Chapter 40

Chapter 40: What Temperature Does a Yao Have? To a Three-Headed Giant Python, a Tree Is Just Something to Coil Around

“What?”

The people running ahead of Jiang Tea Tea skidded to a stop and whipped around. Their faces drained of color when they saw her.

“Sister Tea, are you trying to die? You want to go deal with those three-headed giant pythons alone?”

“Sister Tea, those are Level 6 mutated pythons. Their nest is under the waterfall. If that’s their den, then everything within fifty kilometers is their territory. There are more than a dozen chasing us right now. If you kill even one, its blood will draw the rest, and they’ll hunt us down!”

“With just the eight of us, even if we all died right here, we still wouldn’t be enough to fill their teeth…”

“Then we won’t fill their teeth,” Jiang Tea Tea said, voice flat. “We’ll kill them and farm points.”

Sui Xuan Chu cut through the panic. “Come on. We’re on the same team as Jiang Tea Tea. There’s no way we leave her here to hold the rear alone, facing three-headed giant pythons by herself.”

Huang Da Zhuang nodded hard. “Right. Sui Xuan Chu’s right. We’re a team. If we go, we go together; if we stay, we stay together. Worst case, we can’t win and we forfeit. We’ve already earned so many points—what the hell are we scared of?”

He didn’t have an ability. So what? He had a sturdy body and sharp teeth. There was no way he was leaving Jiang Tea Tea behind to face that nightmare alone.

If Huang Da Zhuang wasn’t afraid, then who was?

The group grabbed whatever weapons they had and turned back without hesitation—one team, one madness.

Jiang Tea Tea fell silent. This was absurd. She only wanted to eat a meal, and now they were clinging to “team spirit” like it was a life raft.

They didn’t have firearms, only whatever cold weapons they could scrounge up: iron rods, daggers, wrenches, telescoping batons, even insect spray.

A three-headed giant python was thicker than a water barrel, its scales hard as armor. They flicked their tongues to taste heat, hunting anything warmer than their own bodies.

With seven people charging back, they became living targets. More than a dozen three-headed giant pythons skimmed right past Jiang Tea Tea and swept around to encircle everyone else.

—

High above the jungle, in the overall command room aboard an invisible super warship, Chong Ming sat up straight. His golden eyes locked onto the surveillance feeds as he spoke to the Minister of Information.

“Minister Cai. Give me three-sixty coverage—no blind spots—on the ‘wipe out the other twenty-nine military academies’ squad. Especially Jiang Tea Tea. I want every trace of ability fluctuation on her, and her thermal readings.”

“Yes!”

Cai Xi Chao didn’t even sit down. A virtual keyboard flared into existence, data and code blooming across her screen. Her fingers flew.

In an instant, the massive display in front of Chong Ming filled with crisp footage of the entire squad—what abilities they used, how they fought, and how they stumbled and dodged in a desperate knot as the three-headed giant pythons closed in.

Jiang Tea Tea’s feed alone took up a third of the screen.

There were no ability fluctuations on her.

There was, however, her body temperature.

Her heat signature wavered between 35.5 and 37.5 degrees—slightly lower than a normal pure human, but still arguable as “within range” if you forced it.

By all logic, that kind of warmth should have been a blazing beacon to a three-headed giant python: prey.

Yet the pythons acted as if they couldn’t sense her at all. They shot past her and went for everyone else.

One slipping by might have been coincidence. Two, three in a row wasn’t.

“Adjutant Ai,” Chong Ming said without looking away from the screen, “compile all known ability types in the m31 star system, including those among the insect clan. Especially the rare ones. I want everything—no detail too small.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Adjutant Ai answered immediately.

—

Huang Da Zhuang shifted into a big yellow dog and yelped as a three-headed giant python bore down on him. Yan Yu triggered blink ability, flashed onto the python’s back with a dagger raised, and drove it down.

Sparks jumped.

The blade couldn’t pierce the scales.

The python abandoned Huang Da Zhuang instantly. All three heads snapped toward Yan Yu, fast and vicious.

Yan Yu’s expression changed. He blinked off the python, grabbed Huang Da Zhuang, and blinked them both to safety.

He barely had time to steady himself before Huang Da Zhuang barked sharply toward where the python had been.

Yan Yu turned.

Jiang Tea Tea stood there with nothing but a branch in her hand.

That plain branch had pierced the python’s scales. She drove it in beneath the three heads, then dragged it down in one clean motion. The wood tore open the python’s belly like a blade, the cut so deep and smooth the midsection split and the beast stalled under the sheer damage.

Jiang Tea Tea flicked the branch up, hooked an egg-sized gallbladder out of the wound, and caught it in her palm. She crushed it.

Bile smeared across her fingers. What she could use, she absorbed. What she couldn’t, she snapped her hand and flung away in a sharp shake.

The python wasn’t dead. Even with its belly ripped open and its gallbladder gone, it roared, whipped its tail, and lunged at Jiang Tea Tea with gaping jaws.

Jiang Tea Tea didn’t dodge. She sprang straight up.

The branch cracked down beneath one of the heads—so hard the head and body nearly separated, hanging by a strip of skin.

Thunder boomed.

Sui Xuan Chu’s lightning summoning slammed into another three-headed giant python—the one tangled up with Zhang Ting Zhou’s octopus form.

Zhang Ting Zhou tightened his tentacles, cinching the python’s body until it shuddered. Rotten leaves clung to him, smeared across his slick skin.

Jiang Tea Tea flashed in, faster than Yan Yu even with blink ability. She drove the branch into the python’s belly, dragged straight down to the gallbladder, and yanked it free.

“Zhang Ting Zhou. Let go.”

Zhang Ting Zhou recoiled his tentacles and shrank, rolling away in a smaller octopus body to Sui Xuan Chu’s side.

Jiang Tea Tea didn’t bother pulling the branch out. Magic power wrapped around it like an invisible edge. She slashed backward, splitting the python clean in two.

Even cut in half, it still thrashed and hissed with blind rage.

Jiang Tea Tea crushed the gallbladder again. Then, without a running start, she leapt and dropped onto the back of a third python—the one fighting Cheng Xiao Ting and Cheng Lin Yue.

The python couldn’t sense her heat at all. It only registered a small weight landing on its body. By the time it tried to whip its tail or snap its jaws, it was already too late.

The branch stabbed in and dragged down in a straight line, all the way to the gallbladder.

Gallbladder number three.

Jiang Tea Tea finished the cut, severing the python’s midsection.

Around her, voices rose in a surge of wild confidence.

“Cheng Xiao Ting, Yan Yu—you two go lure more three-headed giant pythons! Bring them in!”

“Ju Que, Zhang Yan Zhou—protect Cheng Lin Yue and Huang Da Zhuang!”

“Sui Xuan Chu, use your lightning on them!”

Jiang Tea Tea lifted her branch, blood dripping from the tip, and smiled like someone making dinner plans. “I’ll open them up, take the gallbladders, and cut the bones!”