Another morning dawned.
Today was once again the day Dragon-Raising Temple cast down Evil Remains.
Perhaps opening the Snake Abyss two days ago had caused the Evil Qi to diminish, or perhaps they meant to reward the Spiritual Serpents. This time, not only had the quality and quantity of the Evil Remains increased considerably,
but ordinary meat had been mixed in as well.
Pork, mutton, beef... Though this meat contained far less energy than the Evil Remains, it had still whetted Su Qingqiu's appetite.
There was simply too little of it, so he had no choice but to chew slowly. For a boa, that was genuinely rather difficult.
Perhaps he was evolving into a True Dragon. Over the past few days, Su Qingqiu had felt teeth beginning to grow in—not many, just three or five.
Generally speaking, neither cultivators nor spirit beasts ate ordinary grains. It wasn't that human food tasted bad, but that it didn't fill you up.
Spirit materials imbued with spiritual energy were what they loved.
Take Su Qingqiu, for example. Eating ten oxen couldn't fill him as well as devouring one Giant Rat demon, though the latter certainly tasted worse.
After the Vajra Sutra circulated a few times, the ordinary meat had been completely digested.
After swallowing a few more pieces of Evil Remains, Su Qingqiu filled his storage space too. Only then, satisfied, did he leave the leftovers for the other Spiritual Serpents.
If he didn't leave the First Layer Serpent Pit Abyss, even meeting his daily food needs would be a major problem. The other Spiritual Serpents would starve to death for sure.
San Sha had recently run out of food to hide away.
Devouring the Evil Remains this time hadn't yielded anything particularly good either, only some basic pills and a few Human Race spells activated with Daoism Cultivation and magical power.
Things like the Exorcism Talisman, Golden Light Mantra, and Body Refining Technique...
Some of the pills had been mixed into the Evil Remains as a reward for the three silly boas. It made the three fools wonder if their aptitude had improved lately.
Human Race spells were useless to Su Qingqiu, but he still committed them carefully to memory, recording them in his Evil Bones diary.
He could reward the senior monks and young nuns at Dragon-Raising Temple with them in the future.
Name: Su Qingqiu Spiritual Light: 9470 strands Physical Fitness: 167.3 Physical Defense: 199.9 Basic Data: Body Length 14.1 meters, Weight 8400 jin Overall Evaluation: 1999
Since his last molt, he had trained for some time, and every aspect of his physique had improved.
His strength had surged, and his defense was only a little short of reaching the 200 mark.
His overall evaluation was closing in on two thousand.
Absurdly powerful.
With this level of physical fitness, even without using his divine abilities, a sixth-rank cultivator would have to kneel!
But at this level, making any further progress had become incredibly difficult. Even with the might of Protecting the Residence, it would be hard to advance without spending dozens of times more effort.
So, on an auspicious day, Su Qingqiu summoned all his Spiritual Light and broke through the seal in an instant.
A little over seven months after reincarnating into the Great Profound Realm, he had transformed from a spirit into a boa. Today, he officially entered the Second Layer Serpent Pit Abyss!
Three days later
In a partially collapsed tunnel in the Second Layer Serpent Pit Abyss,
Su Qingqiu whipped his tail around, pounding the surrounding rock walls furiously. Only after the tunnel behind him had been completely blocked did he finally breathe a sigh of relief.
"That was close. I nearly got surrounded by evil spirits!"
Su Qingqiu still felt shaken.
Only after entering the Second Layer Serpent Pit Abyss did he realize how vast it was, almost like an underground world.
The Dragon Bone still ran through the earth, but unlike in the first layer, countless strips of red, ribbon-like matter spread out from the central Dragon Bone.
These ribbon-like strands then pierced through the surrounding rock walls, branching out from the Dragon Bone into countless tunnels of all sizes.
The tunnels were unfathomably deep and crisscrossed in a tangled web. Some were a full hundred meters in diameter, while others were only a few dozen centimeters across.
In three days, Su Qingqiu had explored only a tiny corner of this vast cavern world.
Yet even that small corner was packed with Evil Remains, including no shortage of dangerous, reawakened evil spirits.
