The Ba Snake's Tribulation

The Jianjiang River has many deep, cold pools, and when floods pass through, the river surface becomes turbulent, adding a touch of frightening beauty.

Seeing Dong Zhongshu's Law Power blue light finally disappear into a deep, cold pool below the rocky hill by the river, Wen Weng couldn't help but feel a bit of a headache.

"That serpent really lives in the flood?" Wen Weng asked incredulously. "Shouldn't we investigate further? After all, the serpent isn't a fish; it breathes through its nostrils. It's impossible for it to build its nest in the water!"

Exploring a deep, cold pool is extremely difficult, and the biggest problem is the time it takes.

If we wait until another storm hits, the snake may have already digested its food and come out to hunt again.

In that state, the Bashe is extremely ferocious and even more difficult to deal with.

Wen Weng felt that Dong Zhongshu could use his magic again to investigate and confirm.

"From the perspective of a creature's habits, it's indeed impossible for the Bashe to build its nest in water, but..."

Dong Zhongshu also suffered from a toothache.

Starting from their initial scouting location, they followed the blue Law Power light for nearly an hour before finally reaching their destination.

Dong Zhongshu didn't mind trying again, but he knew very well that the result would be the same.

The location explored in the feng shui survey is a highly auspicious site, a place where spirits and demons like to gather. However, feng shui is not a form of physiognomy that can be accurately determined. If a few rare large fish are found in this deep, cold pool, that is also quite possible.

"But the Jianjiang River has flooded; perhaps it has submerged the lair of the Bashe (a mythical snake)?"

When Dong Zhongshu sought Zhang Xuezhou's opinion, Zhang Xuezhou could only offer one possibility.

Given Dong Zhongshu's vast knowledge and experience, even if Zhang Xuezhou were to employ feng shui techniques to locate auspicious sites, he wouldn't be as good as Dong Zhongshu, and might even be significantly inferior to a feng shui novice like Dong Zhongshu.

The Person-Fixing Technique and Acupoint-Fixing Technique were inherited from the Xiangmen lineage by Hongku. These were practices forbidden in the Han Kingdom, which followed the old system of the Qin Dynasty, so Zhang Xuezhou didn't dare to show them off casually.

He waved his hands repeatedly, indicating his incompetence. He said that if everyone investigated, he would wait and see; if they didn't investigate, he hoped that Wen Weng would fulfill his previous promise and give him the ingredients for the Grain Avoidance Powder.

"Let's investigate!"

Although he possessed the highest cultivation level, Wen Weng lacked effective methods for investigating the whereabouts of the Bashe snake and still needed the cooperation of Dong Zhongshu and Zhang Xuezhou.

Seeing that both men's attitudes pointed to this auspicious feng shui location, Wen Weng had no choice but to bite the bullet and investigate.

Zhang Shu went to fetch the bamboo basket, pig's blood, and rope. He put the pig's blood and a stone into the basket as bait, and Zhao Liang dived down to investigate. If he found anything, he was to return to the raft immediately!

The floodwaters in the middle of the river were previously raging and difficult to cross, but the situation became much calmer in the deep pool.

A makeshift bamboo raft was erected, and everyone boarded it one by one.

"Aren't you going over?" Dong Zhongshu asked Zhang Xuezhou, who hadn't boarded the bamboo Zhang Xuezhou.

"It would be very unusual for me to turn into a stone on the bamboo raft; the snake would easily notice. Besides, what if the raft capsized while I was asleep? Wouldn't I fall into the water and be in big trouble?"

"You're too cautious!"

Dong Zhongshu muttered something.

But since they had already reached their destination of exploring the feng shui burial site, he did not insist that Zhang Xuezhou go and explore it together.

The group boarded the bamboo raft and used bamboo poles to propel it closer to the deep, cold pool below the rocky mountain.

The bamboo raft reached a deep, cold pool, and a bamboo basket containing pig's blood and stones was thrown in. Zhao Liang carefully entered the water.

In the murky floodwaters, Zhao Liang's figure swayed for a few seconds before sinking into the water.

Standing on the bank of the Jianjiang River, Zhang Xuezhou looked at the people on the bamboo raft, who seemed like tiny black dots.

The river was wide and flat in this section, and the more than 300-meter-wide body of water did not appear particularly clear to him during observation.

But vaguely, Zhang Xuezhou felt he could see a faint ripple spreading across the surface of the river.

The ripples, like those created by a gentle breeze on a calm lake, were almost imperceptible.

Is this situation on the river normal or abnormal?

Zhang Xuezhou pondered for a moment, then waved and shouted twice to Dong Zhongshu and the others in the distance.

