Jiangshan Fengwuzhi

Chapter 21: Snake Heart (I)

With a dull thud, Gu Jingnian fell among the cracks in the rocks under the cliff. He was covered in wounds and did not move for a long time.

Countless leeches ran past him, so densely packed were they.

The fire burned for a long time until the next afternoon, when Wanchun Palace was gradually burned to ashes, and tens of thousands of people lost their lives overnight.

The flames did not stop, burning down the forest and finally driving the remaining leeches into the valley.

This is a triangular rift valley with towering cliffs on both sides. There is no other way out. The steep slope leading to Wanchun Mountain is already the gentlest.

The wildfire in the distance dried the blood on Gu Jingnian's body. The blood scabs made his skin a little itchy, and he finally woke up from his coma.

"Cough cough cough..."

The smoke was choking, filled with a strong smell of burning and a hint of barbecue.

The sky was grey and the scene was chaotic. Countless ashes were falling from above, like snow and fog, but much more dangerous than snow and fog.

Gu Jingnian suddenly felt like he was back in his childhood.

At that time, he was still living in a prisoner-of-war camp. Thousands of people, known as the remnants of the Yue Kingdom, broke into the Rui army camp and burned the world to ashes. He was hit on the back by a fireball. The burning and stinging sensation is still fresh in his memory, and the scars on his back have never disappeared.

It was this incident that aroused his natural fear of fire.

The heat wave from Wanchun Mountain came, and Gu Jingnian subconsciously walked into the valley.

He was already hungry and tired. As his strength faded, his wounds healed more and more slowly. He was also worried about being attacked by leeches and actually dying here.

But in that gray vision, he saw a strange phenomenon.

Perhaps out of fear of fire, the small leeches began to gather around the big leech, allowing it to suck their flesh and blood.

When Gu Jingnian approached them, few leeches attacked him again. After all, they already had too much flesh and blood for them to feast on. He was now just a small piece of fly meat, and what they seemed to urgently need right now was a powerful host.

"Oh!"

With a loud bang, a mass of sticky blood and flesh splattered on Gu Jingnian.

Just a moment ago, he saw the three-headed viper sucking the blood of more than ten of its own kind, and its body kept growing until it was too big for the host to drag. It also tried to transfuse blood to make the host stronger, but this rough way of growth was not something a mortal body could withstand, and it finally exploded.

Seeing this, Gu Jingnian deeply understood why Master Ma said "raising vipers with leeches". The situation before him was obviously not the growth way of male vipers, but was caused by human intervention.

Liu Ziyan's light words "good stuff" resulted in more and more hosts turning into a pool of flesh and blood.

There was also a three-headed viper that fed on its own kind and grew into a four-headed viper. However, it soon encountered a larger four-headed viper in front of it. When the two four-headed vipers with huge differences in size met, the smaller one quickly lost its momentum, crawled on the ground, and was quickly sucked dry until only a dry skin was left.

The larger four-headed snake continued to grow. When its body was coiled together, it was as big as a house. When it was spread out, it looked like a towering tree, and it seemed that it was about to grow another head.

Unfortunately, in the end, there was still a "bang" and its host exploded. Its huge body fell down, swung wildly, let out a shrill roar, raised countless dust, gradually calmed down, and was sucked dry.

The forest was still burning, and the heat was scorching. Gu Jingnian continued to move forward and saw the five-headed viper.

It grew on the body of a giant, who was two or three times taller than an ordinary person, with sparse hair, facial features as if they were cut by a knife or an axe, and strange and stiff skin, like pieces of bark... It was almost certain that this was also an alien from Yi Hai.

Five viper heads emerged from the giant's belly and bit the surrounding vipers, as if a god had opened his five fingers and slammed down.

Even Gu Jingnian felt the danger. He guessed that if he was chewed to pieces by these five vipers, it would be unlikely for him to heal on his own.

At this time, he saw Huang Hu again.

The yellow tiger had become stronger, and the four-headed vipers on his body had grown twice as long as last night. He was fighting with another four-headed viper, but was at a slight disadvantage and had one of its blade corners bitten off.

The five giant vipers also saw the two of them and urged the giants to come over here.

Realizing that they would eventually become nothing more than food, the four-headed viper that was fighting with the yellow tiger let out a sad cry, lost the will to fight, and was immediately bitten by the yellow tiger and sucked clean.

When the five giant vipers arrived, Huang Hu was not willing to become food like the other weak vipers and leeches, but turned and left.

Gu Jingnian then realized that these monsters actually had their own personalities.

He walked as close to the edge of the cliff as possible, looking for a place to climb up, and gradually walked into the deepest and narrowest part of the valley.

Suddenly, sand and stones fell on his head. He looked up and saw a flash of light on the top of the cliff. They were the silver-armored guards.

I guess those people are preparing to take the heart of the six-headed viper.

No, Gu Jingnian turned his eyes again and found that the sand and stones falling on his head did not come from the top of the cliff, but from a small tree growing obliquely on the cliff more than 20 steps above. The tree was swaying slightly, and a small figure was hidden in the tree canopy.

For a moment he thought it was a giant squirrel, but he immediately recognized it as Master Ma.

Gu Jingnian took off his tattered armor and climbed up.

