Fierce Insect Martial Saint Starts from Insect Refining

Chapter 1: Insect Master
Dali 1347, Qianyang Year Four
Lingnan Prefecture, Bailu County, Yun Cang Town
It was the height of summer, with the sun like a furnace hanging in the sky for seven straight days, making sweat pour down backs and the heat unbearable.
Rumbling thunder rolled in, fierce winds rose, layered black clouds covered the sky, pressing down darkly as bean-sized raindrops poured down, instantly forming a curtain of rain.
“It’s finally raining.”
Under the thatched eaves, rainwater streamed down the grass curtain in a line, dripping to splash muddy yellow water at the feet of a thin, pale young man under the eaves.
Su Yan paid no mind to the murky yellow mud, his eyes flickering brightly.
He turned and entered the thatched hut, swiftly taking down the straw raincoat and straw rain hat from the wall and putting them on.
Su Yan was only fifteen or sixteen years old, his face pale as white paper, his frame thin.
The tattered straw raincoat on his body still revealed his frail figure.
Dressed in the straw raincoat, he stuffed a tattered fishing net into the backpack beside him, picked up the gleaming woodcutting knife nearby, and placed it in the wooden sheath at his waist.
He looked up at the sky, dark and overcast like night.
The curtain of rain obscured the nearby Yunling Mountain, shrouded in mist, the undulating ridges like a great python stretching across a hundred li.
He strode into the rain, his thin figure under the straw raincoat gradually receding as he hurried toward the great mountain.
Yun Cang Town bordered Yunling Mountain to the south across eight hundred li of old forest, dense and maze-like.
To the north lay six hundred li of Bai Lu Lake, with countless tributaries twisting like soul-snaring bays.
One mountain and one water sustained the towns and villages of Yun Cang Town, as well as its tens of thousands of people.
The mountains and waters held many treasure lands, with treasure fish, rare beasts, spiritual plants, and exotic grasses that were hard to obtain, so hunters, fishermen, and mountain hunters made their living from them.
‘Mountain rain chills to the bone, mountain paths are rugged and hard to traverse, no wonder Uncle Xie warned repeatedly not to enter the mountains in the rain.’
Large raindrops blurred his eyes, and the already muddy mountain path became even harder to walk.
Su Yan stepped into one mud pit after another, but his gaze was resolute as he hurried quickly toward Yunling Mountain.
Mountain hunters survive not by great skill, but by knowing where danger lies and where to go or not go.
He was a mountain hunter, though only for five months and four days, but he knew a thing or two about what he should.
But this trip he had to make.
It wasn’t greed for profit or coveting mountain treasures in the rain.
It was for a turnaround.
Five months ago, he had been a law student preparing for the civil service exam.
Burning the midnight oil and rising with the dawn rooster to study, yet to save someone, he had crossed over in an instant to the body of a boy named Su Yan in Yun Qian Village.
His mother had died young of illness, and to save her, the family had incurred a huge debt.
With tax season approaching and the debts to those ruffians due, his original body’s father had taken a risk, climbed the cliff to gather stone ear grass, only to leave no trace behind.
After all that, Su Yan had been reborn.
The rain pattered loudly, making the old trees in the forest shake and creak eerily.
A chill gradually seeped through the straw raincoat, spreading across his back.
Su Yan tightened his straw raincoat, wiped the rain from his face, identified the direction, and hurried along a path.
The woodcutting knife at his waist was now in his hand, with shrubs and tangled branches lining both sides of the path that needed to be hacked through to pass.
‘Shrubs thick and untrodden, that place should be undiscovered by anyone.’
The situation on the road eased his mind a little.
Hurrying along, the muddy mountain path made him fall several times, covering him in mud.
The straw raincoat inside and out was completely soaked.
Even so, Su Yan refused to stop.
Finally, parting the shrubs ahead, the view suddenly opened up, revealing two moss-covered mountain rocks.
A crack between the mountain rocks let a thin stream surge out, pooling beneath into a small pond of four or five square meters.
Swimming fish surfaced in the pond, exhaling bubbles like strings of pearls.
Su Yan’s eyes lit up, taking the tattered fishing net from his backpack.
But he didn’t act, instead quietly hiding to one side of the pond, man and straw raincoat concealed among the shrubs.
Su Yan stayed perfectly still, holding his breath and staring intently, like a stone.
Rain hit his body, soaking his hemp clothes, the chill raising goosebumps all over.
Yet he gritted his teeth, controlling himself not to shiver, his knuckles white gripping the fishing net.
