Huang Niuniu was the first to act.
She whipped out Pale Spine, the contraption tying around the width of the Redgrass Beak Viper boss in a second. The spines extended to grapple onto the beast’s scales.
“Niu’er—” Yu Han wanted to yell at her audacity but soon grasped her intentions.
Huang Niuniu threw the whip handle at Fei Rui.
“Fei Rui, drag the snake away from Fang Zhao,” Yu Han yelled with all his might.
The same moment Fei Rui pinched the whip handle with his oversized pincers, the giant Redgrass Beak Viper pounced. It opened its beak and sprang towards the prone form of Fang Zhao.
Fei Rui pulled, and the Redgrass Beak Viper was yanked out of its path. Its head crashed onto the stone platform beside Fang Zhao rather than gobbling the boy up in one go.
Fang Zhao, on the other hand, was still in a trance.
“Eighty-eight. Ninety. Seventy,” Fang Zhao screamed. “Ninety-four! You will NOT take my True Qi, accursed ring!” He was perched on the same stone slab, the large waves caused by the giant beast crashing onto the pool doing nothing to topple him from his position. His skin showed cracks, and blood dripped from his closed eyes.
He pulled out another Lantern, swallowing it down.
His white skin healed in moments, a bluish-green glow permeating the flesh underneath the cracks. Moments later, blood burst forth from his shoulders and neck. He ate another. And another.
The water around him roiled, as if the whirling was a spiral with Fang Zhao at the centre. The branches of the pool in the surrounding area dropped in height.
Was he absorbing all that in real time? Yu Han held the halberd tight.
An ear-shattering roar shook the cenote as Fei Rui heaved, further pulling the giant Redgrass Beak Viper away from Fang Zhao.
The snake wouldn’t go without a fight though. Its eyes were now fully locked onto the crab. It hissed, then pecked lightning-fast with its beak.
「Get away, bad snake!」 Fei Rui responded with a heavy hammer-like blow from his claw.
Beak met shell, and a shattering sound of glass echoed through the cenote.
「Ouch!」 Fei Rui let go of the whip and punched the snake on its side. It threw the ten-, fifteen-ish-metre body of the primal away from the humans.
As the two bosses fought and moved away, the tiny grunts slithered and flew towards the humans with menacing hisses and squawks.
The three of them used the Elite Grade Protective Talismans.
“They’re swarming,” Li Yao gulped, the swords in his hands flashing silver with each strike.
He cleaved the wing of a Viper Hawk and punctured the brain of a Beak Viper. Three more snakes snapped at his boots, but Li Yao moved away.
Huang Niuniu’s Lotus Razor hit the three Beak Vipers like hot knives through butter. Then she severed two aiming for Fang Zhao.
Wow, Yu Han took a defensive stance, chopping and swatting away the monsters that tried to get to the pool. He was the final line of defense.
Mountain Root Stance!
He focused fully on defending. If needed, he could jump into the pool too. But the strong currents of the whirlpool were more than enough to keep the monsters at bay for now.
He let his sense of smell and taste fall, augmenting his sense of sight. His perception grew stranger, a throbbing ached in his head. He focused on his sense of touch. Then sound. His nose drew blank, but the world seemed to become more vibrant.
More movement of the vipers and hawks in his periphery was captured. He struck with his halberd with precision. Each cleave and slash and hook bringing down more and more.
“Keep clearing them out!” Yu Han said. “Their numbers are going down.”
“Holy hells Tubs,” Li Yao said. “You’re moving like a beast!”
“Han’er is strong!” Huang Niuniu’s voice had a chipper note.
Yu Han tasted blood. He let the augmentation to touch fall away, focusing on sound and sight. Soon, he’d have to select on of them.
That was fine. Level 1s and 2s were hardly a problem. These Redgrass Beak Vipers were Common Species. Perhaps the giant one had a higher Refined or Profound grade bloodline, but Yu Han, Huang Niuniu, and Li Yao were more than enough to take care of the riffraff.
Fei Rui would handle the boss.
