Protecting the Residence, Exorcism and Blessing

Three days later

Inside a small cave on the first level of Snake Abyss.

Bang, bang, bang~

The sound of whipping echoed from within the cave from time to time.

Su Qingqiu was training his tail.

By now, barely any of the medicinal pill's power remained, so the results of his training naturally fell far short of what they had been before.

Fortunately, he possessed the Protecting the Residence divine ability. Though each session brought only a negligible increase, a nine-story tower rose from heaps of earth; with long days and months of training, he had still made tremendous progress.

It was just like a proficiency panel in a game. As long as you dared to train, I dared to add numbers to the panel!

"Though the consumption is a little too high."

After swallowing his last stored beast bone, Su Qingqiu let out a helpless sigh.

He was out of food!

He had to go out and find something to eat.

He definitely did not want to leave. Guardian Snakes were rather homebound, and he was even more so.

Moreover, Snake Abyss was incomparably dangerous, filled with all kinds of strange things, demonic and evil remains, and Spiritual Serpents that had been utterly polluted and lost control.

All of it could only be described as a hell on earth.

Of course, although Snake Abyss was dangerous, Su Qingqiu would not choose to flee from here for the time being.

First, the exit above Snake Abyss was guarded by Dragon-Raising Temple. It would be difficult to leave.

Second, after leaving this place, where was he supposed to find so many demonic, evil, and bizarre remains to devour? Hunt them himself? That would be courting death.

Third, the home bound to his Protecting the Residence divine ability was the first level of Snake Abyss. For now, he had not found a way to change his home's location.

Therefore, Dragon-Raising Temple's Snake Abyss was the best place for him to grow.

The dangers outside were no less than those in Dragon-Raising Temple's Snake Abyss. Plenty of evil cultivators wanted a bowl of Spiritual Serpent stew.

"Today should be the day Dragon-Raising Temple dumps demonic, evil, and bizarre remains. If I'm careful, there shouldn't be a problem."

With that thought, Su Qingqiu twisted his body and slipped out of his Serpent's Nest.

Su Qingqiu did not know just how large Snake Abyss was as a whole. But the first level of Snake Abyss was not very large, spanning roughly a dozen kilometers.

The farther down one went, the more vast the terrain became. And after Dragon-Raising Temple had dumped Spiritual Serpents and bizarre demonic remains into it for thousands of years, the Spiritual Serpents in Snake Abyss had become too numerous to count, while the entire abyss's landscape had undergone earth-shaking changes.

It was completely different from a thousand years ago.

"So that's the Dragon Bone?"

"If that was a snake, just how huge would it have been?"

Beyond the cave, Su Qingqiu could vaguely see an enormous Serpent Bone standing in the Central Area of Snake Abyss, wrapped in countless clouds of dense black mist. With his current strength, he could only make out its outline.

It was said that Snake Abyss had eighteen levels, pierced from top to bottom by an enormous serpent spine that plunged all the way into the depths of the earth. Back then, the Monks of Dragon-Raising Temple had stumbled upon this Serpent Bone by chance. They had been awestruck, believing it to be the legendary Heavenly Dragon Bone.

They had built their temple there, and thus Dragon-Raising Temple came to be.

Su Qingqiu had never gone near the Dragon Bone either. The closer one got to the area where the Dragon Bone stood, the stronger the Spiritual Serpents became, and the more bizarre evil remains there were. Thus, his predecessor had never dared venture deep inside.

Looking upward, all he saw was pitch-black darkness, with faint runes circulating within it. Dragon-Raising Temple had sealed the place off, making it impossible to see where Snake Abyss's surface exit lay.

After getting his bearings, he chose a concealed location, slid forward, and quietly advanced.

Not long after reaching his intended spot, he waited briefly before faint, strange cries drifted down from the sky, followed by piercing shrieks.

In the darkness, rune after rune emerged in the sky. Then countless chunks of flesh and bones glowing with black light fell from above.

There were human bones, beast blood, even things like tattered books and fragments of bloodstained clothing. All of them were bizarre demonic remains.

Some relatively intact pieces fell into the Central Area of the first level, while smaller fragments scattered like raindrops in every direction.

Bang!

After a heavy crash, something landed ten meters away from Su Qingqiu.

It was a rat.

However, this rat was rather large, as big as a calf. Its internal organs had already been hollowed out, leaving only its hide, head, and tail.

Yet even so, it had not completely died. Red light glowed in its eyes, and black qi poured from its body.

