It wasn't about strength or weakness; it was simply that the judgment process of the Technique of Slaughter couldn't proceed at all. The moment he struck his opponent, it was as if he had initiated a judgment himself, and his judgment was bound to be wrong. The process, which should have been completed in an instant, was instead forever stuck in the middle, unable to be released and unable to complete the judgment.

This time, the Sparrow Cat he encountered was a born contrarian, even more hateful than its ancestors. Hu Yuan decisively gave up, letting the Technique of Slaughter—which, once activated, had to hit its target—backlash and consume him. He allowed the backlash of his Technique of Slaughter to come crashing down, hitting him squarely.

Hu Yuan was beaten back to his original form, lying on the ground coughing up blood continuously. He struggled with difficulty to stand up, his whole body looked as if it were stained with fresh blood, yet he was still laughing, laughing madly. "I thought for a very, very long time—far too long—about what to do. I even used the Technique of Slaughter on myself once, inflicting serious injuries. Finally, hahaha..."

The first time he died, it was at the hands of his own Technique of Slaughter. The first time he encountered that situation, he was shocked, angry, and also a bit scared; he had dragged things out for too long. At that time, he thought he didn't have to choose or judge; he believed he could just kill them all together. He kept stacking power, kept delaying, until the might of the Technique of Slaughter, in that state, escalated to a point he could no longer control. And then, it backlashed forcefully. A single blow from the backlash killed him.

Precisely because he had died by his own hand, in a way that should never have occurred, it seemed something was amiss. Paradoxically, he gained an extra thread of life force and revived once again. Since then, he had inexplicably gained this new ability: he would always leave behind a thread of life force and would always revive.

And dying at the hands of a Cat-Headed Bird, whose strength wasn't even average among the mountain demons, became the greatest shame of his early life. So much so that later on, everyone knew he had died, but no one knew how he died the first time. He considered this matter the greatest secret and shame of his life. It even became his nightmare for a very, very long time, forcing him to continuously ponder what he should do if he ever encountered that Cat-Headed Bird demon again. It reached the point where, tormented by his inner demons, he went mad and actually used the Technique of Slaughter on himself, inflicting grievous injuries. Only after that did he finally step out of his stubborn fixation and begin to understand the issue a bit more clearly.

Why use the Technique of Slaughter? For such little demons, a slap could easily kill them. Why use a cleaver to kill a chicken, making things unpleasant for himself?

Later, he wandered the world, killing many demons with the form of a Cat-Headed Bird, including owls that looked quite similar, but he never encountered that peculiar Cat-Headed Bird again. After that, he didn't see a Cat-Headed Bird again for a very, very long time—so long that centuries passed without a sighting.

He had thought that such weak Cat-Headed Birds had gone extinct, only to encounter another one unexpectedly. Moreover, it was a Cat-Headed Bird with that peculiar power, once again subjecting him to backlash. Fortunately, this time he had experience and decisively bore the backlash without any hesitation. Fortunately, he had reconstituted his physical body and regained his former Divine Essence. This One-Hit Slaughter Technique couldn't kill him.

At this moment, every bone in his body felt as if it had been hammered. Countless wounds appeared all over, and his internal organs were all injured, yet he was still laughing wildly. The nightmare of his early life finally seemed to be resolved today. He had thought about it too much; understanding it intellectually was never as thorough as experiencing it firsthand. Being seriously injured on the spot didn't matter, because the long-buried and persistent shadow in his heart had also dissipated with this backlash.

Wen Yan reacted very quickly, but his speed was nowhere near Hu Yuan's sudden burst—so fast that Wen Yan didn't even have time to register it. By the time he turned around, he saw Hu Yuan flying backward, his body gushing blood. He was instantly beaten back to his original form. He looked utterly miserable, yet he lay there on the ground, laughing incessantly.

Wen Yan glanced at the Sparrow Cat. The Sparrow Cat wore an expression of pure horror and utter confusion. When Wen Yan looked towards the Sparrow Cat, the prompt that had never appeared before did so at this moment:

'True Sparrow Cat (Indeterminate Fusion).'

'An undetermined cat? Sparrow?... Cat? Sparrow? Sparrow Cat? Cat? Cat...'

These prompts gradually turned into gibberish. Even the gibberish disappeared after a while, and then the newly emerged prompts vanished as well.

Wen Yan looked bewilderedly at the seriously injured Hu Yuan in the distance, then back at the Sparrow Cat. The Natural Enemy Profession truly does not deceive me! Hu Yuan—who, after regaining his physical body and Divine Essence, had become so wildly arrogant and unstoppable that he could fell anyone with a single blow—had just been grievously injured by a slumbering Sparrow Cat. He had previously assumed the Sparrow Cat was too weak, so weak that it didn't even warrant a response from the Natural Enemy Profession. He hadn't expected that it might not solely be due to its weakness; perhaps part of the reason was that a prompt simply couldn't be generated for it.

"Quick, let's go! Even if that guy only has a single breath left, he can still kill you!" Lord Zhu gasped at this scene, dragging Wen Yan toward the grave.

Hu Yuan, beaten back to his original form, struggled to his feet. His fur retracted, and he stood up again, reverting to his human form. He looked somewhat disheveled and bloodied, with a lingering hint of tigerish features on his face, and a character gradually began to appear on his forehead. It resembled the character meaning 'great' or 'large', with an additional horizontal stroke beneath it.

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