"A beast is still a beast after all. Alright, I've entertained this for too long, it's time to end this." Then, he brought out another talisman and tore it apart. The vast amount of energy inside swiftly converged into light green windy symbols that seeped into the deepest part of his body.

He bent down his legs, and with a formidable kick, he propelled himself forward with speed incomparable to the previous times. The wooden bell quietly flew above, and the square shield followed two meters in front of him.

The viper queen, realizing the danger, was the first to meet him in mid-air, using all of her physical strength.

Like the last time, she hurriedly coiled and compressed her lower body and with a jump, flew towards him headfirst. This time, however, she didn't underestimate him and coated all of her head with brown earth Qi, making it even more robust.

Lu Peng gently controlled the shield with his mind and made it block the incoming viper, which looked more like a colossal arrow than a snake.

Another loud boom echoed through the forest, but unlike last time, Lu Peng gained the upper hand. As the viper flew back due to the rebound, he slashed with his golden whip towards her.

In but the fraction of a second, the golden whip seemed to expand and easily twisted around her neck area, its sharp barbs struggling against the hard rough scales of the viper.

The other three snakes, unwilling to see their boss be humiliated, quickly joined the fray, although they were clearly overpowered.

Yet, although they were clearly weaker, their synergy was impeccable, and they were able to push Lu Peng backward a bit, giving a breather to their boss.

The viper queen seemed angry and just wanted to get this over with. She started to slowly slither her way towards their fight.

Lu Peng, who was paying attention the whole time, felt that something was wrong, but he couldn't point it out.

Just like the first time it attacked them, she slowly slithered as she gained speed by the fraction of a second. However, unlike the previous time, a black fog enveloped all of her body, making only her head visible. Then, with an unbelievably fast movement, she flew towards him in a beeline.

Realizing the seriousness of the situation, he kicked the black and white python with all of his strength, pushing it several meters backward. Knowing that the green viper couldn't penetrate his armor and the blue snake couldn't affect him that much mentally, he readied himself to meet her attack.

Yet, when she was just shy of two meters in front of him, where he could already see the soil stuck in her underbelly scales, she vanished!

Before he could even think about what happened, he felt a very sharp pain in the right side of his stomach.

Glancing down, he saw the viper's vicious eyes glaring at him while her fangs were already deep into his stomach injecting deadly venom.

The viper queen had disappeared and reappeared out of his shadow and bit down with vengeance, his seemingly impregnable armor was easily cut through with her lethally sharp fangs.

Lu Peng's mind went blank for a moment, then his neck veins turned black as a tremendous amount of blood flowed down his leg guards after being blocked by the armor.

Feeling a mixture of shock, disbelief, and horror, Lu Peng froze for a second. However, he quickly regained his bearings, and looking at those vicious eyes, he glared back with an even more menacing expression.

He dropped his whip, and in his right hand, a pitch-black rounded object appeared. Not wasting any more time, he grabbed that object with force and pushed it down towards the viper's left eye.

Sensing that something was amiss and being satisfied with the amount of venom injected, she tried to back away, but it was too late. The pitch-black rounded object seemed to pierce through her steel-hard eyelids as if they weren't even there and dissolved her entire left eye.

But it didn't end there! Lu Peng, sensing that she had let go, jumped backward, and the moment he did so, a loud explosion was heard, which made even him lose his footing.

The pitch-black rounded object had exploded directly inside the viper queen's eye socket!

A high-pitched hiss sounded, filled with pain, fear, and unwillingness, but there was also something else.

The moment the three snakes heard it, they rushed toward Lu Peng, who was by now almost purple. His speed seemed slow, his breathing uneven, and his heartbeat was awfully slow as well.

He started to feel lightheaded, dizzy, and on the verge of losing consciousness as the three snakes attacked together.

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To make matters worse, his wooden bell, which was responsible for reflecting all of the mental attacks he received, had already vanished, leaving him in an even more vulnerable position.

The old man Lu Peng, being at the receiving end of all of this, felt his mind going crazy due to all of the negative impacts, and he madly shouted, scaring the three snakes momentarily before they continued their attacks once again.

The viper queen had already fallen backward on her back as if she had died or lost consciousness, but in reality, she had already consumed a very precious healing pill that she took out from her own spatial ring and started recuperating.

At first, Lu Peng thought that using his golden armor, black shield, and wooden bell would enable him to hold off the three snakes and take the insects to escape. However, the fight had already dragged on for too long, and he didn't foresee the end of the wooden bell, which comprised all of his plans in the fight.

Sensing the poison spreading rapidly throughout his body and the barrage of attacks from the three, for which he had no strength left to counter, and more dangerously the unending mental attacks that made him feel crazy he became desperate and slightly fearful.

