Jiangshan Fengwuzhi

Chapter 244 Shekou
After a long while, Gu Jingnian finally shifted his gaze from the ocean of leeches and asked Shen Jichi, "Did you deliberately bring us here?"

Shen Jichi did not answer immediately.

If he admits that he accidentally wandered into this place, he will lose face and be looked down upon by everyone. But if he says it was intentional, Gu Jingnian will think that he brought them here for ulterior motives, which will affect everyone's cooperation.

He then avoided the topic and said calmly, "I'm afraid the people of this realm have noticed our arrival. Let's go back."

Having said that, he flew back to the river he had come from.

Yan Da muttered, "I told you, running around is dangerous."

By the time everyone returned to the river, it was just getting dark, and nothing could be seen on the murky surface.

"This is bad," Shen Jichi said. "We need a very large mirror to leave."

"Looking for a lake?"

"Look downstream..."

Shen Jichi was speaking when suddenly a snake head darted over and swallowed him whole.

This snake had an even larger head; it was an eight-headed viper.

In the Central Plains, it's difficult to even raise a six-headed serpent, but here, an eight-headed serpent appears with ease.

Gu Jingnian was talking face-to-face with Shen Jichi when he smelled a fishy stench that quickly drifted away, and immediately unleashed a fireball.

"save him!"

Yingyao and Yanda also attacked with fire, burning the leech so much that it kept writhing and struggling, but it never opened its mouth.

Just as Gu Jingnian was wondering if Shen Jichi would die, a figure reappeared in the sky.

Shen Jichi had lost his previous composure and looked somewhat disheveled.

Then, the snake's head opened its mouth wide and roared.

A bronze mirror shot out of its mouth.

It turns out that Shen Jichi always carried a mirror with him, which he used to project his image.

That mirror is too small; it can transmit a person's image, but it cannot project an image into a passage.

Just as he was about to pick up the mirror that had fallen to the ground, a snake's head bit it to pieces.

"go!"

They tried to escape and flew upwards, but a powerful force from afar pulled them towards it.

Eight gaping maws opened wide, creating gusts of wind that caused them to fly lower and lower, while other leeches kept reaching out to bite, trying to swallow them.

"Kill it!"

Gu Jingnian stopped running away.

He realized that running away would only drain his strength until he was exhausted, so he might as well set them on fire; the bigger the fire, the higher his chances of winning.

The flames surged down upon the leeches below once more. This time, instead of fleeing, they relentlessly set fire to everything flammable, including the leeches' own bodies.

The piercing screams, accompanied by the smell of roasted meat, echoed through the night.

Gu Jingnian suddenly recalled the scene when Lu Yanning described the changes in the western suburbs.

What he experienced tonight was even more horrifying.

The eight giant serpents were being burned by the raging fire, but the other six and seven serpents did not flee; instead, they circled around it to protect it.

Their method of protection was direct and brutal: they wrapped their bodies around the eight-headed serpent to extinguish the flames on its flesh.

The fire grew larger and larger, illuminating the world as if it were daytime.

The corpses on the ground were coiled up like dragons, resembling a scene from hell.

This was the first time Gu Jingnian and Ying Yao had gone all out since they obtained Ren Shuangfei's cultivation level, holding nothing back.

They sensed that their control over the flames was different from before.

The monsters that once terrified them have been burned to death countless times tonight, their ashes piled up into mountains.

The screeching sound was deafening.

"No! No!"

Gu Jingnian saw Shen Jichi gesturing to him, and it took him a while to understand what Shen Jichi was saying.

"Their reaction is wrong!"

"what?"

Gu Jingnian flew towards Shen Jichi and listened intently.

However, Shen Jichi was not in the direction he saw; it was as if his image had been projected elsewhere, and his voice came from the other side.

"Leech is afraid of fire, so why are they flying into the flame like moths to a flame... No, something's not right..."

"What did you say?" Gu Jingnian's ears were ringing. "Stop flying around."

Shen Jichi said, "I didn't fly, you're the one shaking."

Gu Jingnian squinted his eyes, which were stinging from the smoke, and realized that his vision had become blurry.

The next moment, he suddenly remembered something.

That was a sentence he had seen in the pharmacy of the madam.

