his head, but she was nimble to the extreme and would absolutely not let Li Qingshan catch her. After a while: “Done!” Then she took out a bronze mirror and let Li Qingshan have a look.

Li Qingshan saw carved on his pair of horns the two words “North Moon,” one left and one right.

“I’ll paint some color on it, to meowke it look meowre striking. This way it’ll be our pledge!” Halfmoon laughed mischievously.

“You just go die!” Li Qingshan stamped with rage.

They found a natural cave to rest in when daylight neared close.

Li Qingshan stretched out his hand with a cold face. “Spirit pill!”

Halfmoon said with a smile, “Be obedient, don’t be angry. Come, open your mouth!” She grasped the spirit pill and refused to put it in Li Qingshan’s palm.

Two pairs of eyes faced each other. Li Qingshan opened his mouth after a while and abruptly bit toward her hand. His long eerie white teeth were like blades. Don’t mention her slender wrist, even a steel frame would be bitten off.

Halfmoon immediately pulled her hand back, making Li Qingshan merely eat the spirit pill. Then she rubbed Li Qingshan’s head. “Really ferocious!”

Li Qingshan ate the spirit pill down and went to sit by himself to cultivate, continue to cultivate. Apart from cultivating, he also held the mirror and touched the two words on his bull horns. He sighed in lament. Could he still wipe them off?

He didn’t know yet at this very instant. Those two engraved words weren’t merely a pledge, they would also be a monster king’s title.

Hence three people hid by day and went out by night for several days in succession. Halfmoon would bully Li Qingshan for fun when bored. Li Qingshan put up a vigorous resistance but it was still no use, so in the end he could only let it flow by him.

Anyway, as long as he could eat spirit pills down his belly, and his cultivation could grow day by day, would he still need to fear there wouldn’t be a day when he would turn things around and be the master instead?

Moreover, Li Qingshan had obtained much knowledge pertaining to monsters from Halfmoon during these days. Monsters who couldn’t cultivate a monster core were usually of low intellect, and they could only be regarded as powerful wild beasts, hence they were called monster beasts. Only those who formed an inner core could be called a monster.

Monsters were likewise separated in different levels, using the heavenly tribulations they’d gone through as the criterion, just like humans. Those who’d gone past one heavenly tribulation were called monster generals, those who went through two tribulations were called monster marshals. Only those who’d undergone three heavenly tribulations could be called monster kings, reaching the same level as the monster kings of the ten sides.

The monster kings of the ten sides occupied an area each and had countless monster marshal and monster general subordinates. The partition of territory was a little different from the human administrative divisions, but there were also similarities. The monster king of the Verdant Province was the Ink Sea’s dragon king.

Halfmoon was a monster general level monster, having just stepped into the field of this world’s powerhouses, but her strength was already so high. Li Qingshan couldn’t imagine what kind of realm the monster marshals and monster kings above her had reached. A fire ignited inside his heart. Whether he was a monster or a human, he had to be the strongest powerhouse in any case. There was no way he could let people step over his head.

Halfmoon was humming a song at this moment, standing on Li Qingshan’s head, grabbing Li Qingshan’s horns, standing high and overlooking the scene from above.

Li Qingshan couldn’t help but imagine the scene of squeezing her inside his palm and listening to her soft voice call him master. Another blaze welled up in his lower abdomen, and it wasn’t merely fighting spirit.

Li Qingshan carried this sort of bottomless ambition with him, the fire of his desires overflowing the sky. A fishy wind rushed forth from between the trees just at the same moment he was inside his fantasies. A bloody mouth swallowed wide open in his direction. Halfmoon whose body was invisible actually bore the brunt of it. She casually swept her hand away. “Reaction’s too slow!” She drew a silver arching light in the air.

A snake head big as a water jar dropped down, and fresh blood spewed forth. It was actually a python with flowery patterns on its body hidden inside the forest.

