Reborn as a Lizard: Evolve! Cultivate! Become a Dragon!

Brandon Drake came to his senses, only to find himself covered in some sort of slime.

Where am I? He questioned himself, before opening his eyes. There was no light, but it was warm and comfortable enough to not make him panic.

What is this place? Brandon was confused, and disoriented. Upon recalling the memories, he remembered what had happened before he closed his eyes. He was hit by a bullet. There was a mole. Why couldn't I realise it? He was disappointed in himself.

But the disappointment was soon replaced by ecstasy. After all, no man can survive a large-calibre sniper bullet to the skull. But there he was. Alive and… not breathing? He felt a sudden hunger for air.

What the hell?! He stretched his hands to escape from here in mild panic. His palms felt the smooth walls confining him, in this narrow prison. It felt like a thin, crusty wall. What is this place? Who brought me here? Brandon felt a sense of irritation and uneasiness in his heart for no reason.

Could he have been caught by the anti-government armed forces?

I can not stay in this place for a long time! He thought to himself, trying to limit the panic. After calming himself down, he listened attentively for a while. He was sure of no movement present around. There should be no one watching here.

First I should get out of here. Brandon pushed the crusty walls, and suddenly it felt like he was much weaker than previously. His hands felt different but he couldn't realise what was different about them.

There was something growing behind his butt. It was as flexible as his arm, but it was so dark that it was hard to tell. When he pushed the walls intensely, that extension behind his glutes also pushed it as if it was a reflex.

After a while, cracks appeared on the smooth wall. Obviously, this smooth material was not very strong. The cracks grew more, creating a bore in the wall. The liquid slowly flowed out through the hole, and Brandon's entire body came out, stretching the fenestrum. He ended up on the ground, covered in transparent goo, and gasping for air.

As the fatigue and disorientation faded, his perception picked that his body was completely healed, but his strength was much weaker. Despite the relief, doubts came to mind again.

He quickly looked left and right, up and down, out of habit of checking surroundings, and suddenly froze.

The sun is shining brightly all around, and there are vines hanging on giant trees above him. This is not a base for insurgents. This is simply a dense forest.

If it's not a base for rebels then I might be able to find some help here. He tried shouting,’Is there anyone there?’, but when he did, he made a sharp and strange sound. Only then did Brandon begin to pay attention to his own strangeness. He looked at himself, starting with his hands, both left and right, and even with his courage, he almost fainted. He was actually covered in scales. The green sheen of thick scales on the outer surface ended where thin, yellow scales began on the boundaries of the inner surface.

There was a muscular tail behind his butt. What is this? He was uncertain, but what he was certain of is that he definitely was not human anymore.

Suddenly there was a clicking sound all around him, and he suddenly came back to his senses. He turned around and saw that there were extremely huge oval-shaped giant eggs everywhere, and creatures similar to himself were emerging from the eggs.

This… this is actually a lizard, a huge lizard!

Upon observing it, Its flexible and bulging eyes looked left and right in opposite directions at the same time, then lowered its head and ate its own eggshell.

By watching this, a strong urge to mimic the act grew in Brandon. The stimulation just now had induced a great hunger inside his yellow stomach.

Looking at his eggshell next to him, the appetite only grew stronger. When the amniotic smell of his shell and membrane called for his bite, he couldn't restrain himself. I don’t care about anything anymore.

He crawled over and bit the eggshell furiously. His drool-covered tongue broke the chunks of calcium shell against his palate, devouring every piece of it.

It reminded him of his past missions where he even had to eat earthworms and locusts, not to mention eggs along with eggshells.

As Brandon was still eating, a little lizard burped and slowly crawled away. Looking at it, he realized that every lizard coming out of those eggs are his siblings. He smiled at this humour of fate.

Brandon was an orphan of war. He was raised by an unknown monk who taught him martial arts for self-defence. At the age of eight, he was practising the Golden Bell Jar and the Eighteen Arhat Fist.

The Golden Bell is one of the four great skills of Shaolin. Legend has it that it was created by Zen Master Bodhidharma, the founder of Shaolin Temple. It is said that from ancient times to the present, only Bodhidharma, a peerless wizard, has practiced it to the twelfth level and achieved the indestructible body of Vajra.

But after Bodhidharma, no one has been able to reach to that level of acquired qi and achieve innate power. Even masters of Shaolin can wander up to five levels at most, and the cultivation speed is extremely slow. Gradually, fewer people paid attention to this magical skill, and its renowned status faded in dusty books of Shaolin. Nowadays it is considered by outsiders to be a third-rate skill.

Although the golden bell that Brandon practised at that time was already at the fourth level, it could only block blades and melee weapons. But it couldn't prevent the large-calibre sniper bullet that he was hit with.

I don’t know if I can still practise the Golden Bell Jar now. His mind comforted itself. The law of saṃsāra has been kind to me. It not only gave me a chance to be a human being, but also gave me a new life… even if it is the life of a lizard.

Brandon's flexible eyes moved around a few times, checking the surrounding environment. The trees above him seemed too huge compared to himself, and he understood that this was because he was too small.

For the weak, he knew it was very dangerous to stay still for long. But he didn't know where to go, so he followed behind his siblings in a direction, behind them.

He walked nearly 100 metres, and when he caught up to them, they had already occupied all the ready-made holes around him, but this was not a problem for Brandon. He chose a slightly higher slope and began to dig with his three fingered claws. Ten minutes later, his small burrow on the slope was ready. He pushed the walls over and over again to solidify them. Then he came back with a branch broken from a tree by wind.

