A Farmer's Journey To Immortality

Aksai took a deep breath.

"Haa..."

Because he was still in his Poison Metamorphosis form, the movement looked particularly strange.

Without most of his epidermis and tissues, the expansion of his lungs was clearly visible beneath his exposed frame. His rib cage widened as the organs within his chest moved.

His heart could also be seen.

It had been pierced by Varesh’s Natal Sword.

The organ was still beating weakly.

Thump.

Thump.

Dark blood slowly oozed from the wound.

Under normal circumstances, such an injury would have been fatal.

For Aksai, however, it was merely an extremely serious injury that needed to be dealt with later.

The Poison Metamorphosis form allowed him to continue functioning despite suffering what should have been a mortal wound.

At this moment, Aksai looked less like a living human and more like a skeleton with partial poison decay that had somehow learned to move itself.

Thin strands of poisonous muscles and tissues still clung to his bones, providing the minimum structure necessary for movement. His internal organs, however, remained largely intact.

Anyone standing close enough could even see those organs moving as he walked.

It was an unsettling sight.

Yet Aksai was already accustomed to it.

The Poison Metamorphosis form was a temporary measure designed to allow a cultivator to survive brief moments of extreme danger. One could say that it was a state between life and death, allowing one to cling to life despite being forced to die.

Normally, maintaining such a state for more than a few minutes would begin damaging one’s foundation. The longer one remained transformed, the more severe the damage became.

Aksai was different though. His druidic lineage gave him an enormous advantage in this regard.

He could maintain the Poison Metamorphosis form for considerably longer without suffering severe or lasting backlash.

It wasn’t that he was completely unaffected.

He still lost life essence.

He still suffered pain.

Various negative debuffs continued to affect him.

And there was no way around those problems.

But whatever life essence he lost could eventually be replenished.

The Spirit Plants inside the Enchanted Everwood Farm provided him with an almost inexhaustible source of life essence. Through his druidic powers, Aksai could replenish the vitality consumed by the Poison Metamorphosis form.

His Qi cultivation was another matter.

In this state, his Qi cultivation base was more or less unusable. That was one of the primary reasons Aksai disliked using this form unless absolutely necessary.

Still, the advantages were undeniable.

In the Poison Metamorphosis form, most ordinary physical damage became almost meaningless.

Sharp attacks.

Piercing attacks.

Severe injuries to his flesh.

All of them could be endured to an absurd degree.

Even if someone ripped his heart out and crushed it, Aksai could still continue fighting.

Of course, such an injury would come with an even greater backlash once he deactivated the Poison Metamorphosis form.

If he failed to repair the damage beforehand, he could genuinely die the moment he returned to his normal state.

Thankfully, Varesh had only pierced his heart.

He hadn’t destroyed it.

Of course, this wasn’t because Varesh wasn’t ruthless enough.

But Aksai’s various tricks and surprise attacks had repeatedly caught him off guard, preventing him from completing that final step.

And Varesh could never have imagined how terrifying Aksai’s life essence reserves and druidic recovery abilities were.

How many Lords could even survive being stabbed in the heart?

Aksai silently thanked the Gu Poison King in his mind.

That old poison monster really did leave me something useful.

The Gu Poison King had developed the Poison Metamorphosis form.

Aksai had eventually killed him without giving him the opportunity to use it.

Looking back, Aksai couldn’t help but feel fortunate.

If that guy had used this technique back then...

He didn’t finish the thought.

Without the Poison Metamorphosis form, the battle against Varesh could have ended very differently.

There was no point.

Aksai had won. Not only against the Gu Poison King but his recent battle with a true late-stage Lord level sword cultivator as well.

That was all that mattered.

Aksai shook away his stray thoughts as his gaze fell upon Varesh’s corpse. In the next moment, he approached it cautiously.

Even though Varesh was dead, Aksai wasn’t willing to take any chances.

He raised his hand.

SHING!

A blade of poisonous energy flashed.

Varesh’s neck was slashed open.

The wound nearly severed his head from his torso.

Only then did Aksai feel slightly safer.

Next, countless green, brown, and blood-colored vines emerged from his body.

They wrapped around Varesh’s corpse.

Wood-element power surged into the dead body.

The vines carefully sealed the various wounds scattered across Varesh’s body, preserving its remaining essence and preventing his corpse from deteriorating.

Aksai’s expression remained solemn.

He had slashed Varesh’s corpse for one simple reason.

A safety check.

If Aksai possessed something like the Poison Metamorphosis form, there was no reason to assume that someone like Varesh wouldn’t possess an equally terrifying method of revival.

In fact, given Varesh’s identity, it was almost certain in Aksai’s eyes. After all, he was a late-stage Lord-level cultivator from the Shinayin Empire.

He was a true sword cultivator.

He had been treated as a Nascent Soul seed within his imperial faction. Someone like that was bound to have countless life-saving measures. Perhaps some of them were even superior to Aksai’s Poison Metamorphosis form.

Aksai wasn’t going to gamble his life on the assumption that Varesh was truly dead.

He slashed.

He sealed the corpse.

Then—

Whoosh!

He stored Varesh’s body inside the Enchanted Everwood Farm.

The moment the corpse disappeared, Aksai unknowingly avoided a disaster.

The poison druid’s paranoid nature had indeed saved him a lot of trouble.

Unknown to Aksai, a restriction had been placed deep within Varesh’s body. It had been personally left behind by a true Nascent Soul King, the leader of Varesh’s imperial faction.

Its purpose was simple.

Revival from the brink of death. Although the methods used were different, the end result would have been the same.

Unfortunately.... Varesh met Aksai.