‘Traverse a thousand mountains seeking treasure paths, become mere dry bones in the mountains.’
‘Mountain hunters’ lives are cheap, trading life with the mountain lord for treasures; if the Yin Water Centipede doesn’t appear today, this body will likely succumb to a mere wind chill.’
Wind chill requires medicine, and medicine costs money.
But he had no money.
Su Yan was gambling, for a chance at a turnaround.
When he first arrived, who wouldn’t want to tinker with something new to find a way out?
But that thought was quickly dispelled entirely.
Not to mention having no capital, the world was harsh; for a low-status mountain hunter, just the mountain fee and poll tax could crush a person breathless.
More importantly, in this world, martial artists were the heavens.
‘When individual martial power far exceeds the ordinary, a single Little Mountain Association in a city can suppress villages great and small for two hundred years.’
In such a world, rising up was too hard.
Su Yan’s heart sank as he recalled the scene of a Little Mountain Association bigshot suppressing a feral beast in the mountains.
Three or two light steps covered hundreds of meters, a soft shout summoned a four-to-five-meter black wolf shadow rising from his body.
With just a finger point, the six-meter vicious tiger that had killed over a hundred hunters and mountain hunters was struck down.
One person alone had such power, so he knew even masses of ordinary people couldn’t overturn the heavens.
‘The lower classes are just crop after crop of leeks; to turn around, must practice martial arts!’
The rain grew sparse, the scattered sounds in the mountain forest gradually fading.
“Rustle”
A faint sound came, and Su Yan immediately held his breath, eyes locked on the pond.
Water-soaked moss grass rustled, a flash of dark purple darted past between the rock crevice.
Hearing it, Su Yan tensed up, eyes fixed, watching as the dark purple thing crawled out from between the rock crevice and moss.
What an exotic centipede!
The centipede was three fingers thick, as long as a forearm, its dense appendages like a thousand black needles, clinging to the rock moss.
【Yin Water Centipede（Unranked）】
【A centipede that has begun inhaling vital energy from an ordinary insect, gradually gaining mystical traits, lives in water, emerges after rain, skilled at swimming, can be used in medicine.】
【Can be refined】
Su Yan focused, and information on the Yin Water Centipede appeared before his eyes.
The glaring “can be refined” made his eyes light up with joy.
After waiting months, coming and going in these mountains, risking encounters with many poisonous insects, he finally found a refinable exotic insect.
The Yin Water Centipede’s two head antennae swayed slightly, then it shot into the water like an arrow.
The swimming fish had no time to react before half its body was torn off; a black fish as long as a forearm, nearly as big as the centipede, was bitten dead by it.
In mere moments, it stopped moving, a black line appearing on its body.
‘Now!’
Su Yan immediately flung the tattered fishing net in his hand; it was one he had bought for 100 wen from an old fisherman.
Patched and mended, he had barely repaired the large net to three or four square meters.
Fortunately, it was for catching insects, not fish.
The net hit the water, startling the Yin Water Centipede.
A “sizzle” of pitch-black poison sprayed out, landing on the shrubs nearby.
In a few breaths, the hit weeds had withered somewhat.
Su Yan watched in alarm but yanked hard with both hands, pulling up the Yin Water Centipede along with the net.
The centipede’s thousand legs, tools for clinging to rock walls, now tangled too much with the net, writhing in a ball on the muddy ground.
The Yin Water Centipede was not large but strong, rolling in the mud and tearing the net in places.
Seeing this, Su Yan grabbed a nearby crooked stick and struck it.
He didn’t hold back; Uncle Xie had told him while mountain hunting that exotic things were always harder to deal with than ordinary ones.
Even exotic insects couldn’t be easily subdued with a couple of blows; he was to be extremely careful if he encountered one.
After three or five blows, it thudded loudly like knocking a hard-shelled coconut, curling the Yin Water Centipede into a ball, its struggles weakening.
In his sea of consciousness, a cyan fierce insect cauldron with three legs and two ears—legs as long insects, ears as vicious insects, its body coiled with countless fierce insects, lifelike and ferocious, appearing to devour each other.
The insect cauldron hummed, Su Yan’s eyes flickering.
‘It’s done.’
The fierce insect cauldron emanated an aura like an ancient wilderness, making the Yin Water Centipede like an ant, not daring to move.
Su Yan reached out to touch the Yin Water Centipede, a stream of light entering the cauldron, then information appeared before his eyes:
【Tier 1 Insect Master:1/100】
【Insect Realm:1 cubic meter】
【Mountain Hunting:94/100（Beginner）】
【Yin Water Centipede1/100(Newborn）】
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