But not alone! Yu Han dragged the halberd low to the ground. With one swipe, the dagger axe pierced through two Redgrass Beak Vipers.
A Redgrass Viper Hawk slashed at him with its talon from behind.
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The protective talisman’s effect ended. Should he use another one?
No, let’s tank for now. I only have one left.
Yu Han swatted it away with the halberd stick, then spun his weapon around and finished it off with Stone Cutting Chop, the heavy halberd blade squashing the bird like roadkill.
“Seventy, fifty, forty, argh!”
Fang Zhao wasn’t looking well. He was shouting his True Qi numbers more in a trance than consciously now. As the blood-red water of the pool was converted with Cyclic Lifeblood Conversion, it was as if his flesh and bones were breaking apart in real time.
He kept shoving down lanterns like they were candies. His body would heal, then break down again. Yet even with the shouting and the pain, he kept a hold of the Calm Before the Storm Breathing Technique.
How many Lanterns did he eat? Eighty? Ninety?
For a while, it looked like Fang Zhao was eating one a second. His body looked like a mangled mess. Not one piece of skin was intact. They looked like rags stitched onto his body. Blood and gore constantly oozed out of rapidly healing gaps. Half his eyelids were gone, and the sclera that peeked out had gone fully red.
He took out a vial. Healing Potion of the Blue Waved Waters!
He downed it, glass and all. His teeth crunched the shards, and blood spluttered from his mouth. His tattered skin healed faster than it broke down, a bright blue glow radiating from him like a giant torch. Glass shards gouged out from the exposed flesh of his cheeks and was expelled like shrapnel.
“Seventy-three, ninety-four! Eighty-eight! Ninety-one!”
The levels of the blood-red pool water near Fang Zhao grew higher, while throughout the cenote the water levels lowered.
The pool was shallow in some places and deep in others—up to ten metres—but even there the water was gone. The pool bed was just a layer of bones and shards held together with layers of meat-coloured paste and long roots of unknown plants.
“I-I hate birds and snakes,” Huang Niuniu said hoarsely. How long had it been? An hour? Two?
Yu Han thrust the halberd through the last Viper Hawk in the area and took a mortal-grade blood-replenishing pill.
His head was hurting, no longer able to augment any senses.
His lifeforce slowly ticked up. These blood-replenishing pills could swiftly regenerate lifeforce, but the more they took, the worse the effects. Their bodies would also accumulate impurities. And after a few hours of taking too many of these pills, the lifeforce regenerated by them would tick down.
The body would naturally purify these impurities over the coming days and weeks, so it wasn’t permanent.
It was worth it if he could save on a protective talisman.
“A-Are we done?” Huang Niuniu plopped down, Lotus Razor still spread out to its full length. The whip blade was covered in blood and gore.
How many did she kill?
Li Yao also staggered, leaning against a speleothem for support. “Don’t see any more in the area.”
“Fifty. Sixty. Thirty.” Fang Zhao groaned. He downed the second Healing Potion of the Blue Waved Waters.
Did he already consume all the Lanterns?
“We’re not done yet,” Yu Han dragged his tired body towards where the behemoths fought. “Keep an eye on Fang Zhao.”
“I’ll go with you,” Huang Niuniu said.
“No buts,” she wouldn’t take no for an answer.
They walked deeper into the cenote cavern where the sounds of fighting still echoed.
「Don’t bite me, you stinky snake,」 Fei Rui’s childish voice hammered in Yu Han’s ears. 「Take this, and that. Now take this!」
The giant Redgrass Beak Viper was coiled around the crab, trying to strangle the crustacean. Fei Rui held on, legs planted into the ground like pikes. With one pincer, he held the bird-head of the primal to the stone floor. With the other, he pounded on the beast like hammering a watermelon open.
The Redgrass Beak Viper constricted harder, its snaking body coiling around Fei Rui’s crustacean parts.
“Fei Rui,” Yu Han shouted. “Create some distance!”
