Song Wen pondered briefly, then slowly backed away. He did not stop until he had retreated into the smooth passageway through which he had come.
He took out an Earth-Escape Talisman and burrowed deep underground, then made his way toward the cavern where the Ink Viper was located, deliberately avoiding the area where Shi Qi and the others were.
Song Wen reached the bottom of the Lake, but he did not emerge from the ground, remaining instead within the rocks.
He cautiously released his divine sense and probed the surroundings, discovering:
This underground Lake was not particularly large, only some three to four thousand li across.
Yet its waters were extraordinarily deep. Song Wen's divine sense could not even reach the surface.
Rather than a Lake, it would be more accurate to call it an enormous deep pool.
However, Song Wen also found the Ink Viper.
The demonic beast was roughly a thousand li to his upper left. There was a cave in the rock wall there, and the Ink Viper lay coiled deep within it.
Just as Shi Qi and the others had said, the Ink Viper was severely injured.
It had the body of a serpent and the claws of an eagle. Its entire body was covered in black scales patterned with white markings, and it was around a hundred zhang long. Unlike ordinary flood serpents, it had no horns on its head, but instead bore numerous swollen venom sacs.
Yet all those venom sacs had now shriveled flat.
Furthermore, several wounds deep enough to expose bone marred its serpentine body. Its black scales had shattered, and its flesh had split open.
Demonic essence surged around the Ink Viper's body. From time to time, it extended its forked tongue to lick its wounds, attempting to heal them. However,