The five-man squad raced through the thickening shadows in the heart of the Sunset Mountains like five arrows loosed from a bow. The air was so damp it felt as though you could wring water from it, filled with the earthy stink of rotting leaves and a strange, sickly-sweet scent that seemed to come from somewhere deeper in the forest. Tangled roots and a thick layer of humus covered the ground. Every step sank into it with a dull squelch that rang out all too clearly in the dead-silent woods. Their eyes stayed fixed ahead, following the intermittent bloodstains scattered across the ground like dark-red pearls—the life marks left by the Head Leopard, and signposts leading to wealth... or death.
The Head Leopard's blood had smeared across the broad leaves of giant ferns, congealed into dark scabs on exposed, pale roots, and left a broken trail across the slick moss. It was clearly badly wounded. Its pace had slowed, and the bloodstains it left behind were growing denser and fresher. The strong, rank scent of an apex predator was growing clearer too, stinging their nostrils.
"Close! The blood's still fresh!" Zhao Si whispered, excitement barely contained in his voice. He licked his cracked lips and tightened his grip on the oil-soaked rope net, his knuckles whitening with the effort. Li San and Wang Wu flanked the group like two silent wraiths, their sharp eyes sweeping the eerily quiet woods. Their hands never strayed from the weapons at their waists. Ye Yun followed just behind and to the side of Yan Xiao Liu, keeping a careful distance. His breathing remained steady and even, but his senses were stretched to their limits, catching every faint disturbance in the woods. It was too quiet. Even the chirping of insects and the calls of birds had vanished; all that remained was their heavy breathing and the crunch of their boots on dead leaves.
Yan Xiao Liu led the way, his expression grave. The blaze of profit that had kindled in his heart was now chilled by the gloom of this deathly silent forest, a darkness that seemed capable of swallowing everything. He gripped his knife without thinking. The leather wrapped around its handle was already soaked through with sweat.
At last, they pushed through a thicket of nearly man-high brambles, their branches studded with sharp thorns, and emerged into a small clearing.
At the center of the clearing stood an ancient tree of unimaginable size. Its trunk must have taken ten people to encircle. The bark was a deep, inky black, furrowed with age into deep grooves like the scales of a giant python and knotted with burls as large as bowls. Countless thick, python-like buttress roots clawed deep into the earth, rising in great ridges to form a natural barrier. Its dense canopy blotted out the sky, almost completely shutting out the daylight. Now, in the last glow of dusk, it looked even more like a haunted realm.
Beside one of the enormous, gnarled root burls, they found their target.
The leader of the Shadowless Leopards lay crouched on the ground. Its glossy black fur was smeared with mud and dark-red blood, leaving it in a wretched state. The wound on its lower back, where Yan Xiao Liu had struck it, was charred and torn open, deep enough to expose the bone. Dark-red muscle showed beneath, the wound pulling with every breath and making its massive body tremble. Its once-agile left hind leg dragged uselessly behind it; the bones or tendons had clearly been damaged. At the sound of their voices, it jerked its head up. Its once-arrogant, ferocious emerald eyes were now bloodshot, burning with bitter hatred and the despair of a beast with nowhere left to run. It stared at the five men emerging from the brambles, a low, hoarse, threatening growl rolling in its throat as it bared its blood-flecked fangs. The growl sounded more like the final, mournful cry of a cornered beast, weak but defiant.
"Haha! Fortune favors us! It can't run anymore!" Zhao Si's eyes blazed with greed, almost enough to spill over. He rushed forward impatiently and swung his arm, about to cast the sturdy, oil-soaked rope net in his hands. The net had been specially made to catch large beasts. Once it landed, even a demonic beast would struggle to escape.
"Wait!" Yan Xiao Liu hissed instinctively, his sense of foreboding surging to its peak. This place was too strange! The tree... the silence... and the fear in the Head Leopard's eyes—not just fear of them, but something deeper. There was something here! There had to be!
But it was too late!
The instant Zhao Si's arm reached its highest point, a sudden change struck!
From deep within the ancient tree's dense, ink-dark canopy came a rustling that made their scalps crawl! It wasn't the sound of wind stirring leaves, but the terrible scrape of some huge, heavy, sleek thing moving swiftly through the dense branches, rubbing and pressing against them as it slithered along!
Then a gigantic, unimaginable shadow tore through the dense foliage, a nightmare flung from the abyss of hell!
It was a snake!
A giant snake beyond all reason!
Its body was far thicker than a barrel, over a meter in diameter by their estimate! Its scales were not black as they might have expected, but a deep, heavy, ink-green that seemed to absorb all light. Each one was as large as an adult man's palm, its edges sharp and its surface gleaming with a cold, metallic sheen in the gloom, as though it were clad in armor from a forgotten age. Its huge body coiled and writhed around the trunk in layer upon layer. The part they could see alone stretched more than twenty meters! Its head was even more terrifyingly huge, shaped like an inverted triangle and hideously savage. Two enormous vertical pupils glowed a cold, cruel, utterly emotionless dark gold, like lanterns from the underworld! Its tongue flicked in and out, more than half a meter long, forked and scarlet. Each flick stirred up a foul wind, its stench so overpowering it nearly choked them—a mixture of rotting flesh, deadly poison, and the indescribable reek of death that clung to an apex predator.
The monstrous creature hadn't descended in silence. The cracks of branches breaking under its massive body, the rasp of its scales scraping against the bark, and the foul gale that swept over them as it appeared all proclaimed the arrival of absolute power!
"Mother of God—!!!"
The boundless fear on Zhao Si's face crushed his greed in an instant! His courage and strength seemed to drain away all at once. His knees buckled, and he collapsed to the ground with a thud, boneless as a puppet with its strings cut. The rope net slipped from his hands and rolled away. His face turned white as paper, his lips trembled, and an unintelligible "h-h-h" rattled in his throat. A dark wet patch spread rapidly across his crotch—he had wet himself on the spot!
"Hiss—roar—!"
The Shadowless Leopard, which had been baring its teeth and growling at the five men, let out a cry of pure terror the instant the giant snake appeared. Its powerful muscles tensed, and every black hair on its body stood on end like a steel needle! Instinct drove out everything else. It didn't even spare a thought for the enemies within arm's reach. Struggling to rise, it clawed frantically at the ground with its three remaining legs, desperate to flee the thing more terrifying than death! The pressure of those enormous vertical pupils struck a primal fear into its very blood, one it could never hope to resist!
But it was all too late.
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