In the clearing, the faint whisper of the snake's flicking tongue set their teeth on edge.
Wang Yue crouched behind a bush, slowly raising his right hand with all five fingers spread to signal Yang Dongxi to get ready.
Yang Dongxi lay low on the other side, his hunting bow fully drawn, its string stretched into a deadly line.
The arrowhead pointed at the giant snake's left eye.
Sweat rolled down his forehead, dripped along his nose onto the back of his hand, then slid onto the bowstring.
That hand was trembling.
Yi Yang huddled farther back with his back against a tree, his old face scrunched up and a billhook laid across his knees.
To anyone watching, he was just a country old man so frightened his soul was about to float out of his body.
But through the gaps in the tangled leaves, his eyes had marked every person's position.
Wang Yue abruptly clenched his five fingers.
Whoosh!
The arrow left the string, slicing through the air.
It was a vicious shot.
Unfortunately, it missed by half an inch.
The arrowhead sank into the edge of the giant snake's left eye socket. Scales cracked, black-red blood splashed out, and a sickly sweet stench spread at once, turning their stomachs.
The giant snake jerked its head up, its thick, long body springing out of its coils. Gray-green scales scraped against rotten leaves, whipping the dead branches and leaf litter across half the clearing into the air.
"Fuck!"
Liu Biao got halfway through his curse before the rest stuck in his throat.
The giant snake raised half its body upright, the vertical pupil of its right eye narrowing to a thin line.
Han Zhu gripped his iron fork, veins bulging on the back of his hands, but his feet were half a beat too slow.
Chen Liu stepped back half a pace, his boot sinking into rotten leaves with an ill-timed noise.
Yang Dongxi's face turned pale. He had not even reached his second arrow yet.
Li Shun moved first.
He barked, "Move! Don't stand there waiting for it to order its meal!"
That jolted their souls back into their bodies.
Han Zhu and Liu Biao lunged out from the right.
Han Zhu thrust his iron fork straight at the side of the snake's neck.
But the snake twisted, its body as thick as a large bowl and nimble enough to make their scalps crawl.
The fork's points scraped across its scales, throwing off a few sparks.
"Split open, damn you!"
Liu Biao followed him in, swinging his short axe at the snake's belly.
The axe struck home.
The belly scales were thinner. The blade cut two inches deep, spraying hot, rank blood over Liu Biao's arm.
The giant snake recoiled in pain and swept its tail sideways.
Liu Biao's axe was still lodged in its flesh. He had no time to retreat.
Thump!
He flew sideways, smashed through two clumps of bushes, and rolled onto the ground. Blood spilled from his mouth, and one side of his waist looked caved in.
But he was a tough bastard too.
Gritting his teeth, he grabbed a nearby tree root and forced his upper body upright, laboring to say, "Not dead yet!"
Behind the bushes, Yang Dongxi had already nocked his second arrow.
A hunter's true skill lay in the tool that earned his living, after all.
This time, his hand did not shake.
The arrow flew straight into the depths of the wound in the giant snake's left eye, burying almost half its shaft.
Agony wracked the giant snake. Its head whipped about, its blood tracing a dark streak through the air.
It fixed on Yang Dongxi's position, stretched out its body, and charged along the ground.
The bushes shattered under the impact.
Li Shun intercepted it from the left, drawing his saber. A flash of steel swept past the snake's neck.
Squelch.
A deep gash opened along the side of the snake's neck, exposing a section of white bone.
That slash bought Yang Dongxi half a life.
The snake's head veered aside, but still smashed the bushes to fragments.
Yang Dongxi rolled across the ground, avoiding its jaws but not its tail.
Smack!
The snake's tail struck his lower leg.
The crack of breaking bone was sharp.
Yang Dongxi groaned in agony and collapsed, his hunting bow flying far away.
"Press in!"
Wang Yue charged from the front, slashing diagonally with his saber.
His blade struck the dark markings along the snake's spine and lodged between its scales.
Flexing his arms, he tore off a palm-sized scale, exposing the tender red flesh beneath.
Chen Liu gritted his teeth and followed up, stabbing his short blade into the exposed flesh from the other side.
The giant snake went completely berserk, its body beginning to twist and coil.
Chen Liu was too slow to withdraw. The snake's body wrapped around his right arm.
Crack.
The sound of shattering bone reached everyone's ears, making their back teeth clench.
"Aah!"
Chen Liu screamed, his short blade falling from his hand.
An instant later, he was flung more than ten feet away. The back of his head struck a broken tree stump, and his body twitched twice before falling still.
Wang Yue's pupils contracted. His feet skidded a long track through the bloody mud as he narrowly avoided the sweeping tail.
Yi Yang lay prone farther back, his eyelids lowered.
One dead.
He made a mental note.
It was not delight in another's misfortune.
It was simply that on a battlefield, every person lost sent the situation down a different path.
The giant snake had wounds all over its body and was bleeding heavily, but the pain only made it more violent.
It turned its head toward Yang Dongxi, who lay on the ground.
The hunter's lower leg was shattered. Unable to stand, he could only crawl backward.
His fingers clawed into the rotten soil, his nails peeling back as mud mingled with blood.
"Save me!"
Just then, Li Shun rushed in from the side and slashed at the edge of the snake's mouth. His blade chipped, but the blow knocked its head aside.
At the same time, however, the giant snake's tail swept toward him.
Li Shun leaped to dodge it, but it still grazed his lower leg. He staggered two steps upon landing, his soles scuffing through the rotten leaves.
Those two steps were all it took.