Several impatient Spiritual Serpents slithered toward it, only to be caught in the red glow of its eyes and instantly turned into a mangled puddle of flesh and blood.

That was not the end of it. The black qi around the rat flashed and swept the Spiritual Serpents' flesh into its mouth. Unfortunately, everything below its mouth was gone, including all its organs, so the flesh quickly fell back out.

But it had already been tainted with dense demonic evil qi.

"Hiss! Shouldn't this kind of relatively intact Evil Remains that refuse to stiffen in death be thrown into the deeper levels of Snake Abyss for disposal? Or tossed into the Dragon Bone's Central Area? Throwing it into the outer edge of the first level—are those bald idiots at Dragon-Raising Temple trying to wipe out all the Spiritual Serpents here?"

This thing was not something outer-level Spiritual Serpents like them could devour or deal with.

Su Qingqiu sucked in a cold breath. If he had hands and feet, he would have said they had already gone cold.

This damned thing was actually dead, but because of the residual demonic evil power within it, its fur and skull remained rigid after death. Its pollution was extremely severe. An ordinary Level 1 Spiritual Snake would go mad from the slightest contamination, perhaps even dissolve into blood and die.

The terror of demonic evil was plain to see.

Not daring to think further, Su Qingqiu turned and fled. But the Blood Demon Remains moved faster. Demonic evil power erupted in an instant, and under its indiscriminate assault, Su Qingqiu was swept straight into it.

Riiip!

It felt as if boiling water had been poured over him. A layer of black light immediately stained the scales on Su Qingqiu's body, followed by piercing pain that bored into his heart.

His head swam in waves, while whispers occasionally sounded in his mind, like the snickering laughter of rats.

Crackle, crackle

Countless rat bite marks appeared across his scales, as though countless transparent rats truly surrounded Su Qingqiu's body.

Pain that seeped into his marrow.

"Fuck!"

He could not stop himself from cursing, but with only a snake's mouth, all that came out were hisses.

The Spiritual Light within him instantly spread over his entire body, resisting the pollution of the demonic evil power. But with only four wisps of Spiritual Light, he could not hold on for long.

What should he do?

Could it be that he would die before accomplishing anything?

Faced with the rat's eruption of demonic evil power, Su Qingqiu had no way to resist.

Just then—

Whoosh!

A massive tail suddenly shot out from the depths of the darkness and lashed fiercely against the Dead Rat like a whip.

Countless rays of Spiritual Light burst from the tail. The demonic evil qi on the rat's hide was suppressed, then scattered, and the entire body split apart.

A rat head, more than half shattered, flew straight toward Su Qingqiu.

As the demonic evil power dispersed, Su Qingqiu's body relaxed, but the shock in his heart did not lessen in the slightest.

"How could there be a large Spiritual Serpent here?"

"By rights, something this huge shouldn't come to the outer areas of Snake Abyss!"

"No wonder a demonic evil carcass that refused to stiffen in death fell here."

Spiritual Light and demonic evil power attracted each other. That rat corpse that refused to stiffen in death must have followed this giant snake here.

Looking at the broken rat head before him, Su Qingqiu's eyes rolled. Following the principle of not wasting anything, he bit down on the rat's head, exerted all the strength in his body, and darted back into his Serpent's Nest within four or five seconds.

Time to run!

He used his tail to shove a massive stone over the Serpent's Nest entrance. Still not reassured, he slithered deeper inside, twisting and turning until he had gone several hundred meters into the rock wall before finally stopping.

After Su Qingqiu left, a Black Python over ten meters long suddenly appeared beside the rat's shattered corpse. Its body was covered in claw marks, and swollen pustules occasionally bulged across it. From time to time, a pustule burst, and eyes crawled out from within.

This was a giant python on the verge of being completely polluted by demonic evil power. The aura of fallen corruption around it was already extraordinarily severe. Its Spiritual Light was also desperately scarce.

Traces of pain flashed through the giant snake's eyes from time to time. It did not inspect the rat corpse closely enough to notice the missing head. It merely swept up most of the flesh and vanished into the darkness once more.

It came in a hurry and went in a hurry.

Back in the depths of the cave, Su Qingqiu also forced down his nausea. He covered the rat head—which still glared furiously, unwilling to die—with Spiritual Light, then swallowed it in one gulp.

This thing might rise as a corpse. Better swallow it first and ask questions later!

[Exorcism and Blessing activated...]

Scene after scene containing information from the outside world surfaced once again.