「I can do that!」 Fei Rui kept holding down the Beak Viper with his bigger pincer. With the other, he untangled the snake from around his body like untying a rope. His spikes and legs retracted into his body where the snake was coiled too tightly.
「Snakey baddie, stay there!」 After getting out from the noodley mess, Fei Rui gave the snake’s skull a few more hammering blows. He then extended all eight of his legs against the ground, jumping away like a spring.
The Redgrass Beak Viper wasn’t down, but the blows to the head must have given it a concussion. It opened its mouth in the general direction of Fei Rui and spurted out a stream of red liquid. Wherever it touched, the stone sizzled.
So it has an acid breath? Yu Han took out an Elite Grade Stone Arrow Talisman. He ripped its edge where marked and threw it towards the snake’s head. The talisman glowed, dissolving into ash in less than a breath. The light coalesced into a stone arrow and flew towards the Redgrass Beak Viper’s head.
The beast must have noticed the attack and tried to shift its battered body away. But it was too late.
The stone arrow hit the feathery part of the beast’s head. Blood and gore splattered, and scales flew off.
The snake hissed loud enough to shake the cenote.
“What a waste of money,” Yu Han cursed, taking out another talisman. Huang Niuniu did the same.
Fei Rui re-engaged before the boss could dive towards Yu Han and Huang Niuniu. It would clobber its head, then spring away. Yu Han and Huang Niuniu would fire off their talismans then.
After a total of six stone arrows, the viper’s head was barely attached to its body. Its long body twitched from time to time. Fei Rui crept near, and with one well-placed snip with his bigger claw, separated the Redgrass Beak Viper’s body from its head.
「Level 10, now level 0. Sucks to be a snake.」 Fei Rui said. 「I think it was trying to break past its tribulation like me. That’s why it was weakened. It failed. Poor dead snake.」
“So we got lucky,” Yu Han sighed. Each Elite Grade Stone Arrow Talisman apparently had the force of a spiritual art cast by a level 11 cultivator. It took six to severely injure the primal, even with Fei Rui’s DPS and tanking.
They trudged through the cenote cavern back to where Li Yao guarded Fang Zhao.
The water from most of the pool had already drained, revealing unknown quantities of beast bones and mangled flesh. The identity of the roots was clear now. They were a massive network directly nourishing the Lesser Nurturing Bloodferns that grew deeper in the cavern.
“What is that?” Huang Niuniu gasped.
Fang Zhao was nowhere to be seen. In his place, there was a glob of three-metre-tall blood-red water. Murky, swirling. Murmurs of numbers came from inside. The little blood-red water that remained in the pool swirled upward to feed this glob.
“What happened?” Yu Han asked.
“He took all the Rot-Negating Body Tempering Elixirs,” Li Yao shook his head. “Like a junkie. Is he still alive? He won’t turn into some monster, right? Heard overconsumption of pills and elixirs can even push cultivators to the demonic path.”
“We’ll just have to trust in him,” Yu Han said.
All they could do was wait. Gather their energy. And hope for the best.
Hours passed. It had already been over twelve hours since they arrived at the cenote.
From time to time, Redgrass Beak Vipers and Viper Hawks would return from the outside world. The primals would turn tail and run, while the monsters would attack.
“Ninety-nine. One-hundred. One-hundred and nine.” Fang Zhao’s voice came. He’d arrived at one-hundred and nine True Qi dozens of times by now. Yu Han estimated that the boy had already refined and lost a few hundred thousand True Qi by now.
If he could’ve used it for normal cultivation, what level would he reach? After some calculations, probably around level 21 or 22.
The air stilled. The ball of water dried up into a red shell, which slowly cracked. The sounds reverberated like a skull shattering.
A pristine hand pushed out.
“I win, filthy ring,” Fang Zhao’s voice echoed. The shell fully collapsed, revealing what was within.
“I-Is that you, Red-eyes?” Li Yao gasped.
Yu Han hurriedly covered Huang Niuniu’s eyes. She didn’t protest, her face heated up.
The man that appeared—naked without a single strip of cloth on his body—was fundamentally different from the previous Fang Zhao.