Chapter 87 – Florida Man Bitten by Amazon Crocodile While Catching Wild Chickens for Dinner
Entering the portal, Leo found himself in a dense jungle. In front of him was a series of mangroves and a large transparent river. Tropical trees packed together, forming a natural wall. The bushes and plants covered the entire ground that Leo, Gao Yan, and Wu Buyi couldn't see anything underneath.
The greenish smell hit their noses, and Gao Yan coughed. He shut his eyes and sat on the ground, meditating and circulating his Qi right away.
Wu Buyi also narrowed his eyes. He summoned his flame spirit avatar and created a flame dome around them. A few seconds later, the scent vanished, replaced with fresh air.
Leo raised his eyebrows and observed the two. He had no idea what they were doing and why they were doing so. From his perspective, nothing was unusual, and the air was fresh. However, these guys seemed to be worrying about something.
"What's up? Can't handle fresh air?" Leo grinned.
Wu Buyi wryly smiled. He wanted to complain that this mystic realm's wood element essence was too thick, and it was suffocating. He had to create a fire dome to filter out wood essence from getting in. Otherwise, Gao Yan would have died from Qi deviation.
"Please don't mind us, my lord. We can remain here and guard the portal. You can go and explore the mystic realm. Also, if you find anything good, please don't forget a souvenir."
"I'm surprised you know that word. Anyway, there's no hurry. The portal will remain open for 34 days, so I'm going to help you set up a camp here first."
"Wait, what?! 34 DAYS?!"
Wu Buyi was stunned. Normally, gates automatically closed after 10-14 days, depending on the difficulty of each realm. But here, Leo nonchalantly said that the portal would stay for a month.
He was excited. With over 30 days, there were many things they could do. For example, the regular plants and trees around here were rich in wood essence. Just by inhaling a mouthful of air, he already gained one year's worth of Qi.
Leo didn't wait for Wu Buyi to react. He walked toward a palm tree with a barbed red trunk. Similar to the pine trees near the Magpie City, this palm tree was over five meters in diameter. No matter how Leo looked at it, it was abnormally large.
Ignoring the pointy surface and the sharp needles, Leo grabbed it and pulled it up.
RUMBLE
The massive palm tree was uprooted.
Wu Buyi dropped his jaw as he gazed at the giant tree being lifted with one arm. Although he used to work out and lift logs before, he had never seen anybody uproot a tree with one arm. But what came next shocked Wu Buyi.
Leo turned around and threw the massive palm tree into the portal like a javelin!
"!!!"
Wu Buyi gasped and dodged the flying tree. A sharp root grazed his head, cutting a few strands of hair.
WHOOSH
The tree disappeared into the portal, leaving Wu Buyi stunned. He had never seen someone transferring a natural resource through a portal this way as most cultivators simply stored their items in their spatial rings.
Leo didn't stop there. He looked below and grabbed a snake-like Aloe Vera. He uprooted the entire plant and hurled it to the portal. Then, he turned around and began pulling weeds and tropical plants in the area.
Wu Buyi gulped and wanted to tell Leo to entrust this task to him. However, he couldn't utter a word as he noticed something. As soon as Leo's hand touched the dark green plants, everything turned black, and the characteristic of the plants drastically changed.
The alchemist widened his eyes. He finally witnessed how Leo turned regular fruits and plants into fine treasures.
"This… This must be why! This is his power all along!"
Wu Buyi was elated. He believed he had made the right choice following Leo. At the same time, he regretted that his friends didn't get to see it.
'Han Hao, you're a fool! You should have sworn allegiance to Lord Florida Man when you had a chance! Now, I'm going to monopolize everything! Hehehehe!'
Wu Buyi rubbed his hands while he filtered and dilute the wood essence in the air so that both he and Gao Yan wouldn't die from Qi deviation.
For a whole day, Leo did nothing fancy. He uprooted everything and threw them into the portal, collecting every resource he found.
.
At night, changes occurred to Gan Yan. Green aura burst out from his body, followed by a rainbow light. It was faint, but his aura was similar to Leo's.
Fire, water, wind, earth, wood, and metal Qi gathered in Gao Yan's dantian and muscle fibers. As soon as wood essence in the air touched his skin, it got stuck on him, and they were slowly absorbed into his pores.
RUMBLE
The presence of Gao Yan and his cultivation base changed. He reached the golden core stage, aka the 4th stage. His dantian volume expanded, and his dantian began refining a gold core inside him.
Wu Buyi quietly watched over his disciple with a bright smile. He was proud of him, and he was excited for his future.
"Less than a month ago, you're just a weak Qi condensation stage cultivator. Look at you. You've advanced two major realms within a month!"
While solidifying his cultivation base, body, and dantian, Gao Yan looked at his mentor, "It's thanks to you and Senior Florida Man."
