The snake lay on the muddy waters of the marsh, with Yun Fei sticking out from a hole near the upper part of its long torso.
Unconscious, his face pale, he was undergoing visible recovery as the snake shrivelled up like a juiced fruit, as if blood and vitality were absorbed passively by the deep vortex that was Yun Fei’s body.
Yun Fei's body was recovering from all the damage it had sustained in the long fight and then the berserk run that had taxed his failing desperate consciousness when Yun Fei was grasped by the jaws of death.
"NO..." shouted Yun Fei loudly, as he rose up with a jerk from inside the scrunched up shell that was the snake, though it still carried the inherent tough flesh of a monster beast.
"I am alive..." exclaimed Yun Fei, hyperventilating as if he had woken up from a terrifying dream, as real as can be.
"Ah ahahhhhhh, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh" Yun Fei shouted his pain to the world as images flashed inside his head, fragmented memories of someone else. But Yun Fei knew that it had been him.
"Yun Fei, I am Yun Fei. I must kill the people of the monastery and Yun Moxie and must live a lavish life filled with thrill, cultivating to the peak of martial arts."
He repeated to himself as the memories threatened to overwhelm him. Looking at the withered body of the snake around him, Yun Fei understood a little about the situation.
"So I can devolve into such a beast which rampages and berserks when there is no path left for me, although it might be good in retrospect, trading your wit and intelligence for power is something that only idiots will do,
It's like jumping into an abyss, not knowing if you can ever climb back out of it again.
Slowly losing yourself to the desire to rend everything and consume everything, forgetting your memories, your purpose, this must be contained. I cannot afford a repeat of this situation whether it be my loss or the senseless carnage might push me to the realms of hell."
"Eroding your spirit for power is something which is like committing suicide to live a longer life, losing all meaning to your goals."
Not in any mood to celebrate his victory over a strong opponent, Yun Fei examined his body and found out that he was completely fine and the quantity of Qi in his cells had even increased a bit compared to before he fought the snake.
This could be explained by the overtly malicious ability of his berserker form, to absorb vitality to cure himself.
‘Although it's like a dry husk, the muscles can be used for a better bow string and the bones for better arrows. I am not in any position to waste such good materials.’
After resting and reordering the past events in his head Yun Fei recovered his bow and skinned the 65 metre long serpent.
‘I never knew that this snake was so damn long, it looks like my defeat was deserved, this just goes to show that my berserk form is undeniably strong. It would be perfect if I could control it.’
The long flexible muscles were shredded into strips, avoiding the damaged parts caused by Yun Fei’s arrows. They were twisted together to make a thick but stretchable string, further enhancing the power of the bow.
He used each individual vertebra to make a whole batch of incomparable arrows.
After spending a few more days preparing for the journey ahead, Yun Fei followed the higher concentration of Qi to a sharp ridge.
Looking down into the night, he saw flowing plains below, all which could be seen were moving carriages which carried some lamps to illuminate the path in the night, and also some moving lights which raced across the sky.
Observing the same place in daytime, Yun Fei could occasionally see cultivators fly on their flying swords and mortals travelling in caravans.
It was this sight which convinced Yun Fei that where he currently was sitting was the edge of a rectangular block in the middle of a plain, and the towering cliff he had first appeared near was probably the edge of another such block, arranged as if a tower.
Forget about the height of the block, Yun Fei couldn't even wander out of a set area, 60km wide. No matter how hard he tried he could not pass an impenetrable wall of mist that made this strip with only two ends.
“The edge has more Qi than the inner area, the Qi down there is probably more than the Qi here. However, there are humans too.”
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Yun Fei talked loudly as he looked 50 kilometres down at the caravans, moving in a line like purposeful ants. Even with his exceptional visual prowess, he could not make out the details.
"The humans will never accept me if I go looking like a monster to mingle with them. The path to my further cultivation can only be found amongst this society, I must adjust, mingling with the masses to get access to true cultivation methods and better resources. My brutish methods have reached their limits.”
Saying this out loud, Yun Fei grit his teeth bracing against the pain as he lifted up his dagger and swung his horns at the base, carefully avoiding his hair that had grown out these past years.
‘Although these horns are a part of me, they are inconsequential towards the greater trajectory of my life and must be discarded so that I have a better chance of survival amongst the society.’
