Yong Lu returned to his previous contemplative self after he inspected his abilities.
This time, he wasn't thinking about his poison but generally beasts.
Beasts are how the world calls animals that step into the path of cultivation. In fact, this term is often used only when a beast steps into the second stage of foundation refining, and from the third stage on, they are called beast cultivators, since they aren't in any way lesser than human cultivators.
In fact, heaven isn't unfair. Beasts are inherently born with less intelligence, hence their weakness in the earlier stages and the difficulty for a beast to start the path of cultivation. Even if beasts are stronger than humans, below the core formation stage, they can easily be killed through wit and cunningness of humans.
For this disadvantage, heaven has given beasts three gifts.
The first gift is their natal power. When beasts reach the third stage, they can transform a part of their body into their natal power in the human form. From then on, they can specially refine the natal power. This refining is naturally different from human refining, but it has it's own wonders and isn't less powerful.
Humans can refine their natal power earlier, but they have to actively strengthen it and advance it with each stage, while even without refining, the natal power of a beast will always correspond to their stage.
After all, once they turn back into their origin form, the natal power will naturally re-attach itself, still retaining the refining from before and become even stronger in this form. It can be said that for beasts, the human form is a convenience, not a must.
The second gift is their spiritual root. For humans, they can have from low to high, five, four, three, two and one spiritual root. The 'low to high' determines their cultivation speed. On the other hand, beasts have vastly different and countless special spiritual roots, they can even evolve themselves as they advance, and even in this state, their speed of cultivation will start at the speed of a third spiritual root.
Naturally there are exceptions for beasts too, but these exceptions usually come from a higher bloodline. If a beast starts from a pure animal, then it will have it more difficult to advance towards higher stages, but it won't have the blockage of bloodline when advancing.
Beasts that cultivate bloodline instead will have this issue, so even though they cultivate faster and might have high intelligence initially, they will have other issues later on.
The third and final gift is the strong bodies of beasts. Not that they are all strong, in fact, frog monsters can be said to be rather weak, not any stronger than a human cultivator of the same stage, if they don't cultivate the physical body. Their only strength is their jumping ability and their flexibility, but this isn't strength.
No, this gift is differently, it is the inherent strength and ability to consume spiritual treasures without refining them. Pill making and smithing are ways humanity has found to refine them, but beasts can naturally do so, without the disadvantages of pill poisoning and such. Their natural digestive system is stronger and allows them to do so.
Looking at the three gifts, one might think that beasts are much stronger than humans, which isn't right, but not fully wrong either. They are generally individually stronger, but the term 'beast' might be confusing to some.
All animals are called beasts, naturally there are many animals that don't conform with each other, how could they be called beasts? Not to mention the smaller details, water beasts, land beasts and air beasts have barely any connection if it doesn't come to hunting each other. It's too much to say they are one group.
Even if humans have their own factions, they are still one species and can ally themselves, while beasts find it more difficult to do so. In the end, through various wars, beasts occupied vast stretches of nature, while humans occupy flat land. Even if there are beasts that prefer flat land, they usually live in the flat land between other natural environments.
For beasts, they prefer their habitat and won't go beyond their range even if it wasn't occupied, these flatlands are dry and unwelcoming places. As for humans, they are naturally unhappy for having to avoid these vast stretches of land – not to mention anything else, even if the flatland they occupy is large, being surrounded by nature makes transportation and various other things difficult.
Additionally, beasts themselves are good resources for humans, while humans aren't the favourite of beasts. There might be some demonic beasts that relish human flesh, but these are outliers that are rather weird in the eyes of beasts. After all, most of them think they taste bad and, like the honey badger, are extremely annoying.
Because of all these, the area beasts occupy are rather small in comparison to the area occupied by humans. Not to mention anything else, they aren't like humans who are inherently large beings that multiply like flies.
Small animals might have this ability, but beasts, like human cultivators, have it more difficult to reproduce. Especially the natural awakeners, they themselves aren't bloodline cultivators, they'd first have to figure out how to spread their own bloodline – but why would they do that! There is a natural chasm between natural awakeners and blood cultivators, natural awakeners disdain bloodline cultivators while bloodline cultivators envy natural awakeners.
Humans have a similar style of trimming low stage human cultivators, but they treasure their mortals much more, so they need more land and space. Awakening naturally is much more difficult for beasts, if they don't eat treasures or are special in another way, they will never awaken.
There are only so many treasures, of course these are kept by higher beasts and given out rarely, knowing reality, beasts are much more ruthless. If a beast isn't born special, then it is unlikely to even awaken intelligence, they work better as food.
All in all, there is a large difference between humans and beasts, so even if humans seem to occupy most of the land, they are weaker. As for everything else, humans are weaker in the air space and don't even dare to fly near monster gatherings, while the waters are fully controlled by beasts and only few humans can find foundation on islands. Deep water, just like the centre of natural environments, are forbidden zones for humans of all stages.
"At least beasts aren't weak here, else it would be difficult for me to be in this world. Humans will look at me as a monster, even if I hide my aura, it will just make things difficult. On the other hand, beasts will at most think I'm a rare mutant species. Some might want to eat me, but their wish to kill me won't be any less than that of humans, at least there is a chance to live, humans will likely hunt me across countries…
And mot importantly, as a beast myself, it will be much easier to come close to other beasts!
Hahaha! I want to see who tries to stop me from studying toxic animals now! Since I'm deadly poisonous myself, I can't possibly be worse than them! Since this body was in the late stage of qi refining, my frog form will also be in the qi refining. The original species of beasts are extremely important for their strengths, a bull can't be poisonous and a bird won't grow hands!
Since my original species is the poison dart frog, the deadliest poisonous land animal, I will naturally still be deadly poisonous, and likely the deadliest in my stage! Even if there are some comparable to me, there won't be any stronger, at least they have to be much stronger!"