CH 247

Channeling courage into his body, Hao Ren slowly rose to his feet and pulled out a large chunk of animal meat from his Storage Bag. Practically every cultivator would keep some food in their Storage Bag just in case.

He raised the meat and tossed it in the direction of the Great Serpent, but contrary to his expectations, the creature ignored him and the meat completely. He tried a couple more times to no avail.

“It’s no use, Brother Yi Ye…” said Hao Ren while sweat dripped down his head.

Lu Ye exhaled once before saying, “You should leave. It’s been watching me since the beginning. Unless I’m mistaken, it shouldn’t bother you if you leave.”

“What about you?”

“I have my ways.”

Hao Ren hesitated for a good while before he finally nodded. “Okay. Take care, Brother Yi Ye.”

After exchanging a glance with Hao Qing, the two ghost cultivators began backing off bit by bit.

As it turned out, Lu Ye’s prediction was spot on. Forget bothering them, the Great Serpent hadn’t looked at them even once. The Hao brother and sister were annoyed yet relieved they did not matter to the Great Serpent one bit.

When they were around three hundred or so meters away from the area, they finally vanished into thin air.

Meanwhile, Lu Ye was doing his best to figure out what about him had caught the Great Serpent’s attention.

According to Hao Ren, he and his sister had passed by the lake multiple times and never encountered the Great Serpent. He, on the other hand, caught its attention right from the get go. He couldn’t chalk it up as bad luck either, since it wouldn’t explain why it was so fixated on him.

Lu Ye carefully recalled everything he had done since arriving at this lake. Then, he grabbed the still stiffened Amber by its leg and held it in front of himself.

For the first time, the Great Serpent’s eyes moved. Its gaze was following Amber.

Just in case, he tried moving Amber to another side and got the same response.

He could now confirm that the Great Serpent wasn’t looking at him, but Amber. The reason he made an error in judgment just now was because the creature’s eyes were so big that he couldn’t be sure.

There was a chance the Great Serpent was interested in Amber because it was a Mutant, but Lu Ye thought that the red mist it consumed a while ago was the real reason.

If it was simply interested in Amber, it would’ve appeared as soon as Lu Ye’s group arrived at the lake, if not sooner. In reality, it had appeared only after Amber had consumed the red mist of the dragon scale. In other words, it had been attracted by the dragon scale he took out earlier.

Dragons and serpents were thought to share similar characteristics, and the Great Serpent was probably some sort of serpentine Spirit Beast. That was why the dragon scale’s red mist had attracted it.

He still couldn’t be one hundred percent sure though. Thankfully, there was one way to verify this immediately.

“Yi Yi.”

“Mhm.”

“Take it and slip the underground!”

Right after he said this, Lu Ye pulled the dragon scale out of his Storage Bag and tossed it into Yi Yi’s hands. At the same time, a pair of fiery wings spread behind his back and took him to the sky.

Yi Yi dove into the underground immediately after she caught the dragon scale, and not a moment too soon. Almost immediately after Lu Ye had taken to the sky, the massive serpent had slammed its head into the spot Yi Yi was standing just a moment ago. The impact was so great that it left a giant pit on the ground, and the shockwave pushed Lu Ye further away from the Great Serpent. It was a good thing of course.

Lu Ye did not dare to look behind him until he was at least three hundred meters above the ground. He immediately saw a gigantic snake striking the ground again and again in an attempt to dig out the hiding Yi Yi.

Spirit Beast energy washed through the area, and his eardrums buzzed unpleasantly at the continuous impact. Each time the Great Serpent struck, the ground would shake like an earthquake. It only took a moment for it to beat out a crater that was at least fifty meters wide and dozens of meters deep.

‘I knew it!’ Lu Ye thought when he saw this. ‘It’s definitely attracted by the dragon scale!’

Regardless of the origin of the dragon scale, it must be very beneficial to the Great Serpent. It would not have been drawn out into the open otherwise.

It had reached the peak of its growth a long time ago. That was why it spent most of its time in the lake these days. A sophist would claim the Great Serpent was enjoying the retirement life because it had already reached the pinnacle. A realist would say it was drifting aimlessly because it literally could not grow stronger no matter how hard it cultivated.

It was a different story if it could obtain the dragon scale, however. It was a Serpent because it was one step away from becoming a Wyrm, and its instinct was telling it that the dragon scale was the key to achieving that! Once it had transformed into a Wyrm, It would be able to break through the Heavens’ confinement and escape this eternal prison once and for all!

Not far away, the Hao brother and sister gulped as they watched the Great Serpent hammering the ground like it had gone crazy. They had no idea what Lu Ye had done to piss it off so much.

The good news was that they could clearly see Lu Ye in the sky. Whatever he had done, he was not the target of the Great Serpent’s ire for the moment.

Lu Ye was still watching the Great Serpent from the sky and wondering his next move. He wasn’t worried about Yi Yi because of her ability to roam the underground unhindered. No matter how powerful the Great Serpent was, it would never be able to get to her unless it had the same ability, which it clearly didn’t.

Now, all they needed to do was to shake off their tail, which was… pretty easy actually. The only way the creature could follow the dragon scale was by sensing the red mist, meaning that all they needed to do was to isolate the dragon scale, a.k.a hiding it in a Storage Bag. There was no easier and faster way of doing it. 

Yi Yi did as she was told immediately after he sent her a message through the Battlefield Imprint. As if on cue, the Great Serpent hammered the crater harder than ever before.

