Daily life of a cultivation judge
Chapter 1198 - 1198: Change of coat (2)

Though he was glad he kept his life, readjusting wasn't easy for him, and the writing didn't make things any easier.

He had steeled himself to beg Yang Qing to remove it, but all that changed a few weeks ago when he got kidnapped by some humans who wore the same look he used to have whenever he saw delectable prey. Kind of like how the vicious kite eyed Haishi.

Seeing that look on those humans dug up long-repressed memories from when he was a nameless tadpole just trying to survive, where every day was a vicious struggle.

The one saving grace he had was that, even as a tadpole, his poison still worked, even against spirit beasts stronger than him, which kept him safe, despite his small frame and lack of strength.

Given how small and poisonous he was, that combination made him less of a target for other spirit beasts. He simply wasn't worth the trouble, which emboldened him to act a little recklessly as he roamed the forest with his guard slightly lowered.

Eventually, that left him exposed to one of his most feared enemies, which was humans and human cultivators at that.

Before that encounter, Bolin had never interacted with or even seen humans in the Green Fog Region, which was to be expected given the nature of the area. Humans were the minority there. And since he was just a tadpole about to transform into a toadlet, his movements were pretty much confined to certain areas, which further reduced his chances of stumbling across them.

However, all that changed one day when he was casually swimming around, not even properly restraining his aura, as he searched for a suitable place to complete his evolution from tadpole to toadlet. That was when he stumbled upon four human cultivators, who, upon sighting him, wore the same heated gaze spirit beasts had when they saw a precious prey or natural treasure.

Their gaze and their race confused him at first. It didn't follow the usual script he'd experienced from other spirit beasts, which was either disinterest, slight wariness, or open hostility if he accidentally wandered into their territory. In those cases, they'd usually throw a grunt of displeasure his way, with some outright attacking him, though not to eat him, but to assert dominance.

But this gaze… this gaze those four weird-looking spirit beasts carried felt different.

They wanted to devour him. And for the life of him, Bolin couldn't understand why, not at the time. He was tiny, which meant he was definitely not filling, and he was poisonous to boot. Highly poisonous.

The Green Fog Region was filled with toxic creatures. Poison was the staple of that place, so its residents had a natural intuition when it came to poisons and how to deal with them. They knew which poisonous plants and beasts they could handle despite the toxins, and which to avoid.

Bolin fell into the latter category.

His body housed six different types of poison, each one deathly terrifying, so much so that even as a tadpole, with his abilities not yet fully formed, he could still kill spirit beasts stages above him through mere contact. And these weren't just any spirit beasts; they were creatures that had developed physiological resistance to poisons from living in the Green Fog Region.

So, one could see just how toxic he was.

At the time, he didn't know exactly how potent he was, but after observing the way other spirit beasts reacted to him, even as a tadpole, he knew he was definitely up there in terms of toxicity. Which was why he was so baffled when he saw those human cultivators eyeing him greedily. That confusion only deepened when he tried to poison them and managed to injure just one, while the other three neutralized his toxins entirely.

Granted, his poisons back then were a far cry from what they were now in terms of lethality, but still, they weren't something just anyone could handle.

And yet... those four cultivators did.

He soon fell into their grasp, and what followed was worse than anything he could have imagined. They dissected him, healed him, dissected him again, healed him once more... the cycle repeating almost a thousand times in the span of two days.

It was a fate far worse than death.

He begged for the sweet release of death at the time, but it never came.

Luckily, his prayers were answered in a different form.

That form came in the shape of his friend, Li Lun, the green flash viper. Li Lun had been stalking those humans for a while, and when their guard dropped as they experimented on Bolin, he struck. He killed them swiftly, devoured three of them, and left the one who had done the most damage to Bolin... for him to consume.

That was where their friendship was born, and also the first time Bolin consumed a human.

As irony would have it, consuming that human cultivator turned out to be the tonic he needed to complete his evolution into a grown rainbow mist toad, directly skipping the toadlet phase. Both he and Li Lun unlocked their wisdom pearls then, paving the path for Li Lun to become a false king, with Bolin as his right hand.

Since that day, Bolin had consumed over a thousand humans, regardless of gender or age. And if he was being honest, even now as a new member of the Order, he didn't regret any of it.

The experience he had that day had shaken him so deeply that he cultivated with a single-minded obsession to become as poisonous as he could be so his toxins could never be countered again. That relentless pursuit created the imbalance he now carried within his body, where his poisons had grown so potent, they were slowly overwhelming his body's ability to contain them.

But he couldn't help himself. Never again was he going to be dissected.

At least that was what he thought, until Feng Xin appeared. He discovered a newfound fear that temporarily overrode his previous one, and he found himself begging for his life to be spared. Even if he had to live as test material, he was willing to endure anything so long as he got to keep his life.

Truth be told, it surprised him when he said that. But even with the conviction he had at the time born out of the desperation to stay alive, he couldn't deny that he was petrified at the thought of being experimented on again, even if it was the only way he got to keep his life. And a few weeks ago, that fear resurfaced when he was captured by human cultivators with the same look in their eyes as the ones from before. But these ones seemed much more powerful, as they instantly sealed all of Bolin's abilities in the blink of an eye, the moment he tried to retaliate.

Just as he had surrendered himself to reliving the nightmare he had vowed never to experience again, the cultivators stopped when they saw the writing on his back. Not a moment later, one of the caretakers arrived and scolded the cultivators, even throwing in a few punches.

The surprises didn't end there. The vicious kite that constantly terrorized him had come with the caretaker. And when Bolin looked into its eyes, he saw something he never thought that bird was capable of showing: concern.

He couldn't help but wonder if the caretaker's arrival had something to do with it. After all, when he had been taken, the kite had been lurking nearby and had seen it happen, but didn't intervene, which Bolin hadn't expected anyway, given its sadistic personality.

Seeing it in his rescue made Bolin revise his opinion of the kite. Though, if the opportunity presented itself, he would still poison it and heal it. After all, gratitude and vengeance had to be given in equal measure, and a toad could only handle so much disgrace.

For the sake of their 'friendship,' he had to return the humiliation it had served him in kind by poisoning it. It was the only way.

As for the writing on his back, Bolin now felt it rather suited his coat and dared not imagine it without it.

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