"A giant snake with five-colored scales? Since when did this kind of monster appear on the island?"
Confusion flickered in Isaribi's eyes. She immediately motioned for everyone to lower themselves and lie on the ground. The others followed her example, lying motionless.
The giant snake's head protruding from the tree hollow was even larger than a millstone. It could probably swallow an ox whole.
Its thick, slick tongue flickered in and out of its mouth. Even from a distance, it exerted such pressure on Hirota Tulio and the others that none of them dared breathe loudly.
"We're downwind. That giant snake can't smell us."
Seeing how frightened they were, Isaribi reassured them quietly.
"But..."
The unease on Hirota Tulio's face did not diminish. He said hesitantly:
"A snake's facial pits can detect the infrared radiation from its prey's body heat to locate it."
"What's infrared radiation?"
Hirota Tulio immediately sensed trouble. To modern people, snakes' heat-sensing hunting abilities were merely an amusing science fact, not even obscure trivia. But someone like Miss Isaribi, who walked alone through Mount Penglai Island's agrarian civilization, had no understanding of it whatsoever.
"Hiss!"
Sure enough, the five-colored snake flicked its tongue toward their hiding place several times. The next moment, it emerged from the tree hollow and slithered aggressively toward them.
It found us!
Hirota Tulio's scalp tingled, and his expression changed drastically. The others were no better off, their faces deathly pale and their legs trembling.
The five-colored snake's body looked thick and cumbersome, crushing the bushes along its path flat and snapping them over, yet it moved like lightning, covering dozens of meters in the blink of an eye.
They could even clearly hear its scales scraping against the ground.
Hirota Tulio immediately understood that there was no way their two legs