Liu Xing was busy shooting at his enemy. He ran around in the forest while shooting. Sometimes he used the remaining trees to maneuver, sometimes he ran on the centipede's spine while shooting it. Throughout the entire battle, his most serious injuries were on his back, and the bleeding had already stopped thanks to his vitality.
The centipede was not ridiculously large now. Liu Xing had successfully chipped away at the beast little by little.
As the sun began to rise, the centipede had shrunk to the size of a large shipping container, with fewer feet and significantly smaller heads and fangs. Liu Xing felt that the time for chipping away was over; now he could defeat Ji Dongyang.
The area around Liu Xing for hundreds of meters was now flat. There were no trees, mushrooms, or anything else—just numerous holes and craters from his explosive bullets and the centipede's attempts to ram itself into the ground.
The centipede now moved like a train toward Liu Xing, its many heads staring at him with rage, as if all of them wanted to tear him apart. Its many feet propelled the giant body forward.
Liu Xing stood his ground and started shooting rapidly. Each bullet hit the centipede perfectly, blowing away several heads only to have them replaced by others.
As the centipede approached, Liu Xing jumped into the sky and turned his body in mid-air. Now with his feet pointing to the sky and his face downward, Liu Xing shot rapidly, destroying the centipede's spine, making it look as though a giant were taking bites out of it like a cookie.
The wound soon regenerated, but Liu Xing glimpsed something strange inside its body. Instead of flesh or bone, in one part of the body, there was a brown shell resembling a chicken egg. Liu Xing didn't know the anatomy of a giant centipede made from thousands of spirit beasts, but that thing was certainly not normal. Liu Xing suspected that was where Ji Dongyang was hiding.
Nodding to himself, Liu Xing made that shell his target.
After deciding on his course of action, Liu Xing landed on the ground. As soon as his feet touched down, he kicked off the ground and appeared on top of the giant centipede. Standing on a head resembling that of a giant wolf, Liu Xing watched the world rush by around him, as if he were a stuntman performing atop a speeding train.
Pointing his gun at several heads in front of him, Liu Xing pulled the trigger several times, creating holes in the centipede's body. Finding no shell where he shot, he moved forward and fired again.
By now, the centipede had realized he was on its back, so it stopped moving forward and began burrowing into the ground. Liu Xing knew he didn't want to ride it while it tunneled, so he shot frantically, searching for the shell where Ji Dongyang was hiding.
After shooting the head of a bear spirit beast, causing it to explode into smithereens and create a hole in the centipede's body, Liu Xing saw the edge of the brown shell.
"There you are!" Liu Xing shouted.
He rushed toward the shell. Another head tried to close the hole, but Liu Xing shot it again. When he reached the blast hole, Liu Xing spun like a whirlwind, digging into the centipede flesh with a lightning blade. After a moment, Liu Xing stood inside the centipede with a half-buried shell that looked like a giant chicken egg in front of him.
"Ji Dongyang, come out!" Liu Xing slashed at the egg in front of him. A slimy liquid gushed out, and the giant centipede roared so loudly it created a shockwave. The roar sounded like that of a wounded beast, as if his slash had struck the most painful nerve.
Liu Xing slashed relentlessly, shattering the shell until he faced a monstrous creature with the face of an angler fish. Its form melted away, leaving only the skull of an angler fish with red light for eyes.
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When their eyes met, Ji Dongyang lunged at him, claws aimed for Liu Xing's neck. Quickly dodging, Liu Xing unleashed his Lightning Palm Technique and struck the angler fish's skull. Instantly, the skull shattered into dust.
The centipede emitted a piercing roar, its every fiber vibrating as it disintegrated into a writhing mass of flesh and sinew, the amalgamation of many spirit beasts' heads. Seems like Ji Dongyang is the center of this centipede beast. Defeating him automatically makes the centipede monster lose its form. The head and flash around him start to fall. Amidst the falling flesh, Liu Xing grabbed a writhing white snake that was slithering out of the shattered skull. It bore a human head with bushy eyebrows and a bushy mustache.
"Now," Liu Xing declared, "are you ready to talk, Ji Dongyang?"
The head grimaced, unable to flee, defeated and at Liu Xing's mercy.
***
Liu Xing emerged from the melting flesh. He stood atop a mound of severed limbs and heads, looking like a hero who had slain a beast terrorizing the world. Surveying the area, Liu Xing realized their battle had forever altered the Dragon Skull Forest.
"Will this place still be called Dragon Skull Forest?" Liu Xing muttered. The Skull Hill, the forest's main landmark, was now leveled. Instead of a hill, a shallow crater remained, filled with giant holes created by the centipede. Blood and spirit beast heads littered every inch of the crater, like remnants of a demonic ritual.
Tilting his head, Liu Xing noticed he was directly beneath the blue portal. Initially hovering a few meters above the ground, the portal now floated hundreds of meters above since the Skull Hill was gone. The cultivators inside would fall upon exiting the pocket dimension, but they would likely survive the descent.
Liu Xing turned his attention to the white snake with a human head clenched in his right fist. Ji Dongyang struggled and tried to bite his hand, but his small snake body and human head is weak, barely stronger than a five-year-old. The bites wouldn't even scratch Liu Xing's skin.
Liu Xing squeezed his hand, making Ji Dongyang grimace.
"I'll talk. Please stop hurting me!"
Liu Xing loosened his grip and sat cross-legged atop a giant wolf head.
"Wasn't that easy? If you had agreed to chat earlier, we wouldn't have fought for three days and two nights. Look what you did to Skull Hill." Liu Xing pointed behind him.
Ji Dongyang looked like he wanted to pounce on Liu Xing and slap him, but he swallowed his emotions.
"What do you want to know?" Ji Dongyang asked.
"What is the 'shadow' you use? Is it your technique, a byproduct of your cultivation, or something else?"
Ji Dongyang remained silent. When Liu Xing squeezed again, he finally spoke. "The shadow is two things: my technique and something else."
"Explain," demanded Liu Xing.
Ji Dongyang grimaced, reluctant to explain. "I obtained the shadow around three or four hundred years ago. At that time, I was a Sun Refining cultivator. I had a... disagreement with my sect, resulting in its disbandment."
Liu Xing raised an eyebrow. If Liu Xing is right, then what really happened is Ji Dongyang picked a fight with his sect and in the end annihilated them.
"What's your sect's name?"
"Blood Wing Sect, a small sect in the north. Our cultivation technique was... unorthodox, and we didn't get along with other sects."
"Blood Wing Sect," Liu Xing muttered. He tried to recall the name but had never heard of it. Probably because Ji Dongyang annihilated them, or because they are probably a demonic sect, and demonic sects tend to hide themselves.
Demonic sects are the enemy of mankind. They justify any means to achieve immortality. Some refine pills from humans, some sacrifice other cultivators, and some possess others for strength. When Ji Dongyang possessed Mo Yan, Liu Xing suspected him of being a demonic cultivator but didn't dwell on it.
"All right, let's not beat around the bush. You're a demonic cultivator. Hundreds of years ago, you annihilated the Blood Wing Sect. Is that correct?"
Ji Dongyang's lips formed a straight line, then he nodded.
"I don't know if what you did was good or bad. On one hand, you annihilated a sect; on the other, the sect you annihilated was demonic."
Ji Dongyang snorted. "You don't need to think too much about it. You Purple Moon Sect disciples think there's a difference between demonic and righteous cultivators, but in reality, every cultivator is the same. Have you heard of the Jade Palace Sect's destruction? The one who destroyed it is called a sage, even though he did the same thing I did."