Only after Dong Zhongshu waved to indicate that he understood did Zhang Xuezhou squat down on the shore to wait.

This rather uninteresting wait left him feeling a bit dizzy, and his thoughts drifted to what he had learned and how to apply it, as well as what his future held.

It wasn't until a sound like an explosive blast erupted underwater that Zhang Xuezhou quickly came to his senses.

At the deep, icy pool that the group was exploring, a gigantic head, as big as a bucket, surfaced. Its subsequent fall slammed into the water, creating a violent surge of waves.

On the rocky hill across the river, Dong Zhongshu and Wen Weng looked shaken, while Zhang Shu, clinging to a crooked tree, led Zhao Liang, who was struggling to swim to the shore by pulling on a rope.

"It seems to be out of its mind, quick..."

Before Wen Weng could finish speaking, the wind in Dong Zhongshu's hand had already begun to swirl.

"Back off! Back off!"

Thinking of the yin-yang double-eyed Divine Ability possessed by the Bashe, Dong Zhongshu also exclaimed loudly when performing the spell.

The serpent's dwelling place was indeed in this deep water, even lying beneath their bamboo raft.

If Zhang Xuezhou hadn't reminded Dong Zhongshu to be more cautious, they would have already been overturned into the Jianjiang River by the enormous body of the Bashe.

"His eyesight has actually recovered!"

When Dong Zhongshu looked at the head of the Bashe snake, he couldn't help but feel horrified.

Holding his Law Treasure fan, he unleashed a wind spell that he had been channeling for several seconds, which flew out like a blade and struck directly at his right eye, which had been hit earlier.

Wen Weng was right; something was wrong with this snake.

The snake moved extremely slowly, as if driven by instinct. The bamboo basket filled with pig's blood was swallowed by the snake, and because the rope was tied to the bamboo raft, the raft was also stuffed into its mouth.

It's like a chopstick being inserted into a person's mouth, but the serpent is still swallowing with its mouth open.

This is not the behavior that a normal living being should exhibit.

Even the Bashe (a type of snake) failed to react sufficiently to his Technique Method attacks.

The wind blades struck the giant snake's eyes, which were the size of millstones, causing the snake's head to shake uncomfortably, as if it had regained some clarity.

But this time, the serpent did not retaliate as before. Instead, it shook off the bamboo raft it was dragging by its mouth and tumbled and submerged in the river, attempting to escape quickly.

The sudden surge of raging waves also allowed Dong Zhongshu to see the countless electric scars on the Bashe's body.

The scales, which resembled armor, had almost completely fallen off, and the flesh, which was either red or white, was covered with a dense spiderweb-like pattern. Dong Zhongshu even saw flesh pits the size of fists, but no blood gushed out of these pits. Instead, it was as if the body, which had had its flesh removed, had undergone basic restoration.

This made him think of something terrible.

"It has survived the tribulation of lightning! Kill it quickly, or in a few years our Han Kingdom will have another great demon like Zhu Jiuyin!"

When a gigantic demon possesses the ability to stretch and shrink at will, and even transforms into the appearance of a human, Dong Zhongshu dares not imagine the trouble that might ensue.

This allows the Bashe snake to easily blend into places where humans gather, and also allows it to reveal its body at specific times to devour everything.

After escaping with a full stomach, the Bashe can even reintegrate into human communities.

"How could such an anomaly possibly survive the tribulation of lightning!"

Wen Weng shouted, and he quickly commanded the long ruler in his hand. The frenzied surge of Law Power made the long ruler point at the surface of the river where the Bashe had sunk.

A huge block of ice quickly took shape and solidified on the body of the Bashe.

I'll remember what you all look like!

The excruciating pain in his right eye returned, and the snake's mind cleared somewhat, beginning to break free from its bestial nature and return to normal consciousness.

It swayed its enormous snake tail, which coiled at the bottom of the river, and with a heavy, explosive crash, countless turbid drops of river water fell, turning the rocky mountain into a muddy mountain.

As soon as the ice that Wen Weng had frozen loosened, it shook its head and its huge body quickly shrank.

"Don't even think about escaping!"

The harsh words uttered by Bashe were barely half a second before Dong Zhongshu, still in the mud, shouted loudly. He turned the wind blade he was controlling, no longer seeking to pierce the eyeballs and drill deep into the head to cause death or destruction.

The rotation of the wind blade turned into cutting, even getting stuck in the eye socket of the snake.

As the snake's body rapidly contracted, the attacked eye did not follow suit.

Like a marble being flung away, the eyeball, difficult to shatter in a short time, shot rapidly into the distant river as the snake's body shrank.