On a pitch black windless night, squatting behind the leaves of an old branched tree, Yun Fei calmed his heart, focusing his dark purple pupils on the slumbering serpent.
‘I have waited for 4 months for this day. Today is the day we clear our debts. Every gripe has its origin, and every debt it’s debtor. You dared to treat me as your food that day.
Today, I will finish you off and savour your Qi filled flesh.’
Yun Fei had observed this monstrous snake for many days, picking today as the day of battle because the wind was rather weak today, increasing the accuracy of his archery.
Noticing the pit organs situated near the nostrils, he thought, ‘Those are the only hurdles to my stealth, without them to detect my temperature, it will be as blind as a bat at this time of the night.’
After four months of training, his eyes could see much better, 360° around him for an appropriate distance, and even through opaque objects if they were in a 100 metres radius.
Yun Fei’s body had further strengthened because of his brutish way of absorbing Qi, which would just be suicide for any normal human. With stronger bones and firmer flesh, Yun Fei knew that he wouldn’t be getting hurt as easily as before.
Although he had prepared well for this fight, there was still an element of danger. This beast had thrived in the unforgiving wilds, living and cultivating for many years amidst competition from outsiders and its own species.
It has risen to the top, on its own steam. Yun Fei was not naïve enough to believe that it would fall just because he asked it to. What followed would be a tough fight, the opponent’s trump cards may even threaten his life, but only through this sort of life and death struggles would Yun Fei maintain his speed of cultivation, for benefits and risk always go hand in hand.
Sucking in a deep breath, he fired off two shots. Tearing the air, the arrows alerted the always vigilant predator. The arrows had been shot from a distance of 150 metres but by the time the snake noticed, it was too late to dodge them and within a short interval it felt the searing pain of its pit organs being decimated.
Spasming in the unbearable pain, it was pierced repeatedly by a few more shots, the arrowheads lodged in its stringy muscle making it pulse with waves of pain.
Knowing that the snake would soon regain its senses and rush to his position, Yun Fei circled around to the previously placed quivers he had hidden on trees around the area.
In his first hiding spot, he had hidden a gourd of green liquid. Before even picking up the quiver, he quickly grabbed the bottle, clambering up the tree faster than a monkey would with its ass on fire.
Spotting the rapidly moving snake, he aimed carefully, managing to land the liquid filled gourd right on the flat face. The specially prepared gourd broke on contact, splashing the liquid on the head of the snake.
The green liquid had been squeezed out of an unknown plant that Yun Fei had found on the banks of the brook. It had a thoroughly revolting smell and had the disgusting effect of causing one’s eyes to tear up, watering profusely.
Under the dual sensory assault of his nose and his blurry eyes, the snake let out a blood-curdling scream of frustration at being brought to such a state by a hairless monkey.
Digging out from his bag of tricks had paid off, the almost complete sensory incapacitation of the snake gave Yun Fei his only chance of inflicting permanent damage to such a behemoth.
Yun Fei, somewhat satisfied with his initial ambush, quickly changed his position and tried to keep a distance from the snake’s head which was hunkered down, trying to minimize damage to the vitals.
‘Trying to hide your head won’t save you today, it’s not like you can hide your whole gigantic body from my arrows.’
Yun Fei said in his head as he tried to make as little noise as he possibly could. He pulled out another arrow from his quiver and started shooting the exposed parts of the snake with the arrows.
Again and again, Yun Fei shot out an endless barrage of arrows, turning the neck and body of the serpent into a pincushion. Slowly the snake started reacting faster, whipping some arrows out of the air, but it was helpless to block the hail of projectiles.
Its attempts to hide its body were all in vain as there just wasn’t enough cover to hide all of its body into the shallow water of the swamp, even if some parts were submerged in it. A mere 2 meters deep water wasn’t able to reduce too much force from Yun Fei’s arrows.
Finally understanding its situation, the snake’s tail extended towards the direction Yun Fei was in and tried to slam it on him. Having already anticipated this move of the snake, Yun Fei simply changed his tree and shot towards the part of the snake above water.
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The tail kept on pursuing Yun Fei, and he kept shooting arrows at it while retreating backwards on the trees.
As Yun Fei was retreating backwards from the tail, the gigantic maw suddenly shot out from inside the water, targeting Yun Fei who was currently midair.
Yun Fei’s heart beat wildly as he realised that he had started ignoring the head of the snake. He stared at the open maw that represented death itself coming to swallow him and thought,
‘A simple mistake in this fight can lead to the light of my life flickering out. This cannot ever be repeated.’
