Chapter 96: Snake

A vast underground space spanning over a thousand square meters appeared beyond the cave entrance. This underground area was completely filled with a grove of trees emitting a strange, glowing light.

The luminescence that Zuo Zhicheng and the others had seen from the cave entrance came from these trees.

“It’s Spiritual Energy Food!” Qingyue Qiu stared at the grove and pointed to the fruits on the trees. “So many… so much Spiritual Energy Food. There’s actually this much here.”

“Probably not just Spiritual Energy Food,” Zuo Zhicheng said as he leaped out of the cave entrance, landing steadily in the underground space. He set the three people down. Under the glow, though it was somewhat dim, ordinary eyes could still see things around them.

Zuo Zhicheng pointed to the branches. “Looks like this is where they store their food.” On the branches were countless corpses wrapped in vines. “No wonder your previous two teams vanished. They probably barged right into someone else’s main base.”

Zuo Zhicheng scanned the surroundings. Along the edges of the underground space, there were not only the hole they had emerged from but also more than twenty holes of various sizes on the surrounding rock walls. Countless vines grew out from these openings, spreading across the entire underground space like a spiderweb.

Just as Zuo Zhicheng was observing, Tang Xianghui let out a gasp and ran toward a tree.

“It’s A Wei and the others!”

Hanging from a tree were A Wei, Liu Changding, and others, all wrapped in vines. Tang Yuan, holding a machete, climbed the tree. But A Wei and the others showed no reaction. After Tang Yuan lowered them one by one, he discovered that A Wei and another person had their stomachs torn open and had been dead for a long time.

Nearby, Liu Changding was unconscious but had a rosy complexion and normal breathing, showing no signs of death.

Tang Yuan said angrily, “These monsters!”

Zuo Zhicheng, however, had no interest in lamenting. Death—whether of comrades, teammates, or friends—was all too normal for him. In this world, there might be the strongest person, but there was definitely no invincible one. Humans, as fragile beings, could die from the slightest mistake, let alone A Wei and the others, who were still far from true strength.

He brushed away the dust and vines on the ground, uncovering bricks and some broken carvings.

Looking at the few who were still squatting sadly beside A Wei, Zuo Zhicheng said, “Now is not the time for grief. The underground passages here lead in all directions. I only temporarily lost them. Those monsters will find this place soon. We need to come up with a plan.”

“Then what should we do?” Qingyue Qiu, who usually maintained a calm expression, couldn’t help showing a hint of panic.

“Can you wake Liu Changding? I see signs of artificial construction here. Maybe he can find some clues.”

Qingyue Qiu nodded and took out a few small bottles of medicine from her pocket. “I have antidotes here. Mr. Liu was probably pricked by the small thorns on these vines and fell unconscious.”

Clearly, the dead bodies here were captured by those monsters, tied to the trees, and left to starve to death or killed along the way. It seemed they were storing food here.

“Then wake him up,” Zuo Zhicheng said as he jumped onto the branches. “I’ll check if there are any other ways out nearby.”

After saying this, Zuo Zhicheng switched modes, adjusting his Night Vision Eyes to Infrared Vision. Under the sweep of Infrared Vision, he immediately noticed something unusual.

All the wrapped-up humans or animals had died, and almost no heat could be detected from them. However, a faint human-shaped figure appeared underground.

“Someone underground? No…” Zuo Zhicheng thought for a moment and understood. “There’s a hidden layer underground, or a secret room.”

But that wasn’t what caught Zuo Zhicheng’s attention the most. What drew his focus was a flicker of flame. In his Infrared Vision, a cluster of purple flames burned fiercely, like the Sun in the sky, giving off a sense of illuminating the earth and never extinguishing.

After scanning all directions and finding nothing new, Zuo Zhicheng switched back to Night Vision Mode. He leaped between tree trunks, moving quickly and lightly, like an ape in the jungle, advancing rapidly through the grove.

Soon, he discovered what the red and purple flame clusters he had seen in his Infrared Vision actually were.

Standing on a branch, Zuo Zhicheng took a sharp breath in surprise at the sight of the enormous creature before him.

It was a giant black snake coiled up like a small hill. The snake was curled so tightly that its full length was unknown, but Zuo Zhicheng could clearly see that the diameter of its body was about 2 to 3 meters.

Even the snake’s body was covered in black scales the size of human heads. Seeing these scales, Zuo Zhicheng suddenly recalled the shipwreck he had experienced when he first arrived in this world. Back then, he seemed to have seen similar scales, but they were several times larger than these.

‘Is there any connection between the two?’ But Zuo Zhicheng only pondered briefly before dismissing the thought. Although the giant snake lay there as if dead, the purple flames in his Infrared Vision told him that it was very much alive, having concentrated all its body heat into its head.

Zuo Zhicheng thought about the current season. ‘Hibernating?’ He didn’t know if a snake this large still needed to hibernate. He cautiously retreated step by step.

‘Is it because it’s been eating Spiritual Energy Food here? That’s why it has such a dense Innate Primordial Breath.’ Though Zuo Zhicheng also possessed a purple aura, the sheer quantity of the snake’s muscles was hundreds of times greater than his. Whether in strength or burst power, it was beyond comparison.

Quickly retreating, Zuo Zhicheng ran back toward Qingyue Qiu and the others. He suddenly realized something.

‘Those monsters tied their prey here to prepare food for this snake after it wakes from hibernation. It seems that even Spiritual Energy fruits can’t suppress this creature’s instinct for meat.’

Zuo Zhicheng knew that after hibernation, a snake would be extremely hungry. Clearly, the meat in the grove was prepared for it.

‘We must leave this place quickly. It’s too dangerous here. Once those monsters find us, or if that snake wakes up…’

By the time Zuo Zhicheng returned to Qingyue Qiu and the others, Liu Changding had already woken up.

“I don’t know either,” he said, rubbing his head with a look of lingering fear. “I just suddenly passed out and woke up here.”

Qingyue Qiu frowned. “The vine thorns have a numbing effect. You must have been hit by them. It seems the people from the previous camp were also captured this way after being numbed.”

“No time to study this now,” Zuo Zhicheng told everyone about the giant snake and the numerous holes around the underground space.

“Giant snake? Monsters?” Liu Changding patted his head. “I remembered something. What you saw might be the Underworld King Snake.”

“Underworld King Snake? What is that?” Zuo Zhicheng asked.

“It’s a kind of guardian beast worshipped by Amariken. They say it can travel between the realms of the living and the dead, manipulating the underworld. People back then often used live humans as sacrifices to the Underworld King Snake,” Liu Changding explained. “They would throw young boys, girls, or young women into the caves where the Underworld King Snake lived. The snake would swallow them alive and fight for the Amariken when needed.

“And those strange creatures—they should be the corpses manipulated by the Underworld King Snake. The Amariken called them Corpse Humans.”

‘Probably an ancient form of primitive worship toward powerful beasts. But this giant snake and those Corpse Humans do seem connected. The rumors about manipulating the underworld likely stem from this.’

However, how this guardian beast from over a thousand years ago had survived until now was beyond his knowledge. Zuo Zhicheng simply asked Liu Changding again, “I can sense there should be another layer beneath this underground space. Can you find a way to locate it?”