As he descended from the air, Liu Xing surveyed his surroundings. The number of spirit beasts was dwindling. Although there were still hundreds of them, it was only a matter of time before he would be able to defeat them all.
Firing rapidly at the spirit beasts gathering below, Liu Xing pondered how many he had dispatched. Hundreds, perhaps thousands. If he could absorb the energy from the bullets created from all the beast cores, he might advance to the seventh stage or even reach the Core Splitting realm, potentially completing two or three cores. It was frustrating that he couldn't cultivate while moving.
Upon landing amidst the remains of spirit beasts, Liu Xing scanned for Ji Dongyang.
There had been no sign of him for hours, and Liu Xing was afraid that Ji Dongyang might have fled. The only reason Liu Xing didn't run away himself was because he wanted to find out the truth about Ji Dongyang's shadow.
Suddenly, the ground trembled beneath Liu Xing's feet, and he watched in horror as a massive centipede emerged from the ground, its roar echoing in his ears like the scraping of glass against glass. This colossal creature was so huge that Liu Xing felt dwarfed, as if he were standing in front of a skyscraper.
Upon closer inspection, Liu Xing realized it wasn't a single centipede but a conglomeration of thousands of spirit beasts forming a gigantic centipede. Every inch of its body, from its myriad feet to its torso and even its face, was composed of spirit beasts. It appeared as though a child, bored with countless spirit beast dolls, had glued them together to create this monstrous amalgamation. The only genuine centipede features were its two enormous fangs.
Jutting from its forehead was a single figure—Ji Dongyang.
"Liu Xing!" Ji Dongyang shouted. "You forced my hand! The Purple Moon Sect will be my enemy, and I will hunt down your clan and slaughter your entire family!"
A cacophony of roars, screams, and growls erupted from each head of the giant centipede. As if accusing Liu Xing of Ji Dongyang's creation of this monstrous form, all eyes were fixed on Liu Xing.
Liu Xing gulped. The centipede cast a shadow that obscured half of Skull Hill, eclipsing the sun. Initially, the thought of fleeing crossed his mind. After all, battling a horde of spirit beasts was vastly different from confronting a colossal single entity. His gun was better suited for hordes rather than singular titans.
However, he couldn't escape. He had to find out the truth about Ji Dongyang's shadow. What if Nui, Joni, and Mamat suffered because he ran away from that giant spirit beast? He couldn't forgive himself for letting them down. They were his friends, and the mission to fight the darkness was the most important task in his life. He wasn't going to give up on that mission. He had to try to defeat this creature and force Ji Dongyang to reveal the truth.
The centipede shrieked, and the rest of the spirit beasts rushed towards the centipede, seemingly wanting to merge with it to make it bigger, and when all of the spirit beasts merged with it, it lunged its head at Liu Xing.
Quickly dodging, Liu Xing watched as the centipede burrowed into the ground, raising a cloud of dust that billowed into the sky. It dug a tunnel, causing the earth to tremble.
Moments later, the centipede emerged from beneath him. Ji Dongyang was sticking out of the centipede's forehead, his anglerfish face melting away, leaving only bones and slimy appendages with a pink hue. His eyes glowed crimson red like pools of glowing blood.
Liu Xing fired at Ji Dongyang three times, each bullet infused with beast core qi and Exploding Fist Technique. Several spirit beast heads moved, forming a shield in front of Ji Dongyang, and exploded. For a brief moment, Liu Xing saw the raw red flesh beneath the decimated heads, a gush of red blood flowing like a waterfall, before new heads sprouted and sealed the wounds, and Ji Dongyang sank into the flesh of this monster.
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It seemed that while each individual head remained intact, the rest of their bodies melded into a single mass of flesh. Every head on its body resembled a living tumor.
Seeing this regenerative ability, Liu Xing grimaced. If every wound on his body could regenerate, what chance did he have of winning?
However, his focus quickly returned to his gun. He had fired three bullets just now, leaving him with three remaining. Yet, he now realized his gun was once again loaded with six bullets.
The centipede monster opened its massive maw wide, attempting to devour Liu Xing. He leaped aside as the centipede burrow underground again, the creature body arched through the sky before completely disappearing into the earth.
Feeling the bullets in his gun, Liu Xing's heart raced with excitement.
As he watched the centipede monster, he understood Ji Dongyang's plan. Although the creature was large and formidable, it wasn't particularly fast, and it didn't have any apparent special abilities beyond ramming or trying to eat him.
Liu Xing was faster, and as long as he didn't make any mistakes, he could easily dodge his attacks. However, he had no way to harm this colossal opponent - this was Ji Dongyang's strategy. His goal was to discourage Liu Xing from fighting, to convince him that there was no way to win, while still leaving a tempting escape route.
Liu Xing's main concern was that he wasn't fit to fight one big monster. His gun was more suited to fighting hordes of spirit beasts, as it could essentially create infinite bullets as long as there were enemies. But this big centipede didn't count as one enemy. Each and every head on its body was counted as a separate spirit beast, possibly because each head still contained a beast core. This meant Liu Xing wasn't fighting one monster, but a horde of monsters moving as one.
"Alright!" Confidence began to grow in his heart. He would defeat Ji Dongyang and make him talk. He would chip away at that giant centipede and win.
When the giant centipede burst from below his feet with its mouth wide open, Liu Xing jumped away, aiming towards the six spirit beasts in its heads and shot rapidly. Each head exploded, and his gun refilled with bullets again, which he fired once more.
The centipede roared, rising to the sky like a tower and crashing down towards him. Liu Xing jumped backward several times. When it hit the ground, the entirety of Skull Hill trembled and some ground started to cave away.
Jumping lightly into the sky, Liu Xing shot six more bullets, again and again. When he landed, the giant centipede burst from the ground and tried to devour him once more.
Liu Xing started running downhill. The centipede chased him, and Liu Xing turned around several times to shoot its heads, creating wounds that always closed after several seconds.
When the centipede tried to crash into him again, Liu Xing moved, and so the dance began anew.
Liu Xing dashed forward, firing relentlessly. For now, every head he shot was soon replaced by another, but he knew that sooner or later, it would run out of spirit beasts to regenerate.
From a distance, Skull Hill began to lose its shape. Before, it resembled a giant lizard's head, but with so many holes and destruction around it, it now looked like a fragile mound of dirt full of holes. And after Liu Xing ran around the hill and the centipede tunneled inside, the hill began to collapse.
Liu Xing ran and fired amidst huge boulders, stones, and debris flying around. The centipede destroyed what remained of Skull Hill like a drill piercing tofu. Since the centipede mainly attacked from underground, Liu Xing's bullets also exploded what was left of Skull Hill, flattening Skull Hill until it changed from a fierce-looking hill to a wide, flat bowl full of holes made by the centipede and craters from explosions.
As a cultivator at the fifth stage, his stamina was tremendous but not monstrous. If he fought normally with his own qi, Liu Xing would be half-dead after half a day. However, since all his attacks used energy from the beast cores, he only used his qi to maintain the Lightning Cloak.
Liu Xing felt very familiar with this technique now, as if he had used it since birth. But what amazed him was how ridiculously efficient this Lightning Cloak was. The qi intake was so efficient that Liu Xing felt he could maintain this technique nonstop for a week, which again made him realize how amazing his gun was.
Like that, several days passed.