Chapter 30: Symbiotic Demon Beast
Chapter 30: Chapter 30: Symbiotic Demon Beast
The Snake King’s corpse lay sprawled on the mudflats of the Dark River, ice crystals flaking off from between its cyan scales with a soft rustle.
Yin Jiu’s withered, hook-like fingers peeled off the Snake Shedding. Three Red Centipedes writhed excitedly at his cuff. "The Snake Shedding is mine, and I’ll take thirty percent of the meat." A sweet, coppery Blood Qi wafted from the mouth of his Pottery Jar, the scraping of centipede legs against its inner walls creating a metallic clang.
Liu Fengchun’s Snake-Head Staff hammered into the snake’s corpse. CRACK! The sound of breaking bone pierced the mist. The staff’s jade-green tip flicked out a walnut-sized, green-veined poison sac. "I’ll be taking the poison sac, and forty percent of the meat." His withered palm caressed the cracks in the bone as a wheeze like a bellows escaped his throat.
Chen Moyang’s Array Disc silver needle jabbed at the snake’s spine. "The Snake Bone can be inscribed with an Array Pattern and refined into an Array Hub." His Profound Iron Knife danced like a butterfly, carving out a Cyan Jade Snake Vertebra. Dark blue fluid remained in the vertebral foramen.
Lu Zhao’s Water-Splitting Needle sliced open the snake’s belly. Inside, blackish-green roots as thick as a man’s thigh were coiled like living things.
His fingertips brushed over them, and the severed roots emitted a fresh, herbal scent. "The roots are mine. The rest is for you to divide." He flicked out ten Spirit Stones, which traced arcs of light in the gloom. "If you feel this is unfair, let the Spirit Stones make up the difference."
"Mr. Lu is a straightforward man!" Liu Fengchun cackled, dipping his Snake-Head Staff in blood and drawing a cross on the ground. "If we encounter another Snake King, we’ll divide it this way!"
A foul wind carrying the stench of rust swept through the Dark River tributary. Chen Moyang’s Array Disc hummed, guiding them as his Cyan Jade Silver Needle pointed toward the Xun Position, the gate of death.
SWISH!
Liu Fengchun’s Snake-Head Staff shot out, and a flash of green light pierced the eyes of a snake in a rock crevice. Before any foul blood could splash, the Red Centipedes from Yin Jiu’s sleeve had already burrowed into the snakes’ skulls to suck out the marrow. In an instant, seven non-Entry Tier Ink-Scale Snakes were left as shriveled as paper.
Lu Zhao made a gesture with his fingers, and three Ice Cones formed a triangular blockade. His Water-Splitting Needle drew upon the Dark River’s vapor, and with a CRACKLE, it froze the snake swarm’s escape route. The Ice Mouse Puppet pounced, tearing and biting, as Ice Burst Runes bloomed like frost flowers on the snakes’ bodies. The team advanced over the snake corpses as if treading an icy path.
The South Cliff Cave suddenly opened up before them. Chen Moyang abruptly clutched his violently trembling Array Disc. "The Water Scorpion Nest is empty!"
Bowl-sized claw marks remained on the rock walls, and the ground was littered with fragments of bronze-colored carapaces.
The Demon Beast corpse that had once guarded the cave entrance was gone without a trace. Only half a scorpion tail remained, plunged deep into a rock fissure, its poisonous stinger as dull as rusted iron. The flesh at the breaking point was dissolved, oozing a blue-green slime.
"An Iron Armor Scorpion Swarm..." The holes of Yin Jiu’s mask seemed to shrink. "Over thirty Tier One Lower Grade specimens. Their tail stingers can corrode through iron armor." His withered finger pointed to the jagged teeth marks on the edge of a carapace fragment. "They were torn apart alive."
A chill climbed up the four’s spines. Whatever could slaughter an entire swarm of scorpions was likely far more ferocious than the Snake King they had just faced!
Just as the group hesitated, wondering whether to enter, Lu Zhao said, "I’ll send my Puppet in to take a look. We can decide what to do after that."
’A Puppet to scout the path.’ Lu Zhao formed a hand seal and tapped the spot between his eyebrows. A thread of his Divine Sense entered the Mouse Puppet’s compound eyes, and a deep blue field of vision suddenly unfolded.
The stench of rotting flesh, wrapped in the sweet fragrance of the Cyan Vine, rushed into his perception. The cave walls were covered in a viscous carpet of fungi, and scorpion carapace fragments were embedded in the rock, like pieces of shattered bronze Armor.
A trail of slime, over two feet wide, was dragged across the ground. The foul, bloody stench had condensed into frost-like crystals.
SKREEE... CRUNCH...