Consoled by this truth, Yun Fei made a small pyre for his two horns and burned it.
It was on a moonless night that Yun Fei decided to begin his descent downwards, towards human society.
Arranging his hair to cover the stubs, wearing a quiver of arrows on his back, his bow on his shoulder and his dagger sheathed at his waist. Yun Fei began climbing down in his newly made snake skin robes.
Using the jagged terrain of the side of the rectangular block, Yun Fei had a rather easy time navigating the bare rock and he travelled quite a lot of distance.
"Woooooosh" a gust of wind flew as if trying to throw Yun Fei into the air.
The wind chipped away at rocks and dust, making them fall off the wall to the ground below.
‘It's as if the wind was being stopped by some force near the top, which doesn't have any effect here.’
Yun Fei slowly went downwards, a lot of times his grip almost failed him under the thrashing and whipping of gusts of wind especially when he was trying to find new footing to shift onto.
‘I'm finally getting used to the wind, this has become a great harvest for my ability to visualise the invisible wind currents.’
Moving downwards with grit and patience, Yun Fei was able to start predicting when a gust of wind would get weaker or when it would lash out with all its might. He could finally visualise the gusts by using Incorporeal Visualisation.
Although Incorporeal Visualisation was a very convenient ability, it mostly depended on the user's own comprehension to provide the image visualized.
If Yun Fei did not have any basic understanding of the wind and if he had not actively felt the wind currents, he wouldn't be able to properly utilise this ability to create a realistic image of the gusts of wind which helped him in choosing the time when the gust would be weak.
With the help of Incorporeal Visualisation, Yun Fei's brain could gain the view of the wind currents as if they were something visible which helped in shooting a bow or other functions that depended heavily on his ingenuity.
‘This ability is not simple, it has a vast untapped potential. I must constantly press myself to think of more appropriate applications of my abilities.’
Thinking more about his abilities and fighting experience in the forest, the ground gradually started getting closer and closer to Yun Fei.
Song Liang and Song Shifang were two bandit brothers who mainly worked around the Beru trade route.
They attacked merchants to steal their goods, and sometimes carriages with people travelling to some other towns which were connected by smaller routes through the Beru trade route.
They would slaughter the men and violate the women, selling them to slave merchants as merchandise for money.
The reason that the Song brothers could be so unrestrained was that they used to be disciples in a cultivation sect when they were younger.
Both of them had reached the 3rd stage of Qi condensation and were strong enough that mortals were no match for them and even the cultivators would avoid them if they didn't have a cultivation level much higher than them.
Cultivators usually only cared about comprehending the heavens and progressing in their cultivation, very few righteous cultivators would actually try to solve small-time bandits like the Song brothers who bullied the weak and used their cultivation base to run a bandit crew.
"Hahahahahaha, that town girl last month was something else. It's a pity we had to sell her to Bai Yunlai so soon. We should've kept her around to serve us for a little longer," said a boorish bandit to the others standing nearby, as they waited for an opportune prey before the fast approaching dawn.
"Don't be discouraged brother Feng, you can just visit that girl in the brothel down in Longyuan town. That's where Bai Yunlai sells all the girls we hand over to him," replied another bandit.
"Quiet! Somebody is walking towards here," cried Song Shifang in a commanding tone, instantly quelling all the small talk of the bandits and making them as quiet as they possibly could be.
Although these bandits didn't have any modicum of manners, they knew how to respect strength, and Song Shifang was the leader of this bandit group, with Song Liang as his second in command who was currently not here.
Facing the direction of the mist, the bandits assumed their stances as they heard the tip tap of footsteps getting closer.
"Hey, brothers. Is there a town or something nearby? Could you show me the way?"
A voice rang out reducing the tension amongst the bandits as they burst into a stifled laughter.
"What are you laughing for?" The voice rang out again.
"We are laughing because the prey has delivered itself right into the lion's mouth!" replied a bandit trying to control his laughter.
"Oh, so I have been marked down as a prey?" the voice sounded amused and the owner of the clear voice finally entered the view of the bandits.
It was Yun Fei who was wearing the snake skin robes, which were battered to basically just pieces of clothes covering very little of his body because of the perilous climb they had to suffer through, as Yun Fei had made his way down.