The Evil Remains here couldn't compare to those on the first layer. Most had endured the corrosive pollution of Evil Qi for a long time, growing stronger with age. Combined with the influence of the Dragon Bone, they had undergone unimaginable changes.
But the Spiritual Serpents living here, including the evil boas that had fallen into demonic corruption, were few and far between. In all these days, Su Qingqiu had seen only one from afar.
It was a monstrous beast over thirty meters long. Even at a distance, its bloodline had made him shudder. Perhaps he could challenge it with the Crimson Fire Horn, but with physical strength alone, it was impossible.
Most importantly, it was an evil boa that had fallen completely to demonic corruption. The Spiritual Light on its body was filthy, ominous, and savage.
Daring not to approach, Su Qingqiu watched, shaken, as the giant boa slipped into a huge tunnel and disappeared.
Today, he had been lucky enough to obtain a piece of Evil Remains. But after he used his Spiritual Light to suppress it, countless evil spirits had swarmed to attack him.
Su Qingqiu had no choice but to devour the Evil Remains, then flee for his life all the way here. He had nearly dropped from exhaustion.
The Evil Remains had belonged to a half-destroyed ox demon. It had no head, only half its body, which had remained intact after death.
Its ability was exceedingly strange. A casual bellow could turn anything nearby into cattle or sheep.
It was practically the legendary art of turning people into livestock.
Su Qingqiu had also put in a great deal of effort before he managed to suppress the ox demon's remains.
At that moment
Hiding in a sealed cave, Su Qingqiu began to digest the Evil Remains.
[Exorcism and Blessing in progress...]
Images appeared one after another.
Three hundred and sixty years ago, in Zhaoyang Country
Drought had struck once more. Ten years of drought had left the Dahuangluo Land in Zhaoyang Country with almost no harvest. The disaster back then had been even worse than the one now.
Corpses littered the land, and famine raged without end. Ordinary people had eaten even the bark off trees and the roots in the fields. Then, defying the court's ban, some commoners slaughtered oxen for meat, killing the goose that laid the golden eggs just to survive the drought.
In the end, after countless hard-working, long-suffering oxen had been slaughtered, their resentment soared to the heavens. It mingled with the world's five turbid evils, and an unprecedentedly terrifying ox demon was born.
That was how the ox demon gained its divine ability. If humans wanted to eat oxen, then it would turn every human into cattle and sheep.
After the ox demon took shape, the number of livestock in the Dahuangluo region surged. At the same time, however, the number of missing people grew rapidly.
But this failed to alert the court of the time. The high officials assumed the refugees had all died of hunger, and toasted one another in celebration that no refugees had risen up in rebellion.
In the end, it was the eminent monks of Dragon-Raising Temple who discovered something amiss. After secretly investigating, they took a full two years to track down the ox demon and bring it to justice.
After its tendons had been pulled out and its skin flayed, the ox demon's remains were thrown straight into the Snake Abyss.
During the two years the ox demon had wreaked havoc, the population of the Dahuangluo region had dropped by a full fifth. Afterward, people discovered that several great cities had been abandoned, with only herds of cattle and sheep wandering aimlessly through them.
Su Qingqiu seemed to have obtained information about this from some other Evil Remains, too.
The incident had caused quite a stir at the time. The Zhaoyang Emperor had been furious and had even dealt with thousands of officials who had occupied their posts while doing nothing.
It was later called the Ox Demon Tragedy.
"Hmm? The ox demon's memories say it was thrown into the First Layer Serpent Pit Abyss... so how did it end up on the second layer?"
Evil spirits didn't truly die. Even after becoming remains, they still retained memories of what had happened around them.
Some Evil Remains could even reawaken as time passed.
"Wait... that's not right... back then, this place was the first layer of the Snake Abyss!"
"Could it be that the previous layer of the Snake Abyss was built later?"
Su Qingqiu's eyes suddenly widened.
In that instant, he seemed to have uncovered the most closely guarded secret hidden within Dragon-Raising Temple.
Dragon-Raising Temple had secretly built a new Snake Abyss!
Why?
Before you continue