Dragon Raises Its Head

"You're pretty pleased with yourself?"

In the darkness, Wu Dao slowly raised his head.

Half his face had already been torn away by the Flesh Tai Sui, leaving only bone. Paired with the twisted smile on the other half of his face and a mouthful of triangular shark teeth, he truly looked no different from an evil ghost of hell.

He was nearly done for.

The energy from the Bat King's flesh inside him had been completely drained. If he kept fighting, he would have to squeeze out his own life force, until he was nothing but a dried corpse!

But!

He wasn't without a chance of winning!!

As long as he could recover his peak condition for a brief moment.

Even if it lasted less than a minute!

He could tear apart the bastard that had dared to touch his flesh!

That one minute.

How could he get it?

Simple...

And so.

What happened next was an utterly horrifying sight before the Flesh Tai Sui's eyes.

It made its entire body turn cold.

It made its soul tremble.

It even briefly brought its intelligence up to the level of an ordinary person, allowing it to spit out two words in a trembling voice:

"You're not human!!"

Why had it lost its composure so badly?

Because...

Under the Flesh Tai Sui's horrified gaze.

Wu Dao grinned, baring two rows of sharp, triangular shark teeth.

Then.

His iron claws tore at the muscles on his chest...

After that!

He raised his right arm...

Riiiip!

The muscles on his right arm were torn away in chunks...

Then his left arm.

Under the Flesh Tai Sui's stunned gaze.

Wu Dao's arms were soon reduced to nothing but jade-like bones, ghastly white and horrifying to behold!

And that flesh...

Thump, thump, thump—

The Great Medicine supplied him.

A fresh load of "firewood" began to burn, unleashing its power as a surging, boundless vitality rushed in every direction.

However.

This time, Wu Dao kept the Myriad Healing Fluid under control.

He didn't use it to restore his damaged tissues.

Instead, he directed it only to the intact parts of his body.

Thump, thump, thump—

With the abundant supply of Myriad Healing Fluid.

His heart, which had seemed on the verge of going out, began pounding once more like a war drum. The volcano had finished charging, and its searing, domineering force surged forth like a crashing sea, leaving the Flesh Tai Sui gasping for breath.

"Haah, now that's the stuff!!"

Wu Dao let his white-bone hands hang limply. He felt no pain at all, and his face wore a crazed, delighted expression. Beneath the thick ribs of his chest, his fiery red heart throbbed in plain sight.

Then.

He bared his savage maw and fixed his blood-red eyes on the distant Flesh Tai Sui, spitting out a sentence devoid of emotion:

"Round two!"

Boom!!

The earth collapsed, and dirt and stone burst into the air!

Once again, in the blink of an eye!

Wu Dao's ruined body burst through the air, a surging current roaring behind him as he appeared before the Flesh Tai Sui like a terrifying blood-red demon shadow.

In that fleeting moment of dazed confusion.

The Flesh Tai Sui felt as though it had returned to the beginning of the battle.

The same twisted smile!

The same savage, ferocious aura!

The same explosive power, built up like a Savage Whale Crashing into an Island!

The difference was.

This time, he used his knee!

This time...

It couldn't dodge, and it couldn't defend itself...

Boom!!

The knee strike was like a Dragon Raises Its Head!

Destructive force surged in like a crashing sea, as if tons of high explosives had gone off inside its body!

Crack~

A faint sound of breaking rang out.

Boundless darkness swept in.

In its daze, the Flesh Tai Sui seemed to see a mountain forest from several hundred years ago, drenched in brilliant sunlight and dappled with shadows from the trees.

Still ignorant of the world, it lay quietly beneath the fertile soil, instinctively absorbing the gifts of heaven and earth.

Until...

It saw a striped tiger leap down from the mountain, twitching its nose as it approached, step by step.

When it drew closer.

It suddenly noticed.

Why did that tiger have a twisted, evil-ghost face?

So familiar...

Bang!!

Splash!

A great sheet of red was flung into the air.

The Flesh Tai Sui's entire upper body was kicked into countless chunks of pulpy flesh, which sprayed in every direction as clouds of blood mist burst through the air.

In its place.

Only half a stump of flesh remained, flung away before finally rolling to a stop on the ground.

Thud!

Another heavy body hit the ground.

