"Move! Now!" Lin Lei snarled, his expression fierce as he barked out the order.
The others heard his urgent shout and didn't dare waste time asking what was going on. One by one, they bolted forward alongside Lin Lei at full speed.
"So many green snakes — what's going on?" Lin Lei's mind raced even as he sprinted. "Before, when we entered the gray mist zone, we didn't find a single green snake anywhere else. But here, there are suddenly so many! How do these snakes hide and blend into the green leaves? How do they produce absolutely no energy fluctuations?"
God-tier experts could use techniques like the Earth Movement Technique or the Fire Body Technique to transform their bodies into energy. But such transformations would inevitably cause energy fluctuations — they couldn't achieve the kind of silent, undetectable concealment these green snakes managed. You wouldn't sense a thing even standing right next to them.
Lin Lei felt that something was deeply wrong with this situation.
But right now, there was no time to think it through carefully.
"We should be far enough out — those green snakes shouldn't be chasing us anymore," Bei Bei transmitted through his soul.
"Keep going. Faster," Lin Lei said without a moment's hesitation.
Just as Lin Lei's group of four was fleeing, suddenly —
"Whoosh!" "Whoosh!" "Whoosh!" …
In an instant, dozens of green blurs shot into the air. Nearly all of them came from the sides and behind; only a scant three green blurs shot in from the front. The green snakes moved with terrifying speed — like green light arrows, they pierced through the air in the blink of an eye. There were far too many!
Lin Lei and the others' faces changed dramatically.
"Buzz~~~" The Black Stone Space suddenly expanded.
From a diameter of five meters, it ballooned to fifteen.
The green snakes that pierced into the Black Stone Space had their speed drastically reduced. But they still hurtled toward Lin Lei and the other four. Strangely enough, not a single one of those dozens of green snakes attacked Bei Bei — they targeted only Lin Lei, Blong, and Wallitt. Each of the three was beset by nearly ten snakes at once.
Lin Lei's gaze turned cold. "Hiss-hiss~~~" as earthen walls instantly formed around them.
"Crack!" The green snakes sliced straight through the walls with ease.
The Remnant Shadow Divine Sword in Lin Lei's hand transformed into a tempest in an instant, sending countless sword shadows slashing at the snakes in succession. Having fought the green snakes before, Lin Lei knew — to kill them, you had to shatter their heads completely. But the snakes were far too agile, their heads far too small; striking and destroying the head was incredibly difficult.
Each green snake's speed was significantly hampered within the Black Stone Space.
"Hiss-hiss~~" Countless sword shadows swept through the snakes like a meat grinder, shredding them in an instant.
Within the Black Stone Space, the green snakes' speed was limited, but that was only relative — after all, their original speed was absurd. Even across a distance of less than ten meters, they still fought to punch through Lin Lei's sword shadow barrage. In one instant, of the nine snakes that lunged at Lin Lei, six had their heads shattered and dropped to the ground.
The remaining three snakes, though wounded, still plunged toward Lin Lei.
"Whoosh!" Lin Lei's dragon tail flicked out, directly crushing two of the snakes.
The last green snake — the very moment it sank its fangs into Lin Lei — was slapped to death with a single blow.
"Those two…" Lin Lei turned to look.
The purple-haired young man, Blong, was handling the snakes with surprising ease now that their speed was restricted. Blong first used that strange, otherworldly long sword to cut down five green snakes, then his body suddenly erupted with an aura of lightning mist that spread outward like clouds.
The already slowed-down green snakes entered the lightning mist and had their speed reduced even further.
Blong naturally dispatched the remaining snakes with ease.
"Wallitt…" Lin Lei's brow furrowed.
Wallitt, a practitioner of the Death Laws, had dealt with some of the snakes too. But one green snake had bitten through Wallitt's hand and slithered inside his body.
"Is he going to be okay?" Bei Bei and Blong both looked over.
Wallitt stood motionless in place.
After a moment —
"Everyone, I'm fine. Let's keep moving," Wallitt said with a smile, though his face was somewhat pale.
"What was it like, having that green snake inside your body?" Bei Bei asked.
Wallitt nodded. "After that green snake entered my body, I panicked immediately and attacked it with everything I had — divine power and soul power together!" Lin Lei chuckled to himself; if a green snake had entered his own body, he probably would have panicked and thrown every tool in his arsenal at it as well.
"But who would have guessed… the green snake transformed into a streak of green energy and shot toward my mind at incredible speed. However… under my soul power attacks, it kept weakening. I had to push myself to the brink to finally destroy that green energy completely!" Wallitt said, still shaken by the experience.
Lin Lei nodded to himself.
"Under soul power attacks, the green snake kept weakening!" He was beginning to understand — the "green energy" that made up the snakes was probably something akin to soul power.
"All right, everyone needs to be even more careful now!" Lin Lei said. "What I can do to help you is only so much. Whether you make it out alive is up to you." He had been keeping the Black Stone Space active the whole time, and its presence significantly lessened the pressure on Blong and Wallitt.
Otherwise, in a situation like just now, the two of them would already be dead.
"Lin Lei, thank you," Wallitt and Blong both said, still grateful — after all, Lin Lei could easily have abandoned them at any point.
"Let's keep moving," Lin Lei said.
Some time after Lin Lei left the spot, a burly man with short brown hair appeared there all at once, his gaze cold and deep as the abyssal sea. He examined the area carefully for a moment.
"So many green snakes…" The burly man's eyes gradually brightened. "So many years have passed, I'd almost forgotten what time feels like. The day has finally come!" The burly man trembled with excitement, then scrutinized his surroundings. Sensing the energy fluctuations ahead, he immediately gave chase.
Lin Lei never could have imagined that having just survived an assault by a massive swarm of green snakes, after moving forward for only a short while, he would be attacked by yet another. And this time, the scale of the swarm was noticeably larger than the last — a full hundred or more green snakes.
And just like before —
The green snakes did not attack Bei Bei. They attacked only Lin Lei, Wallitt, and the purple-haired young man, Blong.
"Hiss-hiss~~"
A massive swarm of green snakes descended on Lin Lei from the air, absolutely frenzied.
"Boss!" Bei Bei darted over to help Lin Lei.
"These snakes have lost their minds!" Lin Lei's Remnant Shadow Divine Sword shifted and transformed. In one heartbeat, countless illusory shadows erupted before Lin Lei; the green snakes that came under the sword's sweep were all ground to pulp. Of the nearly fifty snakes, only a single one managed to break through the Remnant Shadow Divine Sword's barrier.