Ye Qin was neither reckless nor relying on brute courage. According to his calculations, even if he couldn't defeat this hawk, protecting himself wouldn't be a problem. What? You still don't know? Hurry up and Google it.
Besides, since the two had already encountered each other, even if he turned and tried to flee, the hawk wouldn't let the delicious morsel in its grasp escape. He might as well strike first and seize the initiative.
If anyone had been here, they would have witnessed an extremely bizarre scene.
A snake had actually launched an attack on a hawk several times larger than itself. It was an utterly inconceivable sight.
Biologically speaking, snakes would never provoke their natural enemies. They would be more likely to go around them when they saw them, let alone challenge them when there was such a huge disparity in size.
And yet this scene had happened right before their eyes.
The hawk was highly agile as well. It dodged Ye Qin's attack, the scarlet forked tongue passing almost close enough to brush its feathers. It immediately twisted around and pecked at him.
However, Ye Qin was even faster, passing through the air like a ghost and leaving behind only a fleeting afterimage.
The black snake before it was probably the first snake in history to take the initiative to provoke and attack its natural enemy. The hawk was somewhat surprised and stunned, but those feelings were soon replaced by fury.
It flapped its wings and circled in midair, the air currents it stirred up lifting a few small fallen leaves from the ground.
The hawk's advantage lay in its wings, which allowed it to fly. It could seize a snake's vital point with its sharp talons and kill it, or carry the snake into the sky in its beak, then release it from high above and let it crash onto the hard ground.
Therefore, under no circumstances could he allow himself to be caught by its beak or hooked by its talons. Otherwise, escaping would be difficult.
His body had yet to reach the state of being impervious to blades and spears through the Contemplation Method.
Ye Qin understood this perfectly. His body transformed and twisted into countless shapes, yet he refused to give the hawk anywhere to sink its talons.
Each time, he barely slipped past those sharp claws and beak.
His gaze remained locked on the hawk, and he didn't dare relax for even a moment. The slightest carelessness might let those talons tear away a piece of flesh. Even if the wound wasn't fatal, it would still be excruciating.
His most urgent task was to find a way to deprive the hawk of its ability to fly. That would greatly weaken its combat strength.
For an ordinary-sized snake, this would have been utterly impossible. The hawk before him was simply far too large. But for Ye Qin, it wasn't a problem.
Unfortunately, the hawk's wings kept flapping and beating, giving him no opportunity.
But opportunities had to be created.
The only thing the hawk could rely on was brute force.
Ye Qin was different. Not only could he cultivate and possess powerful comprehension and intelligence—he also had a brain.
Looking at the rocks beside him, Ye Qin suddenly came up with a plan. He quickly twisted his body toward one of them, soon climbing onto its surface.
After entangling with Ye Qin for so long, the hawk's patience had long since run out. It couldn't understand how the little snake before it could be so troublesome. When it finally spotted an opening in Ye Qin's defenses,
it seized the opportunity and pecked down with all its might. But Ye Qin had already seen through its move and prepared his response. He rolled to the side and tumbled off the rock.
Seeing the large rock so close, the hawk had no time to pull back. Driven by inertia, it slammed into it.
A miserable bird cry rang out. The hawk's beak was instantly drenched in blood, which dripped onto its feathers, making it look wretched beyond measure.
Several fragments of its beak lay atop the rock, showing just how much force the hawk had used. If Ye Qin hadn't dodged, he would probably have been crippled even if he hadn't died.
Taking advantage of the hawk's pain, Ye Qin drove the tip of his tail hard into its eye.
Strike while it's down and finish it!
This was the cruel wilderness, not a place governed by morality or honor.
The eyes could be said to be the softest part, whether on a human or an animal.
The green tip of his tail was stained with bright-red blood, looking eerily demonic. Quite a lot of blood even splashed onto the rest of Ye Qin's charred-black scales.
The hawk cried out even more miserably and frantically beat its wings, trying to take flight. However, its vision had been affected, throwing its entire body off balance, and it simply couldn't launch properly.
It had only made it halfway into the air when its direction faltered and it crashed into a nearby tree, plummeting from the sky.
Ye Qin watched the hawk's miserable state. At that moment, his slit pupils revealed the cold-blooded mercilessness of a snake, making him look like a born hunter.
There was nothing wrong with what he had done. If he had been inferior in skill, he would have become food on another animal's plate.
That was the law of the jungle: the survival of the fittest.
He had suffered greatly at the hawk's hands before. With a little worse luck, he might already have been dead. Now he had reclaimed everything, principal and interest alike—a fitting cycle of cause and effect.
Ye Qin coiled around the hawk's body and tightened his grip bit by bit. Every muscle contracted and converged in one place, carrying the weight of a thousand jin.
Ye Qin still didn't know how great his strength was, but from the hawk's miserable appearance before him, he could glimpse a little of it.
He could even hear its bones creaking and clearly feel its flesh being squeezed like a balloon under constant pressure.
As it struggled, countless black feathers scattered all around. The hawk's voice grew hoarse, no longer carrying the vigor it had possessed before.
At first, the hawk had thrashed fiercely and tried to peck Ye Qin with its beak. Unfortunately, after smashing into the rock, its sharp beak had become blunt and could no longer pose any threat.
With one final, feeble cry, the hawk's pupils grew dim, and its head slowly drooped to the side.
Compared with the hawk's body, Ye Qin's snake body was still quite slender. It was almost completely covered by feathers, and by comparison looked like a hemp rope that might snap with a single tug.
Yet this very body contained astonishing strength, strangling to death a natural enemy several times larger than himself.
The former overlord of the skies had ultimately met such an end.
After who knew how long, the hawk finally stopped moving. Only then did Ye Qin slowly release his constricted body and collapse onto the ground, his snake body straight as a long pole.
Ye Qin gasped heavily, the frequency of his flickering tongue extremely rapid.
Hunting an animal whose size was disproportionate to his own consumed an enormous amount of energy. He was probably somewhat exhausted now.
It took Ye Qin a long while to recover.
The battle just now could be described as breathtaking.
Although he had schemed to make the hawk crash into the rock, which could be considered taking advantage of a trick, there was nothing wrong with that. A clever mind was part of one's strength as well.
At the same time, Ye Qin gained a deeper understanding of his own strength. After constantly cultivating the Contemplation Method, his abilities had grown much stronger.
Now, by using every ounce of his strength, he could strangle an adult hawk to death. However, there was a prerequisite: it had to lose a certain amount of mobility first.
If he wrapped himself around it while the hawk flew into the sky, the situation would instead become disadvantageous for him. He would be caught between going down and not going down.
If the hawk lost its ability to fly and fell, he would suffer the consequences along with it.
(End of Chapter)