Nan Zhi rushed forward with the woman she had just saved in her arms. The thick, intense malice behind her felt like needles on her back, as if the owner of that malice would pounce and tear her to shreds at any second.
With the situation unclear, running blindly would only lead to running into an even more dangerous existence.
Nan Zhi's eyes darkened. She spun around abruptly and dropped into a karst cave. Quick as lightning, she took out some wet blood mud and smeared it messily over the woman's face. Meanwhile, she threw a blanket woven from Spirit Swallowing Grass over herself, scooped up Hongluo, and leaped into another cave to hide.
"Splash..."
"Splash..."
"Splash..."
The heavy, massive sound of crashing water surged over. Nan Zhi lay flat near the edge of the cave under her blanket, pulling back her divine sense, her eyes fixed unblinkingly on the underground lake—
Soon, a pair of thick tentacles appeared in her line of sight. Judging by their size alone, the creature beneath the water was of a staggering volume.
"Thud, thud, thud, thud! Boom, boom, boom!"
"Boom, boom, boom!"
Having lost the source of the bloody scent, the creature seemed to fly into a rage out of shame.
Accompanied by the rushing sound of water, the massive, thick green tentacles slowly swayed, and a colossal, glossy, dark-green centipede slowly crawled out from the depths of the water.
Nan Zhi saw it with absolute clarity.
Its body had a total of thirty-seven segments. Its head was dark green, and its back was lined with deep brown ridges, like river valleys carved into hills. Starting from the second segment, countless dense, robust legs sprouted from both sides of its body.
Most striking of all, unlike ordinary centipedes, a pair of glittering, translucent golden wings grew from the middle segments of its body, folded tightly against its back.
This was a terrifying behemoth!
Even the hundred-meter giant fish Nan Zhi had seen before paled in comparison to this incredibly massive dark-green centipede.
【Flying Golden-Winged Centipede: Level 47 (Mid-stage Foundation Establishment Level 2)】
How was this fair? Even a bug had a cultivation level so much higher than hers.
Nan Zhi silently pulled the blanket tighter around herself.
The Flying Golden-Winged Centipede swayed its head. Seemingly bored, it whipped its body around, its tail smashing the stone pillars connecting the ceiling and floor of the cave to smithereens—
"Boom!!"
Another earth-shaking tremor rumbled as countless Sun-Burning Stones shattered, sending splashes of liquid flames flying. The beast seemed to be playing around, churning up water pillars to toss boulders weighing tens of tons high into the air before letting them crash heavily back down!
While the giant centipede played merrily, Nan Zhi held the warm hedgehog close, closing her eyes to rest her mind.
The stench of the wet blood mud could mask the scent of blood; she only hoped the woman she had just saved wouldn't suddenly make a sound.
Nan Zhi only saved people when it was within her power. If her own life were truly on the line, she wasn't so foolish as to feed herself to a centipede for a stranger she had only met once.
The Flying Golden-Winged Centipede played for a full hour. Only after the surrounding Sun-Burning Stones were completely destroyed and reduced to fragments covering the ground did it leave in satisfaction.
Nan Zhi still didn't move. Listening to the sounds in the water fade into the distance, she waited in the cave for another half hour before cautiously extending her divine sense to investigate—
She had to make sure the creature wouldn't double back.
Fortunately, the woman was lucky today.
Only after confirming that the Flying Golden-Winged Centipede had indeed departed did Nan Zhi cautiously step out of the cave to check on the woman's condition.
She was severely injured. There were bite marks of varying severity across her chest, abdomen, and thighs, and a large chunk of flesh had been torn from her stomach by some unknown creature, faintly exposing her internal organs.
Combined with the severe blood loss, her survival up to this point was purely due to sheer tenacity.
Nan Zhi shook her head as she pried open the woman's mouth, stuffing Blood Supplementing Pills and hemostatic grass inside.
She had a hoarder's personality; she couldn't bear to throw away any herbs or pills from her Qi Refinement stage, leaving them all piled up in her system inventory.
After reaching Foundation Establishment, compared to the higher-grade Qi-Augmenting Pills and Rejuvenation Pills, the mana and health recovery efficiency of Qi-Supplementing Pills and Blood Supplementing Pills was simply too low.
As for the hemostatic grass, it was even less effective.
Like chicken ribs, it was useless to eat but a pity to throw away.
Yet she hadn't expected it to actually come in handy.
Seeing Nan Zhi saving the person, Hongluo sensibly helped crush the hemostatic grass. Her exact process was:
Take a handful of hemostatic grass, put it in her mouth, chew, chew, chew, spit out the green residue, and apply it to the woman's exposed wounds.
The lower one's cultivation, the more pronounced the effects of low-grade pills.
After swallowing a Blood Supplementing Pill and a Qi-Supplementing Pill, the woman's injuries improved at a speed visible to the naked eye. Under the effects of the hemostatic grass, the wounds on her body also slowly closed and scabbed over.
In the end, though her face still looked somewhat pale and weak, the woman finally had the strength to speak.
“Glasses... my glasses...”
The woman squinted, groping around on the ground. Hongluo somewhat reluctantly handed over the object she had secretly pocketed before they fled:
She recognized it as glass. Although it was broken, it was still worth quite a bit of silver.
“Thank you, thank you.”
The highly near-sighted woman squinted, straining to identify the people before her through the cracked lenses:
“Did you give me some painkillers? I feel much better. I'm Liu Ruhe, and I entered the underground passage with the seventh Western Xia underground palace exploration team. Which team did you come in with? Why did you bring a child along—”
Before she could finish her sentence, the expression on her face suddenly froze.
Because through the shattered lenses, she finally saw the attire of the person in front of her clearly.
Green robes, an oval face, hair styled in an ancient bun, accompanied by a young girl dressed in ancient-style hemp clothing.
“Are you... Ma Guniang?”
Liu Ruhe's voice was very soft. She almost thought she was talking in her sleep.
...
...
To prevent the Flying Golden-Winged Centipede from returning, Nan Zhi led Hongluo and Liu Ruhe deeper into the karst cave.
During this time, no matter how disgusted Liu Ruhe felt, she didn't dare wipe off the wet blood mud on her body.
Perhaps out of trust in the identity of “Ma Guniang,” or perhaps for some other reason, Liu Ruhe took the initiative to tell Nan Zhi everything about this miraculous place.
“I was originally a researcher at the Helan Snow Mountain Underground Research Institute, specifically responsible for studying supernatural phenomena and the special waves appearing on the Blue Star. Three years ago, we captured a special wave band in the Western Xia Imperial Tombs, which aren't far from Helan Snow Mountain.
“This wave is different from any currently known biological wave. After six months of observation, we discovered that its source might be two thousand meters underground, or even deeper in the Earth's crust.
“I was the head of this project, so I kept tracking this wave. Even after the underground research institute merged with the 233 Northwest Circle Special Investigation Bureau, I didn't give up, wanting to find the source of this biological wave.”
When talking about her field of expertise, Liu Ruhe's voice unconsciously became much steadier:
“It wasn't until early this year, when the archaeological work at the Western Xia Imperial Tombs continued, that our people excavated two ancient corpses underground that still retained cellular activity. That mysterious biological wave appeared again, right inside a bottomless underground passage in the Imperial Tombs' underground palace.”
Nan Zhi's eyes flickered slightly, but she did not interrupt her.
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