On his fourth day in Black Wind Ridge, Jiang Fa decided not to venture any deeper, but to roam near the middle region.
On the map Lin Feng had given him,
an abandoned herb gatherers' camp was marked near Beheading Creek in the outer region.
It was called a camp, but in truth, it was merely a windbreak built from a few stone slabs. A spring flowed beside it, its water clear and cool, and quite a few valuable herbs grew nearby.
Jiang Fa wanted to try his luck there too.
The morning mist had yet to disperse completely. The light in the woods was dim, as though he were looking through a pane of frosted glass.
He walked over the soft humus, his broad saber in hand, its tip angled toward the ground. He planted each step firmly before taking the next.
The farther he went, the denser the woods became. Interlacing crowns obscured most of the sky, and everything around him was so quiet that only his own footsteps remained.
After walking for over two hours, he faintly heard water ahead.
Jiang Fa slowed his steps.
According to the map, the spring was not far ahead.
He was about to cross a hollow thick with ferns when he suddenly stopped.
Something was wrong.
There was a rank smell in the air.
It was neither the smell of rotting leaves nor that of stagnant water, but a stronger, more primal musk,
like the distinctive scent of some animal.
Jiang Fa's gaze swept over the mud at the edge of the hollow, and his pupils abruptly contracted.
A winding drag mark ran through the mud, roughly two feet wide and pressed three inches below the surrounding ground. The mud along its edges was still wet.
The trail extended from the other end of the hollow, passed toward the spring, and disappeared deep into the dense woods.
That rank smell. That drag mark.
A kind of fierce beast flashed through Jiang Fa's mind.
A Crimson-Scaled Python.
And judging by the signs, an adult.
Jiang Fa's heart clenched.
The Crimson-Scaled Python was one of the most troublesome first-tier high-grade fierce beasts. Enormous and possessed of boundless strength, it was covered in scales as hard as iron armor, which ordinary blades could not cut through.
Even more terrifying was its constricting strength. Once caught in its coils, even the defenses of an ordinary An Jin martial artist would not hold out for long.
Lin Feng had said that when facing a troublesome fierce beast like this, he should run if he could and not try to play the hero.
Jiang Fa began to back away.
His steps were light, making almost no sound on the soft soil.
He retreated to the edge of the hollow and was just about to turn when his foot suddenly landed on a dead branch buried beneath the rotting leaves.
Crack.
The sound was not loud, but in the deathly silent woods, it was exceptionally piercing.
Jiang Fa froze.
In a nearby pool, the surface suddenly exploded.
An enormous creature raised its head from the water.
It was the largest living thing Jiang Fa had ever seen.
Its head was fully half the size of a millstone. A pair of dark yellow slit pupils locked onto him, and a forked tongue over three feet long flicked from its mouth, hissing through the air.
Sunlight spilled through gaps in the canopy onto its body. Its palm-sized scarlet scales gleamed coldly, like a suit of iron armor heated red-hot.
Second tier.
Jiang Fa's mind went blank.
Lin Feng had said Crimson-Scaled Pythons were first-tier high grade, at most equivalent to peak Ming Jin.
Yet this Crimson-Scaled Python looked at least seventy feet long, and the thickest part of its body was a full measure wider than a bucket,
its scales had already changed from dark red to scarlet. This was clearly a Crimson-Scaled Python that had begun its second shedding-it already had one foot in the second tier!
Without the slightest hesitation, he turned and ran.
A deafening crash rang out behind him as the giant python smashed through trees.
Then came the rapid rasp of scales scraping over the ground,
so fast it sounded like someone furiously scraping an iron brush across an iron plate. The sound drew closer, bearing down on him at astonishing speed.
Jiang Fa pushed his speed to the limit.
His feet trampled dead branches and fallen leaves. Using the ground's recoil to change direction constantly, he darted left and right through the woods, as fast as a wild hare pursued by a hawk.
But the Crimson-Scaled Python was faster.