"Of course! Now, take your time and absorb as many drops of wood essence as you can."
Wu Buyi was relieved that Gao Yan was no longer in danger. He sat cross-legged and began meditating, cultivating the surrounding essence as well.
WHOOSH
Both men ignored the whizzed sound of flying logs, plants, and random objects. Soon, their mind entered a trance, and they stopped hearing the noises.
Meanwhile, Leo cleared the land and created an elevated area, which was suitable to build a campsite. He lit up a campfire, giving everybody a source of light and heat.
After setting up a place for Wu Buyi and Gao Yan to rest, Leo looked around, scanning the area. As he paid more attention, he noticed that over 300 lifeforms had been lurking and watching his every movement. More than half came from the mangrove river nearby.
Leo's infrared eyes followed their life signature and looked up. Then, he found a dozen lion-sized chickens, standing on the top of mangrove trees. Their red eyes glowed in the dark, but they maintained a distance from him.
After seeing the weird chickens, Leo salivated. He missed the good-old fried chickens.
"…Chickens. Oh, right. I haven't built the goddamn livestock shed. Can I capture these mofos and bring them home?"
Leo chortled like a villain. He kicked the ground and vanished from where he stood. Less than a second later, he stood behind the horde of chickens.
Upon getting a closer look, Leo discovered that they were not ordinary chickens. Each chicken had three snake tails, and they had four legs. In addition, their eyes emitted something that made Leo recall the ancient legends.
CRACK
As soon as his eyes met with the chickens' red pupils, Leo's skin hardened. His muscles became rigid as if they were turning into a stone.
Despite being on the verge of being petrified, Leo shrugged.
"I finally remember. Those yellow lightning bolts back in the day also petrified me as you did. Those days were hell. I even lost two legs when I first got hit by those. Well, thanks to that, my body learns how to regenerate lost body parts and repair my DNA."
BOOM
A thick layer of petrified arm skin came off. Then, Leo's eyes reddened.
"POKOK?!"
The cockatrices were confused about how Leo hadn't been turned into stone yet. They kept staring at him, waiting for him to become a stone statue, so they could feed on him.
However, as soon as Leo's eye color changed, he was no longer affected by the petrification stare. He seized the necks of two cockatrices with bare hands.
"First off, let's see how your meat will taste after I mutate you. If you suck, I'll just put on gloves and put you in a cage!"
"POKOK!!!"
The two cockatrices squirmed in pain. Their feathers and hairs fell off while the sharp claws of their legs scratched Leo's face and chest. However, they failed to leave a scratch wound on him. Two seconds later, their skin turned yellow-brown as if someone had painted them with turmeric. After three additional seconds, they ceased resisting.
"Five seconds. Welp, I don't have to remove your feathers. Thanks a lot."
Leo ignored the remaining cockatrices on the tree and returned to the campsite. He tossed the two lion-sized chickens there and looked at Wu Buyi.
"Wu Buyi, I have a job for you. Can you cook these while I'm hunting?"
Wu Buyi wanted to retort that he had to cultivate. He reopened his eyes and was about to refuse. But then, his eyes noticed the two large carcasses of chickens.
As a veteran, Wu Buyi recognized them right away.
"E-Earth Cockatrices?! Aren't those 6th-stage cockatrices, my lord?!"
"6th stage, 7th stage, I don't care. Just cook these damn chickens. It's unfortunate that we don't have vegetable oil here or I would have deep fried these. Oh, well, just BBQ them, boil them, or sashimi them. I don't care which. I just want some good damn chickens!"
"…"
After entrusting a troublesome job to Wu Buyi, Leo vanished. He reappeared on the same mangrove tree, where the herd of cockatrice chickens were.
"Alright, which one of you wants to be my livestock? If you resist, I'll kill you. If you surrender, I'll spare you for now, but I'll kill you later. Any smart ass that wishes for the third option, I'll deep fry you alive. Now, make your pick."
"…POKOK?!"
The cockatrices seemed to understand a human language. They were fumed with rage, and they swarmed Leo. They pecked, clawed, and bit his arms and legs.
Leo burst into laughter as they did something stupid. Five seconds later, all chickens lost all their feathers, and they fell from the tree one by one.
Florida Man collected his findings and tossed them toward the campsite. However, he failed to catch one of them, and it fell into the river.
PLOP
Rainbow color, the radiation contamination, spread from the corpse. It slowly spread along with a calm wave and turned colorless.
Leo ignored the contamination process as he didn't need to be considerate of the local humans. He got down from the tree and shoved his arm into the river, trying to get the chicken back. He managed to grab one of the chicken's legs.
But as Leo was about to pull it out of the river, something tickled him.
CHOMP
"…"
Leo looked into the river. When he discovered what it was, his eyes sparkled as if he was a child looking at his favorite toy.
There was a black glossy caiman crocodile in the river.