After covering up the footprints outside, he put the branch on the entrance of the cave to camouflage. He knew the importance of camouflage as he was famous as ‘the silent hunter’ in his regiment.

Brandon tidied up the cave a little and couldn't wait to plan his next step.

There was an anxiety in his heart about this new life. He still felt regret for his own death. After rebirth, even as a lizard, his mental power was preserved.

On the floor of his cave, he lay on the padded dust, his spirit calmed down, and he began to fall into silence.

With his eyes closed, he could perceive deeper parts of his body. Through this internal vision, he discovered that although lizards and humans have great individual differences, their basic structures are similar. Except for some branch lines, the main veins are the same. After all, lizards, like humans, are four-limbed vertebrates. There should be no problem in practising. Brandon began to pay attention to his dantian, perceiving the original breath in his dantian.

After half an hour, a weak warm current slowly rose from his dantian. Brandon felt excited, but he did not dare to relax at all. He carefully guided this weak air to flow towards the tail, passed through the tail, and then to the hind limbs.

Suddenly he found that there was a trace of an unknown energy in the hind limbs that was compatible with the internal qi. Brandon was a little confused, but after the fusion of internal qi with the unknown qi, the internal qi was actually a little stronger. He seemed more excited as the speed of his cultivation had increased significantly.

There was also a trace of this unknown qi through veins of his forelimbs. Brandon didn't think much about it, it shouldn't be anything bad anyway. Then he passed the original breath through the head and returned to the Dantian!

The internal strength had obviously grown stronger. Maybe it was a coincidence, maybe it was a mistake.

As a martial arts method, the Golden Bell Glove itself used earth elemental qi. Through the circulation of internal qi in the body, the practitioner's body would slowly absorb the surrounding earth-elemental qi. This would slowly transform the practitioner's physical body through the muscles and veins, giving it powerful strength and defence capabilities.

However, due to the cultivation method of normal people with their palms facing upward, it was too slow for those who practise it to absorb the earth qi. It greatly slowed down the cultivation speed. As a result, the Golden Bell Glove had slowly retreated from a top-notch skill to a second- or third-rate skill, which was really regrettable.

But now when Brandon practised it, the palms of his hands and soles of his feet touched the ground, which greatly increased the amount of earth qi he absorbed during practice.

I have to say that this is a blessing in disguise.

After 9 cycles of qi circulation, he felt his Dantian bulging. Strangely, with each cycle, he could draw a trace of cool internal energy from his limbs. After nine cycles, the internal energy, which was initially almost imperceptible, had grown to the thickness of a hair.

He slowly opened his eyes, unable to conceal the ecstasy in his heart. His muscles were full of strength and vigour.

I am probably the first lizard in the world with internal qi. Brandon thought as he shook his head, feeling proud. But the growling sound of his belly obviously won over his prideful pose at that time.

Brandon shook his head, stretched out his forelimbs, and looked at his sharp claws. He walked slowly to the entrance of the cave, used his claws to push aside the branches covering the entrance of the cave, and was ready to start his first hunt. Brandon, who was still very confident in the cave, became cautious as soon as he came out of the cave. He scanned around with his flexible eyes and crept toward the surrounding grass.

After observation, he came to realisation that the environment there was like a tropical rainforest, with many ferocious animals.

Suddenly there was an unknown sound in the grass, and Brandon tensed up. After looking around for a while, Brandon's keen eyes finally saw an unknown creature crawling out of the grass. It turned out to be a dung beetle.

Brandon’s mouth began to secrete saliva unconsciously, but his small arms and legs are not enough for him to eat it in one bite. Brandon glared at the dung beetle hatefully and turned his head away with scorn.

At that time, he discovered that there was a caterpillar next to him, happily gnawing on the leaves. Looking at the fat and green body, Brandon couldn't bear it anymore. He contracted his strong tendons, darted away, and stretched out his tongue perfectly. Before the caterpillar could react, it was rolled into his stomach with a whooshing sound. Although he felt nauseated for a while, he finally endured it. Damn instinct!

After a while, Brandon effortlessly found a few more cabbage caterpillars and swallowed them. He burped, and it smelled like green vegetables! He felt a bout of nausea.

After Brandon finished hunting, he carefully ran back to the cave and covered the cave with branches.

He felt safe in the cave, but there was always a sense of fear and anxiety when he was outside. He laid down in the cave and rolled around, patting his belly. It felt good to be full. After an hour, Brandon began his training again.

For cultivating Golden Bell, external skills were also very important along with internal cultivation. The golden bell was a martial art that was both external and internal. It was the most important skill among the seventy-two hard martial art skills. Its training method was very complicated.

When you first start practising, you need to use a hammer, to hit it back and forth all over your body. At first, you would feel a lot of pain. After a long time of training, you would gradually feel no pain.

Due to environmental restrictions, Brandon couldn't find anything to use at all, so he had to use his own tail instead, and began to whip himself. Wherever his tail could not hit, he would slap it with his limbs or hit the wall. After struggling for an hour, he was finally too tired to move.

He tried his best to get down on all fours, focused on his Dantian, and began to practise the golden bell. A stream of hair-thick Qi slowly flowed through the tendons, and part of it nourished the damaged body through the tendons, slowly strengthening it.

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