—The male viper spits out a sap that has a foul and pungent smell, which kills all beasts.

Previously, he was poisoned to death without even smelling the saliva of a male leech, because he only encountered a few leeches with heads.

Now he is encountering eight-headed and seven-headed serpents that are close to male serpents.

There are wastelands and swamps here because leeches have turned the wastelands into swamps by spitting out large amounts of saliva. At this moment, the toxicity of the leech saliva continues to rise with the smoke, and they are gradually absorbing it.

"poisonous!"

Gu Jingnian and Shen Jichi shouted at the same time.

They discovered that the most terrifying aspect of the venom was not that it "kills instantly upon smelling," but that one was poisoned without even realizing it.

"go!"

"That way."

Gu Jingnian beckoned Yingyao to fly towards the wasteland.

However, he, Yingyao, and Shen Jichi flew in completely different directions. Due to the poison, their vision was blurred, as if they were drunk.

"Hu Jingnan, tie us up."

"Let me try."

A silk thread flew through the air and touched Gu Jingnian. He grabbed it and, as the thread tightened, finally brought everyone together.

Only then were they able to fly in the same direction.

It looks like it's heading towards a wasteland, where there are no swamps formed by snake fluids.

After a long time, they finally left the towering fire behind.

The faint moonlight shone down.

But Gu Jingnian and the others had already flown very high, and their minds were foggy, so they couldn't see whether it was a swamp or a wasteland below.

The toxicity started to take effect, and it became increasingly difficult to endure.

Before long, the moon disappeared into the clouds again, plunging the world into darkness.

Gu Jingnian flew forward in the darkness and suddenly bumped into something soft.

His vision was blurry, as if he had bumped into a strange beast.

The beast's skin was soft, moist, and sticky.

As the fire wings shone, Gu Jingnian saw a wall of flesh.

Immediately afterwards, the slime covered them, extinguishing his and Yingyao's fiery wings and pulling them into a wet "tunnel".

A sudden realization flashed through his dazed mind: they had flown into a snake's mouth and were now sliding into its belly.

This snake's mouth was even bigger than the mouth of an eight-headed serpent; it's unclear whether it had nine heads.

Another surge of saliva, like a tidal wave, rushed over them, its stench carrying poison, rendering them all unconscious...

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The moonlight shone on the wasteland, illuminating the black iron rocks that covered the entire wasteland.

Next to it is a glowing mountain.

If you look closely, you'll find that what appears to be a mountain is actually not a mountain, but a casting furnace as large as a mountain.

Hundreds of people worked around the clock, hammering the huge iron ring that had just been taken out of the furnace.

It was a pair of shackles; nine had already been cast, and the other eight were hanging on a large frame made of black iron.

Nearby, a giant was pushing the bellows with all his might.

This giant was none other than A Meng.

He was drenched in sweat from the fire and was about to exhaust himself. He barely managed to hold on until another giant came to take his place. He quickly shrank back to his normal human form, sat on the ground, picked up some dry rations, and ate.

suddenly.

"Look!"

Someone shouted and looked up at the sky.

Several words appeared in the sky, formed from the moonlight.

"A nine-headed serpent has appeared!"

"Prepare."

A Meng also stood up.

Although he was illiterate, he had been instructed long ago that the nine-headed male viper, which could only be raised once every eight hundred years, was about to appear in the world.

Once the nine-headed serpent appears, it must be captured immediately and its heart cut out.

Otherwise, if we let it grow any longer, we might not be able to deal with it, and then we'll have to seal off the entire realm.

Even so, there is a possibility that the male viper could break through the boundary and wreak havoc on the Central Plains, or escape to the barbarian seas.

The master said it was a matter of utmost importance.

Therefore, once a nine-headed male snake appears, it must be captured with all our might.

As soon as A Meng stood still, a person with an expressionless face appeared in front of him, holding a huge fruit platter filled with fresh red fruit.

The dignified voice of the smelting boy rang out.

"Everyone come and eat fruit, ten pieces each!"

Ameng was overjoyed. He took the fruit with both hands and ate it all in one go. As the warm current surged up, all his strength was restored.

Suddenly, a bright light appeared ahead, and a portal of light slowly opened. The smelting boy shouted again, "Prepare to cross the boundary!"

(End of this chapter)