In his desperation, feeling both cornered and on the verge of dying, a savage expression appeared on his face as he brought out his most precious treasure and the technique with the most long-term negative side effects.

A golden pill, as big as a fist, appeared in front of him, and he hurriedly jumped towards it, swallowing it whole. The moment the pill entered his body, a shocking change occurred. All of the injuries, both obvious and hidden, that he had sustained throughout his whole life seemed to slowly vanish. The poison melted away as if it met its greatest nemesis, and his whole mind was covered by a golden halo, shielding him from the mental attacks of the blue snake.

Without waiting a single beat, he gently punched himself square in the chest, and a golden drop of blood with intense energy jumped out of his mouth, landing above his golden whip.

The golden drop of blood slowly seeped into the golden whip, and its energy spread throughout the whole weapon, making it even stronger and deadlier.

Lu Peng held the golden whip in his hands as a frightening aura emanated from him. With a strong punch, he sent the black and white python flying and flew toward the blue snake with lightning speed.

Lu Peng, more than anyone, knew that the pill's mental shield was merely a secondary effect that would disappear in a second, and that goddamn blue snake was the most dangerous of the three.

The viper queen quickly woke up from its slumber to rush and protect the sky blue snake, but it was too late.

Lu Peng slashed with the golden whip that seemed to follow the blue snake wherever it went and swiftly twisted around it with its terrifying sharp barbs penetrating its rough scales very easily. He forcefully pulled down the whip, and instead of the blue snake following, it didn't—or rather, only its intestines did as the golden whip tore it apart completely, and it instantly died.

The viper queen was enraged once she witnessed that sight.

The sky blue snake was a crucial fighter in the battle against the ants because they had low to no mental resistance. Now that she had lost it, things would become even more difficult than they already were.

A high-pitched roar sounded this time instead of a hiss, followed by the shaking of the ground as several giant mid-Foundation Establishment monsters appeared one after the other.

A big black and white striped tapir, a two-meter tall red sloth, a gigantic white horse with golden hair, and an equally big black bear with terrifying claws and fangs.

The queen viper shot out towards Lu Peng, with all of them following dutifully behind it, although they appeared somewhat uneasy facing the formidable old human.

Lu Peng, on the other hand, was busy slightly regretting using the golden pill. 'I was too rash...' But what could he do? In the midst of all that pain and constant attacks, he genuinely believed he was going to die at the time.

Maybe he would have, but now it seemed to him that the golden pill was useless.

Moreover, using his blood essence would undoubtedly affect his strength in the long run. He would need a considerable amount of time to recuperate. Still, even with all of that, the perfect course of action that made sense to him right now was to run.

As for the insects? Although they were precious and valuable, they weren't worth his life. At the same time, he found a scapegoat for Li Feng's death, so the humiliation of today would naturally not end here.

With that, he immediately fled!

Fortunately for Lu Peng, the moment he made that decision and ran, a gigantic earth dome appeared in the place where he was just standing. If he had not run away, he would have been trapped and beaten to death by all the monsters inside.

On the other hand, the viper queen's blood ran cold—colder than it already was—once she saw that he had fled just a fraction of a second before disappearing from the range of the earth dome she had just released after painstaking effort.

However, to her absolute shock, Lu Peng didn't choose to go take the insects but instead immediately fled, but she quickly understood why.

Most people would naturally speculate that since she was the one who created the dome, she'd be able to do the opposite just as easily. The fact of the matter, however, was that she couldn't. If Lu Peng had chosen to go take the insects and leave this place, she'd have had nothing to do other than gnash her teeth in hatred.

Now, this simple guess and speculation played in her favor and made this whole fight worth it.

Even though she had offended a sect, lost one of her most important underlings, and risked losing both her territory and the Scarlet Qiroot Tree. It was all worth it so that her plan could finally come into fruition.

Her underlings, being smart themselves, didn't need her order before they focused on a single area of the dome and started unleashing all sorts of attacks to break away.

After a while, an opening was created, and all of them quietly got out.

The queen viper surveyed the surroundings and saw that nothing was amiss, other than the hundreds of broken trees, puddles of blood, charred grounds, and big craters signifying a huge battle took place. Everything looked ordinary.

When she glanced at the corpse of the sky-blue horned snake, her somewhat satisfied and relieved mood soured.

She had adopted and raised that snake as one of her own when it was just a tiny Body Forging little snake that she stumbled upon in a previous outing. They had spent so much time together, fought dangerous battles, and gone through thick and thin. Most importantly, it was her only high-level mental fighter, and those were very essential against her nemesis, the ants!

However, she quickly dismissed such pointless thoughts out of her mind and moved on to more important matters.