Its enormous body threaded through the woods as swiftly as an arrow loosed from a bow,
flattening shrubs and snapping saplings in its path, plowing a deep furrow through the ground.
After barely a dozen breaths, Jiang Fa could already smell that rank musk growing stronger.
"No! If I keep running like this, I'm dead for certain."
If he kept running for long, there would eventually come a moment when his stamina ran out.
And while a cold-blooded beast like the Crimson-Scaled Python might not match a human's short burst of speed, its endurance far surpassed a human's. Once it exhausted his stamina, he would be a meal on its plate.
Gritting his teeth, he abruptly veered left and charged toward a cliff.
Black Wind Ridge might not have much else, but it had plenty of cliffs.
He vaguely remembered passing a steep cliff on his left earlier. There had been a small cave in it, its entrance so narrow that only one person could squeeze through sideways.
As long as he got inside that cave, the Crimson-Scaled Python's bulk would make it absolutely impossible for it to follow.
The hissing behind him drew ever closer. He could even feel gusts of hot, foul-smelling breath striking his back.
The cliff finally came into view.
It stood roughly fifty feet high, its face covered with dead vines and moss. Sure enough, a cave lay at its base, its entrance half hidden by a clump of shrubs, so narrow that only one person could squeeze in sideways.
He rushed up to the cliff, tore the shrubs aside, and turned sideways to squeeze inside.
Just then, a deafening hiss erupted behind him.
Jiang Fa had no time to look back. He only felt an overwhelming force, powerful enough to topple mountains and overturn seas, slam into his back.
The impact hurled him forward like a kite with its string cut, smashing his back hard against the cliff beside the cave entrance.
Agony struck instantly, nearly blacking out his vision, and a metallic sweetness surged up his throat.
But he clenched his teeth and used the momentum of the blow to squeeze sideways into the cave. He tumbled deeper inside and crashed heavily onto the cold stone floor.
The very next breath after he rolled inside, an enormous snake tail lashed savagely against the entrance.
With a thunderous crash, the cliff around the entrance shattered into flying fragments, and the entire cliff face shook.
Stones large and small rained down, blocking more than half the entrance.
The Crimson-Scaled Python's furious hisses sounded outside, one after another, shaking loose stones from the cave walls.
It rammed the cliff madly. Each impact made the entire cliff shudder violently, and cracks spread across the cave ceiling at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Jiang Fa lay sprawled deep inside the cave, his chest heaving, a trickle of fresh blood seeping from the corner of his mouth.
He reached back and felt his back. A large gash had been torn in his fitted martial attire, and waves of piercing pain came from his spine, but his bones probably were not broken. He could still move.
The protective effects of the Seven-Colored Glazed Glass Art had saved his life. Had an ordinary Ming Jin martial artist taken that blow, it would have shattered his entire spine.
He took wound medicine from inside his robe and scattered it haphazardly over the wound on his back. The instant the powder touched it, a bone-piercing, burning pain struck, but he merely clenched his teeth without making a sound.
The pounding outside continued, blow after blow, as though someone were hammering the mountain with a siege ram.
After an unknown length of time, the pounding finally stopped.
Not because it was tired, but because the Crimson-Scaled Python seemed to have realized its efforts were futile and given up.
A rustling came from outside-the sound of snake scales scraping across the ground. It receded farther and farther, gradually vanishing deep into the woods.
Jiang Fa leaned against the cave wall, and the muscles throughout his body finally relaxed.
The taut strings of his heart finally loosened, and belated fear washed over him. If not for this cave in the cliff, he probably would have met his end here today.
He raised a hand and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. It had already dried into a dark red crust.
This trip to Black Wind Ridge had yielded far more than expected, but its dangers had also gone far beyond anything he had anticipated.
A second-tier Crimson-Scaled Python,
even one with only half a foot in the second tier, was not something he could handle now.
Escaping alive from that snake's jaws already counted as snatching his life back.