Chapter 78

Chapter 78: Reuniting in the Underground Cave

The moment Yun Xi was snared, panic flooded her chest. Almost by reflex, she activated every defensive artifact she carried. Even the huadian divine artifact at her brow flickered in and out of view. She gripped her spirit sword and slashed at the tail that had wrapped her.

This time, Yun Xi held nothing back. She used her full strength and actually split open the scales on the snake tail.

“Human cultivator. If you don’t want to die, stop resisting. Otherwise, I don’t mind swallowing you right now!”

A cold voice transmitted into Yun Xi’s sea of consciousness. Her sword froze mid-swing, and in that instant of hesitation, she was dragged underground.

The underground was pitch-black. When she spread her spiritual sense, she realized she was being dragged deep into the earth by a three-headed snake, as if it were returning to its lair.

After smacking her head twelve times along the way, scraping every patch of exposed skin, and getting her robes covered in dust, she was finally flung onto the ground by the snake’s tail.

Yun Xi rolled on the spot. She swept her spiritual sense around, then went a little blank, because she recognized several familiar faces—Qin Tong Shuang, Mu Ning Zhu, and Zhang Yan were all there, along with four cultivators she didn’t recognize. And each of them held an egg in their arms.

“Yun Xi!”

“Junior Sister Wei!”

Qin Tong Shuang and Mu Ning Zhu spoke at the same time, both clearly shocked.

Before Yun Xi could answer, the snake tail rolled an egg into her arms. That icy voice entered her sea of consciousness again. “Human cultivator, since you’ve fallen into my trap, hatch my eggs properly. If my descendants can’t hatch, don’t think about leaving alive. You’ll obediently become my food.”

As it spoke, it released its peak second-rank pressure and forced Yun Xi to her knees.

In truth, the moment the pressure fell, the huadian divine artifact blocked it, but Yun Xi didn’t want to expose it in front of her fellow disciples. She went with the flow and knelt.

Each pair of the three-headed snake’s eyes stared coldly at Yun Xi. Only after it confirmed Yun Xi couldn’t resist did it withdraw its pressure, swish its tail, and leave the dark underground cave.

After the exit was blocked, Yun Xi stood up and hugged the snake egg as she sat beside Qin Tong Shuang. “Junior Sister Qin, how did you end up getting captured and dragged into the snake’s lair? And what’s this about hatching eggs?”

Qin Tong Shuang looked at Yun Xi, who was just as bedraggled as she was. She was about to speak when Mu Ning Zhu cut in first. “Wei Yun Xi, why were you captured too? Did you come looking for us?”

“In a way.” Yun Xi explained in one breath, “After I heard Qin Tong Shuang went missing in the Bao Hua Mountain Range, I accepted the task to find you. But when I rushed to Bao Hua City day and night, I learned that because Qi Refining cultivators who accepted the search task kept going missing, the difficulty was upgraded and it was handed over to Martial Uncle Sheng Yu Hong from the inner sect.

“So I teamed up with Senior Brother Long Dao Yu and entered the Bao Hua Mountain Range to train. Really, we were tailing Martial Uncle Sheng’s group, hoping to find clues.

“We followed the trail all the way to the place where you used the distress talisman. After Martial Uncle Sheng’s group left, we went to check the fire dragon grass patch. We had only picked two stalks when I was dragged underground.

“But Senior Brother Long definitely sent out a distress signal. Martial Uncle Sheng isn’t far from us. He’ll definitely see it.”

Only then did Yun Xi look at Qin Tong Shuang.

Qin Tong Shuang rubbed her temple. “That fire dragon grass patch was planted by the three-headed snake. It did it to lure cultivators into picking it, so it could kidnap them.”

“Kidnap cultivators for what?” Yun Xi asked, looking down at the egg in her arms. “To help it hatch eggs?”

“Yes,” Mu Ning Zhu answered firmly.

