In winter, the Ten-Thousand-Mile Marsh was shrouded in faint cold mist and toxic miasma.
Deep within the marsh, several narrow waterways twisted like snakes through the mud, crisscrossing one another. Reeds half a man's height were coated in a thin layer of frost, swaying in the wind. Bleached bones lay scattered everywhere, leaving the place deep, desolate, and lonely.
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
Explosions of air shattered the long-standing silence.
Several figures darted through the reeds. Not far from them loomed a colossal creature.
It was a giant python, its body as thick as a water barrel and more than ten meters long. Its entire body was covered in black scales that gleamed with a hard metallic sheen. A single horn grew from the center of its head, its surface covered in dense patterns, with a faint light flowing across it.
A Devouring Essence Python! A fearsome beast renowned throughout the Ten-Thousand-Mile Marsh.
The ones pursuing it were none other than Scarlet Tiger, Nightingale, He Gu, and the other members of the Demonic Sect.
They had vaguely formed an encirclement, sealing off every direction and trapping the Devouring Essence Python completely.
Even Scarlet Tiger wore a grave expression as he looked at the Devouring Essence Python before him. The beast was one of the most terrifying ferocious creatures below the True Essence Realm—or rather, it could not be confronted without reaching the True Essence Realm.
But this was an assignment Tian Ming had ordered them to carry out. None of them dared disobey.
Seeing its escape routes cut off, the Devouring Essence Python's ferocity was fully stirred. Its gaping maw opened, and a mass of pitch-black venom shot forth, splattering into the marsh.
"Sizzle! Sizzle!"
The reeds within a radius of several meters turned ash-black in the blink of an eye.