As the snake’s maw almost reached him, Yun Fei grabbed the bow at one end and poked the other end of the bow on a fang that was jutting out from the maw of the snake, using it to move himself out of the way of the trajectory of the bite, creating distance between them.
A snap echoed as the mouth of the snake closed without swallowing anything.
Returning once again to his strategy of guerilla warfare, Yun Fei kept firing arrows while dodging the retaliation of the snake, trying to deal as much damage as he could.
However, it seemed that Yun Fei had underestimated the advantage of size. Any quality, when brought to the extreme, became a unique and fearsome weapon. For such a large animal, although the arrows were troublesome, inhibiting movement and causing pain and wounds that would take a long time to heal, these wounds were only superficial, allowing it to keep up the fight.
Feeling that his advantage would be short lived if he did not act expeditiously, Yun Fei decided to rush his plan and prepared to bring the fight to the snake. Pausing on a large flat rock, he set down his bow and quiver and disrobed completely.
His lithe, unblemished body glistened in the faint moonlight, coated with a thick layer of animal fat which made it extremely slippery.
Leaping down to a fallen log, Yun Fei ran with a soft patter with his arms raised, balancing himself.
As the snake’s head shot towards him, he used the Ruler’s Jolt for the first time in this fight.
‘The prowess of my eyes have increased a lot since 4 months ago, it will definitely become immobile for some time,’ Yun Fei thought as he moved towards the snake with some speed.
The serpent slowed down enough for Yun Fei to make his move.
With a soft shout, he heaved himself to the snake’s neck, stabbing downward with his dagger to create a handhold. Hanging precariously from the deeply embedded dagger, Yun Fei slammed his fist savagely on the flat head of the worm, disorienting it as it swayed, trying to dislodge the dagger.
The snake slammed its head against a tree, sandwiching Yun Fei, driving out all the air from his lungs as he coughed up blood, feeling himself slowly drown as his rib pierced his lung.
Grimacing and gasping with long breaths, Yun Fei tried to maintain his grasp on the dagger but he could do nothing but try his best as his hand was forcefully shook off by the struggle fo the snake, leaving it buried in the scales.
Yun Fei slid off the tree, battered and immobilised, falling slowly into the swamp without being able to move a limb.
Injured and disarmed, he could only stare as the snake shook off its dizziness, stretched opened its giant maw and breathed out a dense poisonous vapour, trying to seal Yun Fei’s death before swallowing him.
Pervaded by the extremely poisonous venom, Yun Fei could hold onto his consciousness no longer and started blacking out.
Seeing the transgressor pass out, the serpent grabbed Yun Fei’s body with its teeth, threw it into the air and swallowed it in one big gulp.
The completely helpless Yun Fei could only think as his mind devolved into darkness ‘So this is how I die… the embarrassment. I have let Sun Ming down, I have let myself down…. No...’
Yun Fei’s short life flashed in front of his eyes, he saw himself completely helpless in his childhood, always getting pushed around.
He saw how he finally reached this forest, where he beat down all the predators. He was no longer a cripple, and had a body filled with power. He could finally cultivate but all those memories were slowly swirling and breaking, sinking into a black hole inside his mind.
As he passed through the wet and pulsing gullet, a strange change came over the unconscious Yun Fei.
The black hole that devoured his memories gurgled, gurgling out a dark red colour which gave a very malicious feeling, eviler than all.
The dark colour spread inside his mind, his whole soul was red and the red colour kept gurgling out, dying his hair red too.
His horns started growing and curving, and strange patterns began emerging on them.
His body crackled as his wounds healed at a visible rate, a muffled crack sounded out as his ribs set into place.
His canines grew as they started protruding out of his mouth, and his muscles bulged as if they were gaining mass from nowhere.
In a moment Yun Fei was completely unrecognisable, looking more like a beast than any species with high spirituality.
With nary a sound, as if still unconscious, the transformed Yun Fei punched out with his right hand as his eyelids snapped open, revealing pitch black eyes concealing the endless abyss.
His mouth formed into a snarl as his punch punctured through the digestive membrane of the snake. Flailing like an animal, Yun Fei scraped, bit and tore the body of the snake, filled with bursting strength beyond all limits.
This was the birth of a true berserker, the serpent was helpless to the havoc wreaked inside it and twisted in its death throes as Yun Fei ripped out his way from the snake’s stomach, biting the snake's vertebrae between his teeth.
Tearing and destroying all he could feel, the transformed Yun Fei tore a hole out of the body of the snake.
Feeling the sun shine on his exposed face, the feral Yun Fei slumped on the edge of the hole he had created in the snake’s body. His body deflating like a popped balloon, it fell into a comatose state.
The fight had outlasted the night, the marsh was silent as the King lay dead….. all hail the new king.