Yun Xi’s mouth opened twice before she finally found her voice. “It lays eggs but doesn’t hatch them? Forgive my ignorance, but in the demon beast manuals I’ve read, snake-type demon beasts hatch their own offspring. Since when did cultivators have to help?”

Mu Ning Zhu looked like she didn’t even know how to describe it, but Qin Tong Shuang had already started speaking. “Who wouldn’t say so? But we ran into such a bizarre snake-type demon beast, and it’s a peak second-rank three-headed snake, equivalent to late Foundation Establishment for human cultivators. None of us can escape.

“Its eggs won’t hatch, and I don’t know which demon beast talked it into this, but it heard that a cultivator’s spiritual energy can assist in hatching snake eggs. So it used fire dragon grass as bait and started catching cultivators to hatch eggs for it.”

After hearing this, Yun Xi understood the full story. Mu Ning Zhu brought a team into the Bao Hua Mountain Range to train, and because the three-headed snake’s fire dragon grass was old, it caught their attention.

As the team leader, Mu Ning Zhu was cautious. She only led Qin Tong Shuang and the others to quickly harvest when the guarding three-headed snake left to hunt. But they still fell into a trap and were wiped out in one swoop.

They thought they were doomed, but instead the three-headed snake gave each of them a snake egg and set a deadline. If they couldn’t hatch them, they would become the three-headed snake’s food.

The cold and aloof Qin Tong Shuang had long since lost her usual calm, and she rattled off the whole story in a rush. It matched Yun Xi’s guess. Now the only way they had any chance was to hold on long enough for Sheng Yu Hong to find them.

“Are these people also fellow disciples from the Hao Ran Sect?” Yun Xi glanced at the unfamiliar faces. Since they weren’t wearing sect robes, she couldn’t tell and could only ask directly.

“These four are also fellow disciples from the Hao Ran Sect,” Qin Tong Shuang said. “Two of them accepted the search task and came to investigate the fire dragon grass patch too, then they were kidnapped by the three-headed snake.”

Yun Xi rubbed her chin. That three-headed snake really did have a brain. It was using a lure-and-ambush tactic. As long as the Hao Ran Sect disciples weren’t found, more and more disciples would keep coming.

It kidnapped weak ones like her. As for Sheng Yu Hong’s group of Foundation Establishment cultivators, the three-headed snake simply ignored them. Not because it couldn’t win, but because there was no need. Human cultivators had more methods than the Demon Clan.

Sheng Yu Hong’s team had six Foundation Establishment cultivators. If they fought to the death, the three-headed snake wouldn’t gain much. That was why it never showed itself when Sheng Yu Hong was investigating the site.

But when she and Long Dao Yu showed up, the three-headed snake locked onto them.

After understanding their situation, Yun Xi asked the most important question. “Martial Aunt Mu, you’ve been here for more than half a month. Have these snake eggs shown any signs of movement?”

Everyone fell silent and shook their heads. If the eggs had shown signs, they wouldn’t be in such a miserable state.

A senior brother snapped, “We’ve drained so much spiritual energy, and these eggs haven’t moved at all!”

Yun Xi dared to guess, “They’re dea—”

Before she could say “dead,” Qin Tong Shuang covered her mouth.

“Shh. Don’t say it. Otherwise, that three-headed snake will go crazy.”

Yun Xi blinked to show she understood, and only then did Qin Tong Shuang let go.

Mu Ning Zhu sighed. “We suspected the same thing before. But when we probed with spiritual energy, there really is demon power surging inside the eggs. They just won’t hatch. I don’t know why.”

Everyone was on the verge of losing their minds. Yun Xi also held her snake egg and started studying it. She tried sending in her spiritual energy, but it felt like a stone sinking into the sea, with no response.

She pressed her ear to the egg and listened. There was no movement. Finally, she carefully sent her late Foundation Establishment spiritual sense into the egg. A moment later, she said with a dark expression, “We’ll never hatch these eggs in our lifetime.”