Master Ma finally found a comfortable position and squatted on the tree trunk. When he lowered his head, he saw Gu Jingnian climbing up. He picked up a bamboo tube and put it in his mouth, wanting to spit out the smoke. However, he did not have many bamboo tubes left as they would be needed to snatch the snake heart. It would be a waste to use them on this undead ghost.

He could only stare with his small eyes, watching Gu Jingnian crawling closer and closer, hesitating whether to kick him down.

After staring for a while, Master Ma finally reached out his hand. "Mr. Gu, please sit down. It's comfortable here, and the view is good... I'm not lying to you. You will see the six-headed viper soon. The viper refiner will be here soon. You can ask him anything you want to know."

If it were Lu Yanning, Pei Nian and others, seeing this unforgivable person who killed tens of thousands of people overnight, they would definitely want to cut him into pieces to punish evil and promote good. However, Gu Jingnian did not have such a strong sense of right and wrong. He had been treated as a medicine by others all his life, and seeing others treat others as medicine was just a habit.

The two of them squeezed together and sat on the small tree trunk. Gu Jingnian asked, "How do you plan to get the heart of the snake? How do you plan to leave?"

"Just take it one step at a time."

Master Ma was afraid that Gu Jingnian would not believe him, so he added, "It is precisely because we have no plan that the old man's arrangement was disrupted. You see, they are panicking now. They are worried that they will not be able to get the snake out, or that they will not have time to take out the heart."

Gu Jingnian looked in the direction Master Ma pointed, and saw several extremely tall figures suddenly falling from the high cliff.

Master Ma said, "It's too late to add more materials now. If we fail again this time, we can only build another Wanchun Palace and employ another 10,000 people."

"What do you mean by too late to take the heart?"

"It is better to eat the snake heart right after it is harvested. Just like food that has been stored for a long time, it will no longer be as fresh."

"The old fellow you are talking about is Liu Heng."

"I haven't seen it either. I can only say that I learned about Wanchun Palace in Liu's mansion. The young master must have seen it too. He is very good at using strange people for his own benefit. Even caged people are afraid of him. I don't know the rest."

"How does he control the aliens?"

"Who are you running around for, young master? Without the protection of the Gu family, no matter how capable you are, how can you survive in this vast land of Zhongzhou, all alone and without any strength?"

After saying this, Master Ma realized that he had said something wrong, laughed dryly, pointed at the Viper Tide in the valley, and said, "Look, it's gradually becoming clear. Who do you think will be the Viper?"

The scene in front of him was definitely not pleasing to the eye, with the snakes' bodies entangled, making one's scalp tingle, but the size difference between the big snake and the small snake was becoming more and more obvious.

From a distance, the big one looks like a hill, and the small one looks like just trees on the hill.

"In my opinion, that giant might be able to produce a snake." Master Ma raised his hand and pointed, "What do you think, sir?"

Gu Jingnian didn't want to take part in this discussion, but when he turned his eyes, he saw the yellow tiger in the valley roaring in pain. It had grown a fifth snake head. It was already a huge monster, but compared to the giant, it was still a dwarf.

"Oh!"

A fireball fell from the top of the cliff and landed in the valley, still burning fiercely, and the burning leeches let out terrifying screams.

As if he was afraid that Gu Jingnian would not understand, Master Ma pointed to the forest in the distance that was still on fire and said, "When the fire is out, they will stop killing each other and will turn around to look for a way out. Setting the fire now is to force them to come out as soon as possible."

Sure enough, as the fireballs continued to fall, the leeches began to go crazy again. More and more five-headed vipers lost their hosts and fell to the ground wailing. The rest rushed to the big viper that was living in the giant, allowing it to suck them.

It grew bigger and bigger, almost filling up half of the valley, until the snake's head suddenly tilted back and almost reached the top of the cliff.

It was obvious that the silver-armored guards standing on the cliff were frightened, and one of them couldn't help but shoot an arrow.

Behemoth, this is a real behemoth.

Master Ma stood up excitedly, his eyes shining, and he kept saying, "It is it, it is it, it is coming out, why is it not coming out yet?"

He was eager for the leech to break away from its host and grow its own body and heart.

suddenly.

The giant viper twisted its body and let out an angry roar.

Before the yellow tiger surrendered, the five vipers bit the giant viper. The giant viper immediately turned around and charged at it. The horns of its blades pierced the yellow tiger and crashed it into the cliff.

For a moment, it seemed as if the mountains were collapsing and the earth was splitting apart.

Master Ma cried out in surprise, and the tree trunk under his feet was broken by his step, and he and Gu Jingnian fell down immediately.

Seeing that they were no match for the giant snake, the five vipers living in the yellow tiger fled away immediately, quickly biting a few small vipers and sucking them to restore their strength.

In its fear, it didn't care whether the meat was big or small, and it grabbed Gu Jingnian who was near its mouth.

"Pfft, pfft."

Two huge teeth pierced into Gu Jingnian's body and sucked his blood.

Gu Jingnian pulled out the dagger and slashed it hard. The snake felt pain and raised its head, throwing him away.

The next moment, the giant viper arrived and bit the yellow tiger.

Gu Jingnian fell to the ground, feeling weak all over. In just a short moment, too much blood had been sucked away from him. His head was dizzy and he wished he could faint immediately.

However, just as his eyelids were about to close, he vaguely saw a strange scene.

Huang Hu seemed to turn his head and look at him.

(End of this chapter)