The cold bit to the bone. A thick layer of white frost coated the trees.
A shadow as thick as a water vat ground over the frozen earth, its scraping piercing the eardrums.
Its head hung in midair, its dark green scales gleaming with a chilling light.
A primordial remnant, the Titan Python.
The python did not attack immediately.
Its slit pupils locked onto the Black Pot on Shi Hou's back. It had scented the explosion of a Life-Bound True Bone.
Its old rival had died too quickly, too strangely.
The python coiled around a hundred-meter-high rocky hill, its immense body crushing the rock layers.
Its forked tongue hissed, collecting pheromones from the wind.
In Stone Village's square, the atmosphere was oppressively tense.
Shi Linhu knelt on one knee, both hands clenched around the wooden haft of the Black Iron Great Axe as he gasped for breath.
The Suanni runes within him had dimmed, and his sea of qi was utterly empty.
Shi Feijiao lay flat on the ground, his thigh muscles spasming violently.
That last strike in coordination with Kang had drained everyone's strength.
The villagers could barely even stand.
Shi Hou stood at the very front, his expression calm. He strode over to the pile of corpses left behind by the first wave of the beast tide.
His right hand settled on the rim of the Black Pot.
Gray light flickered rapidly. The mountain-high heaps of Ironclad Rhinoceros and saber-toothed tiger corpses vanished into thin air, all drawn into its space.
He brushed the blood off his hide skirt and looked straight up at the python, his gaze brimming with contempt.
Yet cold sweat had already soaked through the hide on his back.
*This loach was far too cautious. And of all times, the villagers couldn't even manage