Moments later, when it could no longer perceive the dragon scale no matter what it tried, the Great Serpent finally turned around and slithered back to the lake. It was clear from its flicking tongue and the unstable energy around its body that it was anything but calm.

The Great Serpent was just about to reenter the lake when suddenly, an idea struck Lu Ye’s mind like a lightning bolt: what would happen if he lured the Great Serpent to the Outpost?

This creature was obviously at the same level as Gray. If his plan worked, Sky Pillar Sect’s cultivators would be in for the most exciting night of their lives.

Originally, Lu Ye had come to the Inner Circle with the aim of honing his own strength and taking revenge against all the sects who had wronged him during the Battle of Goldentip. He was going to kill as many Sky Pillar Sect cultivators as he could without putting himself at risk.

With this latest revelation… perhaps he could dream a little bigger?

Of course, it all hinged on whether he could lure the Great Serpent to the Outpost.

“Yi Yi, take out the dragon scale and move in this direction!” Lu Ye messaged.

“Got it.” Yi Yi did not bother with the questions. She simply did as she was told and took out the dragon scale.

Beside the lake, the Great Serpent’s snout was inches away from the water when it sensed the dragon scale once more. Body stiffening like it had been struck by a lightning bolt, it immediately turned in the direction Yi Yi was “running” and gave chase. It was surprisingly nimble despite being over sixty meters long. His first thought was that even Amber could not outrun the creature at full speed, much less Yi Yi.

So far, it definitely looked like the Great Serpent could sense the red mist of the dragon scale. It was about what he expected from the ridiculously powerful Spirit Beast.

The snake-and-ghost chase went on for about an hour or so. Then, the Great Serpent suddenly stopped and started hammering the ground once more. It was because Lu Ye had ordered Yi Yi to travel deeper into the ground.

The reason he ordered this was because he wanted to know the range of the Great Serpent’s senses. This was the only way since Yi Yi could not outrun it.

That said, Yi Yi’s ability to traverse the underground unhindered wasn’t limitless. The deeper she traveled into the underground, the greater the interference of the omnipresent underground force field. It was similar to the force field of a Yuan Metal in the sense that it could shackle one’s Spiritual Power. Therefore, the deeper she traveled, the less of her spiritual Power she could use. If she reached a point where her Spiritual Power was fully shackled, then she would be trapped in the underground for eternity.

Three hundred meters below surface level was the deepest Yi Yi could travel into the underground right now. At that depth, over half of her Spiritual Power was unusable. To go any deeper than that was to risk permanent entrapment—not death since was a ghost—which was a fate literally worse than death.

A moment later, Yi Yi messaged, “How is it?”

“It’s enough.”

Despite having traveled three hundred meters into the ground, the Great Serpent was still hammering away like no tomorrow. It had already dug out a giant crater that was about forty meters deep. At this rate, assuming Yi Yi stayed exactly where she was, the Great Serpent would be able to dig her out in less than two hours.

“It’s time to move. I’ll guide you where you need to go,” Lu Ye messaged again.

“Mhm.”

Very soon, the Great Serpent began moving in a certain direction once more. Wherever it went, trees were crushed like toothpicks, and the ground was carved inward like butter.

Lu Ye corrected Yi Yi’s direction a couple more times until she was heading exactly where she needed to go. Then, he dropped back to the ground, grabbed Amber—it had recovered by this point—and dropped it on the ground.

The Hao brother and sister ran out of the nearby trees with confused looks on their faces.

“What’s going on, Brother Yi Ye? Is Sister Yi Yi okay?”

Lu Ye climbed onto Amber’s back and answered, “Don’t worry, Yi Yi is perfectly safe right now. As for what’s going on… let’s just say that the Sky Pillar Sect is out of luck today.”

“Sky Pillar Sect is out of luck?” At first, Hao Ren could not make heads or tails of the answer. Then, he glanced at the direction the Great Serpent was headed to and exclaimed in realization, “Is it heading toward the Outpost?”

“Unless I’m gravely mistaken, yes!”

“But why?”

“Who knows? Maybe it’s feeling under the weather and wants to go on a killing spree to relieve itself? Anyway, this is where we part ways, Brother Hao, Sister Hao. Be seeing you.”

Amber took off after the Great Serpent after he said this, leaving behind a pair of very confused siblings.

Lu Ye was certain that they could lure the Great Serpent all the way to the Outpost considering how attracted it was to the red mist within dragon scale. Not only that, the Outpost must be overflowing with people after he and the Hao siblings had conquered their ore vein.

There was still some time before the sun rose, so the Sky Pillar Sect would not dare to send anyone away from the Outpost. They would wait until the sun rose before making a move.

They might be ready for a sudden invasion, but Lu Ye would bet that a Serpent was the last thing they expected to see!

He could not wait to see the shock and horror on their faces already.

Of course, Lu Ye had no idea if the Great Serpent was powerful enough to break through the Outpost’s Grand Defensive Ward. Since he was the one who started this mess, it was his responsibility to see it through.

He did not invite the Hao brother and sister this time because he could imagine that the situation was going to be pure chaos. They might be a minor realm higher than him, but he wasn’t going to risk their lives just to improve his chances of success a little more. 

Yes, parting ways then was the best outcome for both of them. In the end, they were just strangers who ran into one another by happenstance.

It was fine even if the Great Serpent failed to breach the Sky Pillar Sect’s Grand Defensive Ward. Casualties were guaranteed to occur as long as they clashed against one another. Worst case scenario, he still got to enjoy a good show.