The snake's head swung back toward the enemy who had hurt it most, and its jaws clamped onto Yang Dongxi's shoulder.
The hunter let out a short, piercing scream.
The giant snake shook its head.
Yang Dongxi was hurled several dozen feet away. His body struck a rock and slid down, never moving again.
Seeing this, Han Zhu seized the opening, raised his iron fork, and charged, driving its points into the existing wound in the snake's belly.
The thrust went deep enough to bury most of the iron fork, leaving it hanging from the snake's body.
The giant snake rolled.
Han Zhu clung to the shaft with both hands and was swept up with it, his body slamming into a tree trunk.
His chest caved in.
Blood poured from his mouth and nose.
His fingers loosened, and his whole body slumped against the tree roots like a wrung-out rag.
Barely more than a hundred breaths had passed since the fight began.
Yang Dongxi was dead.
Chen Liu was dead.
Han Zhu was dead.
Liu Biao was gravely wounded.
Only Wang Yue and Li Shun remained alive and steady on their feet.
And that "scared senseless" old man Yi farther back.
But the giant snake was in bad shape too. Its left eye was ruined, its neck cut open, and an iron fork stuck out of its belly. Blood trailed across the ground, and its movements had slowed considerably.
Wang Yue panted, blood dripping from his saber.
His peripheral vision swept over the battlefield, then settled on the bushes behind him.
Yi Yang was still there.
That old bastard had actually not run off.
Wang Yue's mind worked quickly.
Constable Yang had told him to find an opportunity to dispose of Yi Yang.
Hadn't that opportunity just been delivered right into his hands?
Wang Yue chased the giant snake with his saber raised. His stance looked convincing, but his blade went wildly off course.
He struck neither its neck nor its wounds.
Instead, he slashed diagonally at the tip of its tail. Provoked, the giant snake instinctively turned and charged in the opposite direction.
Straight toward the bushes where Yi Yang was hiding.
Yi Yang had been watching Wang Yue's movements all along.
The moment Wang Yue's first slash veered away from a vital spot, he knew this constable's belly held not a snake's gall but filthy water.
The gray-green snake hurtled toward him, reeking of blood.
The bushes splintered.
Branches and leaves flew everywhere.
Yi Yang neither blocked it head-on nor truly dodged.
The instant the snake's head smashed through the bushes, he let the impact carry him diagonally backward, tumbling into the grass within the dense woods.
As he landed, his back scraped against a tree root.
His jacket tore open.
Bloody scratches scored his flesh.
The pain was real enough.
But for him, now at the blood qi first stage, an injury like this was nothing.
The moment he landed, he held his breath, went limp, and lay motionless among the dead leaves.
He bit through the tip of his tongue.
Half a mouthful of bloody froth seeped between his lips, staining his gray-white beard.
He looked exactly like an old man swept away by the giant snake, his apparent death perfectly plausible.
Wang Yue glanced back, confirming that he had completed the task Boss Yang had assigned him.
Amid the dust and shredded leaves, Yi Yang lay motionless in the grass.
Blood still clung to a broken branch.
The stone weighing on Wang Yue's heart dropped away.
But the giant snake was not dead yet.
It rolled after its charge, its body plowing deep furrows into the ground.
Liu Biao dragged himself up despite his broken ribs and retrieved his short axe. His face was covered in blood and mud, and his voice was ragged beyond recognition.
"Beast!"
His short axe came down beside the wound where the iron fork pierced the snake's belly.
The wound widened, spraying blood all over his face.
The giant snake let out a long hiss, its force far weaker than before.
It no longer stayed to fight.
Stretching out its body, it shot toward the depths of the mountains.
As it left, its tail swept toward Liu Biao. It was already an arrow at the end of its flight, but a blow to a human body could still kill.
The tail struck Liu Biao in the chest.
He fell flat on his back, his breastbone caving in as bloody foam bubbled from his mouth.
His fingers twitched a few times. The short axe fell beside his palm, and he could no longer grasp it.
The forest clearing was a complete wreck.
Seven men had gone up the mountain.
Now only Wang Yue and Li Shun remained standing.
Wang Yue braced his hands on his knees and panted, but his eyes stayed fixed on the direction in which the giant snake had fled.
The gray-green snake trailed blood as it slipped deep into the mountains.
He cursed, "Goddamn it!"
For all his cursing, his eyes burned bright.
It was a look brimming with greed.
Li Shun stood beside him, saber in hand, the cuffs of his trousers stained red with blood. There was not a trace of joy on his face.
Wang Yue turned to him, speaking quickly and quietly.
"The snake's badly wounded. It won't get far."
He pointed excitedly in the direction where the blood trail vanished. "It's heading deep into the mountains, probably back to its nest. Think about it. A snake that close to becoming a Mutant Beast-how many years has it been coiled up on Greenwood Mountain? How many living creatures has it eaten? How could there be nothing in its nest?"
Wang Yue licked his cracked lips. "Snake gall, shed skin, eggs, maybe even something imbued with spiritual power. Take any one of those into town, and we'd be feasting on rich food and strong drink."
Li Shun looked at the bodies strewn across the ground and said nothing for a long while.
"You're just leaving them?"
Wang Yue glanced over the dead on the ground, his tone as cold as if they had been strangers.
"We can't take the dead with us. We'll report them as killed in the line of duty when we get back, and the county will pay compensation. Those of us still alive should take what's ours first."
Li Shun's grip on his saber tightened, then loosened. He wiped the snake blood from the blade on his trouser leg and said:
"Let's go."
The two followed the blood trail deep into the forest.
Before you continue