Chen Tao involuntarily took two steps back in the pitch-black depths.
The remains of his men floated in the surrounding lake water, blood seeping from their corpses and staining every inch of water in his sight red.
Twenty-two lives under his command had become food for the enormous snake before him.
Opposite Chen Tao, the gigantic Gold-Patterned Black Serpent fixed its slit pupils on him, flicking its forked tongue in and out as though savoring its prey's final struggles.
He was the last great medicinal offering it needed for its breakthrough!
Reading the look in the beast's eyes, Chen Tao tightened his grip on his saber, its hilt digging painfully into the old calluses between his thumb and forefinger.
He knew perfectly well that he could not win by ordinary means.
The snake's defenses were absurdly strong.
A full-power slash at third inner qi completion had cut only half an inch into a gap between its scales.
To kill it, he would have to concentrate every attack on the same wound, striking again and again. But it was thirty percent faster than he was. Underwater, he could not even catch it, much less keep slashing one precise spot.
Fighting it head-on meant certain death.
Turning to flee? That was certain death too.
Besides, his hopes of a breakthrough still rested on this creature. At that thought, Chen Tao narrowed his hooked, triangular eyes.
Eight years.
He had waited eight years, from forty-three to fifty-one, watching white appear in his hair. A strand had sprouted at his temple, reminding him every day when he looked in the mirror that time was running out.
The Gold-Patterned Black Serpent's heart blood and the Black-Scale Fruits were right here in this cave.
Today, either it died or he did.
There was no third path.