Wu Dao's battered body toppled over like a golden mountain collapsing and a jade pillar falling.

That last strike.

Had burned through all the "firewood" he had eaten. Now his own flesh began to burn, his body visibly withering away.

He could no longer maintain the God-Ghost Heaven state.

The instant he exited it.

His brain's protective mechanism returned.

Pain, as if he had fallen into a sea of blades and flames, surged over him from every direction, tearing at his soul and flesh until it seemed his whole body would burst apart!

His consciousness, too, was slowly dragged into the darkness, as though he would fall into an eternal sleep the next moment.

Don't sleep!

Don't sleep!

You're the winner. You haven't even enjoyed your prey yet. Why are you sleeping?!

That's right!

I won!!

I won again!!

Once more, I had risen above the brutal competition of survival of the fittest!

This wasn't my end!

Eat my prey!

Keep going!!

"Ha... hahahaha..."

A wild, unrestrained laugh of pure exhilaration rang across the land.

Wu Dao suddenly bit off half his tongue, using pain to overcome pain and forcing himself to stay conscious.

Couldn't his body move?

Had he reached the end of his strength, with nowhere left to turn?

It didn't matter!

Drawn by that scent, so irresistibly tempting it was almost lethal.

Using the only muscles he could still move—his jaw—and the warm current from the cut in his stomach, Wu Dao kept opening and closing his teeth, gnawing at the ground and dragging himself toward the Flesh Tai Sui's Demon Core like a maggot.

I'm coming!

I'll be there soon, and then I'm going to eat you!!

Wu Dao howled in his heart as he gnawed at the ground and squirmed onward, leaving behind a thick, blood-red trail as he dragged himself along.

His mind was clear at times.

And muddled at others.

All kinds of nonsensical thoughts drifted through it:

Chicken flavor?

Beef flavor?

Or mixed-fruit flavor??

Pan-fried, stir-fried, steamed, or deep-fried?

Extra chili?

Ten meters...

Five meters...

One meter...

At last.

A ball of flesh the size of a soccer ball came into view. It was translucent, like a red agate, and gave off an intoxicating fragrance.

At its center,

a chicken-egg-sized Demon Core glimmered with a faint, gemstone-like radiance. Its fragrance was almost intoxicating.

Crunch!

He bit into the ball of flesh!!

His mouth filled with fragrance.

Unexpectedly.

The Tai Sui flesh.

Tasted like sweet potato, with the texture of jelly.

Towering Canyun Mountain.

A vast forest stretching like an endless sea.

As the jade rabbit sank toward the western horizon, yin descended and yang rose.

Whoosh—

A warm wind from the east stirred up waves of green leaves, dispersing the strange, eerie fog that shrouded the mountainside.

The wind swept over mountain and forest.

It circled and wailed through a stretch of pitch-black, primeval woodland.

At last.

The gust carried away the thick, lingering stench of blood in the air.

As for the layer of blood and flesh covering the ground like a slaughterhouse's refuse, the mountain's "residents" would have to clean it up themselves.

Deep in Canyun Mountain.

In the depths of a natural cavern.

"Chirp, chirp, chirp..."

In the darkness.

A bat flapped through the air. It seemed to have spotted its prey and hurried closer, unable to wait.

Splat!

Suddenly, a huge steel hand shot up in the dark and slapped the bat into a pulp.

Whoosh!

Wu Dao abruptly opened his eyes. Tiny sparks of lightning crackled in the darkness, his presence impossible to defy.

Hoo~

He let out a long breath of heavy, stale air.

Wu Dao sat upright and surveyed his surroundings. His eyes shone like two little lanterns, and the darkness did nothing to hinder his sight.

After a night of recovery,

his body, battered and utterly spent, had finally returned to its peak.

After last night's brutal battle,

both his mind and body had been on the brink of death.

Yet with inhuman willpower, he had forced himself to move to the Demon Core of the Flesh Tai Sui.

After eating the fragrant meat wrapped around the Demon Core, he had barely regained the ability to move.

To keep a new "fisherman" from showing up,

he had fled far away with the Demon Core and finally hidden himself in this primitive cave.

Monsters harmed people, people killed monsters for their cores—that was perfectly normal in fantasy immortal-hero novels, right?