Li Qingshan dodged the blood. He raised his head and saw the snake’s body twisting around the tree trunk. It was fully several dozen feet long, its color the same as the tree trunk. It was entirely invisible if one didn’t look carefully, simply a living “Annaconda1.” He’d already seen quite a few strange things already, but he still couldn’t help but sigh with feeling. This world actually had such creepy and fearsome creatures. It could have casually exterminated everyone if it’d gone to a human village.

Li Qingshan sniffed the monster qi on the snake’s body, realizing this was a so-called monster beast. The wuxia novels he’d read hadn’t been few in numbers, so he immediately went up the tree to take the snake gall2. Only then did he find out that the snake skin was tough to the extreme. Even if it wasn’t infused with monster power anymore, he still had to spend some time and efforts to cut it open. It was easy to imagine how fearsome this monster beast would be if still alive. It’d merely picked the wrong target to attack and been instantly killed by Halfmoon.

Li Qingshan grabbed the black stinky snake gall. Thanks to his spirit that didn’t fear pain and labor during practice, Li Qingshan closed his eyes and swallowed it down in one go under Little An’s shocked eyes.

Halfmoon said curiously, “Why did you swallow the poison sack?”

“What, poison sack!” Li Qingshan’s expression changed at once. His originally greenish black face became even more ashen. His heartbeat sped up, the toxicity attacking the heart. To speak bluntly, Li Qingshan hadn’t done anything like fetching snake gall even adding his two lives together. How could he become a countryside survival expert just because he’d traveled to another world.

“Meowhahahaha!” Halfmoon rolled on the floor in laughter. She took out another round ball from inside the snake body when she saw Li Qingshan had fallen on the ground from the poison. She stuffed it inside Li Qingshan’s mouth. “Yes, this one is the snake gall.”

Li Qingshan’s whole body had already started to stiffen. He barely managed to swallow the snake gall down. The poison only alleviated somewhat. Halfmoon then took out another spirit pill from her little bell. “This is a Poison Dispelling Pellet!”

Li Qingshan lay down for a while. He waited for the medicine to exert its effects, only sitting up after that. He said to the worried Little An, “I’m fine!”

Halfmoon groped out another spirit pill with a backhand and gave it to him. “This is a reward!”

“What reward?”

“It was really too funny. You have to keep working hard in the future, and provide happy amusements for this mistress.”

And so did Li Qingshan collect a medicine pill with an ashen face.

Little An spit out the “Cremation Blood Fire” and very quickly incinerated the python monster beast. It could be regarded as taking revenge for Li Qingshan.

The blood fire cleanly burned the python to ashes, leaving only a snake skeleton behind. It then spun in the air before returning inside his mouth. These monster beasts had abundant and powerful blood energies that even a hundred persons added together couldn’t match. It was greatly beneficial for him.

Halfmoon stared in a daze. “Turns out this is what Little White eats.”

Li Qingshan took note of it and thought he should help him find some blood food more often.

The trees grew increasingly taller as they went along the depths of the Boundless Mountains. Li Qingshan would unexpectedly feel himself negligible even with a body more than ten feet tall.

They also encountered more and more monster beasts along the way. Various kinds of creatures only existing inside imaginations and legends appeared in front of them.

A great bird with wind and thunder curling around its body and wings over a hundred feet when spread out flew in the sky. A spider as big as a table with a ghost face imprinted on its back had woven a spider web as big as a soccer field between a dozen antique trees reaching to the sky.

But it was fortunate not every one of them would charge and attack them. For example a leopard as tall as a man chose to turn around and leave after observing a while in the surroundings. Although they didn’t have very high intellect, those monster beasts still had keener senses when it came to judging strength and weakness. They were extremely prudent and would definitely not attack casually. They weren’t monsters in video games, but real living creatures.

1. Reference to the movie series of the same name.

2. The snake gall/snake bile is used in traditional Chinese medicine, often described as having all kinds of magical uses, a little like ginseng.