Different Rules Between Worlds

After only a few more steps, Chen Ping spotted the target of his trip: the Touch Dragon King with four hundred and eighty years of cultivation.

It was about a meter and a half long and as thick as an adult's forearm. Though it fell short of the one outside, which was nearly three meters long and as thick as an adult's thigh, it was still a fearsome sight.

Never mind anything else-its two rows of steel-blade centipede legs and enormous jaws, seemingly cast from refined iron, were enough to send a chill through anyone. One distant glance at the jumble of teeth filling its mouth could make a person physically queasy.

Quietly setting his bamboo basket on the ground, Chen Ping touched the Storage Ring on his left hand, set with a sapphire fragment no bigger than a fingernail.

This was something Chen Ping had prepared right from the start.

He would not be hunting any particularly powerful soul beasts for his first soul ring.

And for the vast majority of soul beasts with a hundred years of cultivation, there was one universal solution.

That solution was fire.

Even if starting a fire inside a cave seemed rather stupid, Chen Ping was certain his own half-baked skills would never be enough to deal with this Touch Dragon King.

He was no Superman. A month or so of training through the system and a few combat moves would not let him grab a Willow Wood Staff and fight a Touch Dragon King to the death.

Pouring water from his flask, he soaked the coarse hemp towel he wore around his neck to wipe away sweat. Using both hands, Chen Ping swiftly wrapped it around his face, covering his mouth and nose.

Chen Ping carefully took a palm-sized pottery jar from his Storage Ring while his other hand pulled a fire starter from his basket.

After a few deep breaths, Chen Ping worked the cap off the fire starter with one hand and gently flicked his wrist. The embers on it instantly brightened.

A wad of coarse hemp soaked in grease was attached to the mouth of the palm-sized jar in Chen Ping's right hand. A light shake produced the sloshing sound of liquid inside. This was an incendiary bomb handmade using an old-fashioned method.

Of course Chen Ping would have preferred to lob a grenade-or, failing that, get himself an AK or a rifle, build bigger and stronger, and reach new heights of glory.

The problem was that he could not make them.

Tang San being able to bring hidden weapons to the Douluo Continent did not mean Chen Ping could throw together one part saltpeter, two parts sulfur, and three parts charcoal, add a little sugar, and get a Tsar Bomba.

Gunpowder might not even exist in the Douluo World. Or perhaps it did, but Chen Ping had the wrong formula.

Even if Chen Ping produced the black powder found on Blue Star, it still would not be true black powder.

Both the system's deductions and Chen Ping's experiments coldly confirmed that fact.

The rules of the two worlds did indeed differ slightly in the finer details.

As for how Tang San's Buddha's Fury Tang Lotus exploded and what its formula was, Chen Ping's system actually could look that up.

But retrieving information from over ten thousand years ago in such detail came at an astronomical price Chen Ping could not possibly afford.

Fortunately, incendiary bombs were at least something Chen Ping could make, and his private tests had shown that they worked quite well!

The fire starter's embers ignited the cloth wick of the homemade incendiary bomb. With a precise throw, Chen Ping hurled it at the Touch Dragon King's back.

"Bang!"

The already brittle pottery jar shattered instantly against the Touch Dragon King's hard shell. The oil inside spilled freely, then caught fire from the burning cloth wick.

"Hiss, hiss-"

The Touch Dragon King immediately let out a series of agonized hisses. After all, it was still just a centipede. How many centipedes were not afraid of fire?

Flames splashed through the cave as burning oil scattered everywhere. Fortunately, Touch Dragons were soul beasts that preferred damp places, so there was little combustible material inside. Chen Ping did not have to worry about it setting the entire cave ablaze.

But this Touch Dragon King was clearly more resistant to burning than Chen Ping had expected. The homemade incendiary bomb burned for over a minute before slowly going out.

Throughout that time, the Touch Dragon King rolled in pain and slammed wildly into everything around it, sending dirt flying and shattering rocks, yet showed no sign of dying.

A chill crept into Chen Ping's heart. Now he understood why commoner soul masters could only start with ten-year first soul rings. In ancient times, these hundred-year soul beasts would have been fucking monsters!

Aside from Bei Bei and Tang Ya, who were outside working hard to kill the thousand-year Touch Dragon King, Chen Ping had never met any other Shrek soul masters.

But Chen Ping was certain that even among Shrek's so-called geniuses...

Probably very few could kill a hundred-year soul beast using only their own strength to obtain their first soul ring.

Holding his breath, Chen Ping hid behind a rock wall, took out another homemade incendiary bomb, and threw it at the Touch Dragon King.

Yet despite all his caution, the Touch Dragon King's extremely sensitive hearing still caught the sound of the incendiary bomb cutting through the air.

"Hiss, hiss, hiss-"

The Touch Dragon King let out a piercing hiss, but because its compound eyes had extremely poor vision, it failed to realize that the rushing sound meant another incendiary bomb was coming.

Fierce waves of flame erupted over the Touch Dragon King once more as the spilled oil surged and spread. The six scythe-like wings on its back flapped wildly, flinging burning oil everywhere.

Even Chen Ping himself nearly got splashed by the burning oil.

Chen Ping hurriedly tiptoed away to another spot. Watching the Touch Dragon King crash about like a headless fly, venting its agony, he had only just breathed a little easier when a rustling sound came from beneath his feet.

In the shadows, a huge Evil Pincer Bug burst out of the ground. These creatures resembled venomous scorpions, but their bodies were clad in pitch-black armor.

Its enormous pincers looked capable of snipping iron and metal to pieces. Instead of a single venomous stinger, it had two branching tails, tinged with a faint inky green that suggested they were saturated with deadly poison.

Well, wasn't this a disaster?

Chen Ping shuddered.

Of course. No matter how furious the thousand-year Touch Dragon King outside was, it would never have left the Lesser Touch Dragon King alone in the cave.

This Evil Pincer Bug was the bodyguard it had left behind!

What do I do? What do I do?

Chen Ping's hands were trembling. This really was his first time facing a situation where his life hung by a thread.

Inside, the Lesser Touch Dragon King and the Evil Pincer Bug had him trapped between them, one in front and one behind.

Outside were the larger Touch Dragon King, which might return at any moment, and over a dozen Touch Dragons with at least a hundred years of cultivation.

For the first time, Chen Ping felt death was so close.

Hmm...

Being run over and killed in his previous life did not count. That had been contact with death at a negative distance, not merely getting close.

Honestly, Chen Ping could not understand why this Touch Dragon King was so resistant to burning!

If he remembered correctly, even if a Touch Dragon King's shell offered decent resistance to sharp weapons and attacks of various elemental attributes, that resistance should have applied only to its shell.

With all the burning oil that had spilled everywhere, it should already have burned through the creature's soft belly.

Chen Ping did not know that he had overlooked something.

Temperature on the Douluo Continent might be an entirely different matter from temperature on Blue Star.

After all, flames here only needed to reach two or three thousand degrees to qualify as ultimate fire!