Poison God's Heritage

Two days underwater, and hundreds of thousands of attempts later, I finally was able to move a couple of steps without creating any current.

The idea was simple, apply the same force you're creating, to negate the impact of your own motion.

It's extensively draining in Qi however because not only your calculation of the applied force and the counterforce must be exact, but you must also apply this to every bit of your body.

The idea was thankfully not that hard to understand thanks to my origin coming from a more scientific world. But applying it, in reality, is not like theory. Still, with enough practice, I was able to move about without creating even a swirl around me.

Everything had to be monitored, from the strength behind my step to my weight to the very movement of every muscle, they must all be taken note of, and the force and power they release, then I must exude a Qi that negates all of those. It's like my body movement creates a Positive, but my Qi must create a countering Negative to have the result of my 'moving' become a zero.

Making every step I make, and every move I make a perfectly stealthy action.

I left the Sea Biome in the wake of the last day, now that I'm at the rudimentary stages of mastering the Traceless Step. I think I can go with my original plan of killing a Saint Class beast while I'm still a Nascent Soul cultivator.

Once I returned to my Spiritual Herb garden in the middle Biome, I found the Heavenly Dark Tiger pacing around Kyu.

"It is still unable to exert any of its abilities, besides the power of its Blood, it's as weak as a toddler. You must teach it to hunt," the tiger said.

"Isn't he too young for that?" I asked.

The tiger shook its head, "It is well within the age where it needs to accompany its parents to see them hunt, it also requires a playmate to learn how to hone its predatory instincts. Think of how you can solve this."

"I'll give it some thought, also I think I'm done here," I said.

"Good, I was growing bored, after traveling all over this place, I didn't find much life form, it's a dead world no matter how vivid it looks," the tiger said.

"I'm not keen on having people know of my secrets, but I'll think about inviting a few life forms over. Perhaps it'll become livelier," I said then asked the Automaton to open a gate back.

The three of us left, with Kyu on my shoulder and the Dark Tiger towering over us.

"I don't know why you decided to waste six days learning the traceless step, since even if you can approach the Toad, I don't know if you can kill it, but I won't ask, since I want to see, lest it spoils the fun," the tiger said.

Don't worry, I'll need to do something first though. I said, then ran towards one of the creek's ends.

It was distant enough that the Toad won't see us. This part of the creek was what funneled the excess water from the pond where the Toad was sleeping.

I made a dam to stop the water from moving. I needed to hurry though because if the pond were to overflow it would make all of my work pointless.

I then made a roundabout way to go around the pond, as far away from the toad to not be noticed, and went up all the way to the source of the creek.

And thankfully it wasn't mountain water, but an underground water source that was pouring its content creating the small creak.

So I only needed to dig for a couple of hours and redirected the source to flood away from the main creek, this stopped the water flow and made the pond where the Toad was sleeping a sourceless pond.

No water was coming in or out of it. It was basically a giant water bucket.

Which served my purpose perfectly.

Now comes the time for the traceless step.

I went down the creek and began walking using the Traceless Steps, hiding my entire presence from the world by merely making sure that every move I made was negated. Not a blade of grass moved, not even the wind itself was able to detect me.

I walked slowly and surely, exuding as much Qi as needed to make sure that I'm 'invisible' to the world.

And soon, I arrived to the pond where the Toad was sleeping. It has yet to notice that the pond has been tampered with and is no longer being supplied water.

I then slowly dove into the water making sure to keep my presence hidden.

The water was poisonous, but it wasn't something that I needed to worry about. I already had several antidotes ready and swallowed them, so this distilled poison won't affect me much.

Once I was at the bottom of the lake, I held one hand forward and ignited the Veridian Heart flame.

I didn't dare make a great fire lest it would disturb the surrounding, but it was a small flame that won't be detected if I were to carefully apply my understanding of the Traceless Step on it.

The small flame raged but didn't create any disturbance in the water, no bubbles rose and no waves were created.

But the flame still raged on.

Now what I was trying to do was simple. I was actually recreating an experiment I read about back on earth. A scientist had placed two frogs, one in boiling hot water, and the other in lukewarm water.

The first frog immediately jumped out of the boiling water, while the other remained inside the lukewarm water unphased.

Yet the Toad didn't realize that the water it was in was slowly being heated. The temperature was rising slowly while it was inside.

Frogs have a natural ability to mitigate and recalibrate their body temperature. So since the water was heating up, the frog was cooling its body to negate the heat. Yet, after a while, the water became too hot for the frog's internal cooling mechanism to cope, and when the frog decided to jump out and save its skin, the frog realized that it had overused all of its internal energy to mitigate the increased heat, finding no power in its legs, the frog flailed weakly and died afterward unable to leave.

And now, with the Veridian heart flame having heated the water of the lake. The same experience could be seen, only on a wider scale.

At first, I thought that this would fail since a normal frog and a Saint Class Toad were two different begins.

But it didn't take long for me to see the Saint Toad's body being covered in a thin layer of ice underwater.

I smiled there and then. They may be in a different class. But they are still in the end, frogs.

Now, I just had to wait…

***

The Dark Heavenly Tiger had no idea what the human was trying to do. Shutting down the streams of the pond would serve absolutely no purpose in killing the Toad. So Why did this human do that? The tiger questioned every move the human did but couldn't come to a realization.

Then, the tiger failing to understand what was happening decided to perch on top of a tree that overlooked the pond and watch what was going on.

The human had redirected the flow of the water source and it no longer poured into the pond. Even the Toad realize that but since there was plenty of water it didn't want to leave the pond, after all, there was a great treasure that even the human didn't know of right inside the Thunder Tree that the Toad was guarding.

This Toad was greedy, it wanted to eat the fruit of the Thunder Tree to become a Thunder Toad, although the chances of that happening were infinitesimal it was still an opportunity for the Toad.

So it decided to stay in the still water pond not caring why the source of the water was cut off.

Then the human came down the mountain, it was almost a miracle too, since even the tiger didn't notice him coming down. How did this human manage to learn the Traceless Step? No that was not the Traceless Step even, the Traceless Step requires a great understanding of nature and attunement to it. What this Shen Bao was doing was actually the opposite. Instead of communicating with Nature to hide one's presence, he was using his own energy to hide his presence, he was self-sufficient in his own Traceless Step unwilling to take aid or assistance from the world around him.

A rather forceful and greedy way of denying the nature around oneself. Selfish even and disregarding. Befitting of a human the tiger thought.

Yet it seemed to work on an entirely different level from the Traceless Step. If this human was able to hone this new ability of his, he would be able to walk among his peers without them even noticing he was between them. Quite frightening and interesting.

Soon, the human dove into the waters, though the Tiger was intrigued, he didn't use his divine sense to scan what Shen Bao was doing lest it would alert the Toad.

So, the tiger kept watch on the still waters of the lake. For an hour, two, then half a day. Nothing seemed to happen at first, but then the tiger noticed something, slight amounts of water vapor were coming out of the pond as a light fog was being created. The fog was always present in the Dark Forest, but it wasn't too cold for it to form. No, there were even signs of heat coming from the pond.

However, this light increase in heat wouldn't do anything to the Saint Class Toad.

When the tiger looked at the Toad, it was already lightly coating itself with Yin Qi, preventing any heat from coming close to it.

Whatever the human was planning was bound to fail, since it cannot even harm the Saint Class Toad.

The tiger shook its head and sighed as it waited for the morning.