The mouse-paws crushed half a scorpion pincer. A faint blue Ice Mist spontaneously formed to protect the Puppet’s body. It rounded a narrow pass and entered a wide-open cavern. After it had traveled a bit further, it saw:
A massive pile of Snake Sheddings! Old and new skins overlapped like scales. The bottom layers had hardened, while the newest layer was still wet with slime, wrapped around the undigested remains of scorpion pincers. In the center of the pile, a section of Bronze Ancient Vine was coiled like a python, its surface caked with resin-like scabs of blood.
The perspective shifted upward—
Thousands of Crystal Stalactites hung from the ceiling. From three broken ones, Cyan Marrow dripped. The liquid hit the ground with a SIZZLE and instantly sprouted finger-length crystal clusters! Amidst these clusters, the veins of a young Cyan Vine pulsed like blood vessels. Its roots were entangled with three severed vine stalks and a half-rotten Snake Bone.
HISS!
A sound of something slicing through the air shattered the dead silence! Before the vision spun and went dark, the last thing it saw was a black shadow flitting through a crevice: a scarlet, forked tongue, sharp as a blade, and scales reflecting a ghostly green light like Ghost Fire.
Lu Zhao’s eyes snapped open, the bone-chilling cold from the Mouse Puppet’s destruction still lingering in his palm. "There’s a pile of Snake Sheddings inside. A young Cyan Vine’s stalk is bleeding and scabbed over, and its roots are wrapped around a snake corpse."
’My Puppet was destroyed by a Snake King. Our Divine Sense can only penetrate a few dozen feet into this cave. We’ll have to go inside and see for ourselves.’
Hearing Lu Zhao’s report, the others all grew solemn, tightening their grips on their Magical Artifacts.
As the group passed through the narrow passage into the open space, they were all tense upon first entering the cave. At that moment, Lu Zhao swept the area with his Divine Sense.
He bent down and picked up a bowl-sized snake scale from a crack in the floor. Its blue-black edge was serrated, and the inside was stained with blue-green scorpion blood. "A Snake King fought here." His fingertip tapped a pockmark on the scale. "Scorpion venom corroded this spot, but it didn’t penetrate."
Yin Jiu kicked aside half a scorpion pincer, the flesh at the break melted like wax. "It’s snake venom! The Ink-Scale Snake’s venom melted the Iron Armor Scorpion." Inside his Pottery Jar, the Red Centipedes suddenly thrashed against the walls, their antennae scorched black and curled.
Chen Moyang dabbed at the slime on the rock wall. "It’s Wood Poison! That Cyan Vine is secreting a toxin!"
Lu Zhao’s Water-Splitting Needle suddenly stabbed into a patch of grass at the cave’s edge. An Ice Blade flicked up, revealing a large pool of black, foul blood and a drag mark on the ground as wide as a small vat.
"Two Snake Kings fought to the death here." A cold glint flashed in his eyes. "The victor got the new shoots and severed roots... and devoured everything the loser had!"
After the group walked for a while longer, their vision pierced through the cyan mist, revealing a hair-raising sight in the depths of the cavern—
The Cyan Vine came into full view: its main stalk was as thick as a thigh, its body split by a spiderweb of bloody scabs. Seven secondary vines, each as thick as a bowl, bulged like veins as they plunged deep into the abdominal cavity of a dead Snake King on the ceiling!
The Snake King’s waist was nearly two feet thick, yet it had been bound by the vines into a blackish-green cocoon of flesh. Where the vines had parasitized it, its scales were peeled back and festering, revealing writhing, blood-red rootlets beneath the skin.
With every contraction of the rootlets, amber-colored Demon Blood oozed from the gaps in the Snake King’s scales and was transported along the vines toward a flower bud at the top.
The most horrifying part was the millstone-sized flower bud: its covering was translucent like a fetal membrane, revealing a coiled, serpentine embryo within. With each pulse of the embryo, it expelled a thick cyan mist. When the mist touched the stalactites, the stone marrow actually transformed into a flowing, Cyan Jade-colored liquid!
KLAK, KLAK.
Two ghastly green lanterns lit up in the depths of the cave.
A fifty-foot Snake King slowly slithered out of the shadows: its body was wrapped in vines, but from the neck up, it radiated pure ferocity. Three bone spurs grew from its forehead in a triangular pattern. The central spur was inlaid with cyan patterns, and its light pulsed in sync with the embryo inside the Demon Vine. Its vertical, amber pupils were frozen like an Ice Lake.
Seeing this, Liu Fengchun, the eldest of the four, seemed to recall something.
"This is bad! The beast has formed a symbiosis with the Cyan Vine!" he shouted, rapidly retreating.
Seeing this, the other three didn’t care about appearances and also shot backward in retreat.
Only after they had all retreated several dozen yards and exited the cave did they finally stop.
"Don’t worry, that Snake King won’t leave the range of the Cyan Vine’s roots," said Liu Fengchun.
Hearing this, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
"Elder Liu, what does it mean for the Cyan Vine and the Snake King to be in symbiosis?"
Lu Zhao asked. Hearing his question, the other two also turned to look at Liu Fengchun, their own curiosity obvious.