Yong Lu stood up from his seat and looked out the window of the wooden shack. In fact, he's not on the ground, this is a building he, the previous Lu, built on a large tree. This is a good place for hiding and only a few cultivators and beasts roam around, hidden in the lush leaves, it's hidden.
The previous one needed a bit of effort to climb and go down, but the current Lu didn't have this issue. He took on his origin form as he walked out the door. Although he didn't have most of a frogs ability, this form still makes it subtly easier to climb and jump, and he did just that – jump!
Of course, not to the ground, he is fifty metres above ground, a qi refiner will definitely get hurt. He jumped simply from one large branch to another until he was on the ground.
"Long hair is such a hassle, alas, when in Rome, do as romans to. Even in human form, the poison dart frog is still so colourful, obviously he is trying to scream 'I AM POISONOUS!'… in the human world, I will only look like a special cultivator at most…"
He straightened his robe and jumped forward. Every of his steps pushed him ten metres forward and he was quickly out of the forest. On the way, he only saw some beasts, but none approached him when they felt his aura.
Although his hair was flashy and long, it had the thickest aura of himself. He was sure that if he cut a bit off of it, he could probably sell it as a talisman to avoid beasts. Naturally he wouldn't do such a thing – wouldn't that just reveal his identity right away?
When he was about to leave the forest, he fully became a human again, without a speck of beast aura around himself at all. He didn't pay much attention to this and approached the nearest city.
Ten kilometres outside the city was the cities' patrol range, and just a hundred metres away from it, was a small village.
Mortals are necessary in the world, regardless of beast or humans, even though their purposes are different. Humans especially like having many and support the reproduction of mortals, this in turn brought many issues.
No human dared set foot in beast territory, most didn't even leave the range of cities and towns spread all around, but a few had to do so to gain more space to live and spread, so a few human communities had to live outside the save range, and this village was part of this group.
Although it's only a 'few' humans, in fact, this is only because the cities and the near surroundings are packed with mortals. If one only looked at the number of villages, then there were many villages outside the range, but this can never exceed 10% of the total local population.
Once it does, beast tides aren't far away, so it's become an iron clad rule to not allow mortals outside the safe range to reproduce crazily, usually these villages were packed with old and sick who are left behind or specially send away from the inner villages.
In one of these villages, there was the black market of this region. Every city had one such, a few affluent towns would also grow black markets, but most of them didn't dare house too many robbery cultivators, so they would actively eliminate them, unlike the approach of cities, who turn a blind eye as long as they get a piece of the pie.
Yong Lu knew of this market from his memories. Being in close proximity to the forest, there were particularly many rogue cultivators, generally rogue cultivators gathered around places with dangers and opportunities. For them, this was their only chance to properly gain a foothold in the world of cultivation.
The young were still able to join sects properly, anyone else had to be talented in any way possible to finance themselves outside of sects. The strong still had the possibility of becoming a guest elder of any force, but this is often rejected by the strong. After all, they usually have the ability of opening a sect or family on their own, and even if that wasn't the case, guest elders' treatment varies, and one might live better in the mountains than in yards.
Yong Lu himself only entered once with a fake identity and looked around before leaving again.
Thinking for a moment, Yong Lu entered the village and went into an empty house. The black market's entrance was near this, but he had to prepare something beforehand.
He took out a few jade vials. They were simple vials that were similar to modern ones, only a bit more rigid and with a jade cap. These were vials that usually contain potion made through water alchemy. Unlike fire alchemy that is most widely practices by humans, water alchemy is often used by beast.
Beasts have a stronger digestive system and they don't need to follow all steps in alchemy, especially removing impurities, but alchemy also has it's wonders in enhancing the effects of spiritual elixirs.
So, in fact, water alchemy is a way for beasts to mix properties of different elixirs and create a greater effect. The entire waiting step can majorly be skipped since it's purpose is to slowly remove the impurities.
Calling it water alchemy makes it sound somewhat too human, the water alchemy known widely originates from the beast tribe in the first place, the wine-making skills of ape beasts is a type of water alchemy. The modern water alchemy was remade by humans to be more compatible for humans, which added a great disadvantage.
The only advantage fire alchemy holds over water alchemy is that takes quicker in effect, while water alchemy lasts longer. There are numerous stories of pills becoming ineffective after only a few years, even high-end pills can't be stored for more than a few hundred years, while even the lowest water alchemy start with a storage date of ten years, stronger ones have no expiration date, since only immortals would be able to live long enough to know it.
Yong Lu took these out for a simple reason. He separated the ten vials into six, four and two, for a total of twelve vials.
After transforming, Lu focused his spiritual power into his fingertips and rubbing it a bit caused a few sprinkles of purple colour to fall town. These purple spots on his face were only a visual mark, but the fingertips had poison glands and this rubbing simply let go of a little.