67: Heat

Heat

The mist cleared up and Ning could finally see everything clearly. He saw the snake coil up at the bottom of the shallow ocean, he saw the giant ocean behind the snake, and he saw the group of villagers running towards him and the snake.1

As soon as they reached the snake, they once more let out the relentless attacks with their spears and their claw-like hands. Deep cuts and wounds started all over the demon serpent's body. They were finally getting somewhere with their attacks.

"YES," Ning shouted, seeing his plan work.

The snake was starting to get uncomfortable with the suddenly increased amounts of damage and the creepy burning sensations it was getting all over its body.

It started to once more move around its body, hitting the villagers with its tail in the process. But there were too many of them attacking right now. The snake couldn't target the villagers individually and started to hit the villagers one at a time.

Ning was happy that his plan had succeeded. He had successfully managed to strip away the Yin surrounding the snake, basically forming an armor protecting the snake from physical attacks. However, now with his doing, it was taking plenty of damage.

'Still, it's quite surprising. In fact, one could even call it weird,' Ning thought. 'The snake is only using its head and tails to fight, it hasn't been trying to bite anyone yet. Does it not have venom despite the fact that it has fangs?'

The snake had not once changed its attack pattern which surprised Ning. Ning started to believe it was similar to one of the many non-venomous snakes that was found back on earth. Still, betting it all on a simple guess wasn't the right thing to do.

'System, give me information on this species of snake, ' he ordered.

Before the system could even list out everything, he picked the intermediate version of the information and got it transferred to his mind. Suddenly, a whole lot of information about the snake popped up into his mind.

The knowledge terrified him for a second. "Is it… really true?" he was shocked. The Yin Demon Serpent was a ferocious race of serpents that was as dangerous as it was venomous. They were naturally adept at cultivation, however, due to being a monster, it took them a lot of time to cultivate. Still, they were faster than most creatures.

They also grew in size as they got stronger. As for their venom, it depended on their age. A young Yin Demon Serpent, which was tiny compared to its adult form, did not produce enough venom to secrete through its glans.

Which meant, the only reason the serpent in front of Ning wasn't using its fangs was…

"It's still a child. It's a newborn snake in comparison," Ning was shocked beyond belief. The snake that terrorized the villagers, cut off their route out of the island and stole their food by taking over their area of sea was just a very young snake.

'If this is a young snake… then how big are the adult ones?' the world of Cultivation started to terrify him more than he would care to admit.

Suddenly, the snake changed its attack pattern. It was getting too bloody and beat at this point, so in desperation, it wrapped its long tails around the group of villagers trying to crush them.

The villagers stabbed, clawed, scratched, hit, pushed, and did whatever else they could stop the snake from crushing them with its body, but nothing happened.

At the last moment, just before they were crushed, however, all of the villagers suddenly vanished from the spot.

They reappeared over 100 meters away, at the beach.

"Was it… Inikaka?" they wondered. They were scared to go after the snake once more, but this time, the snake started crawling up to them.

"Oh no you don't," Ning said as he asked the system to teleport the snake as far away as possible from the island. Both he and the snake disappeared from the beach appearing somewhere deep underwater.

Unfortunately, due to the massive size and weight of the snake, the system couldn't teleport it very far away. The snake wasted no time getting confused and immediately started swimming away. Before Ning could even realize it, he was back on the beach.

"What?" he was shocked. He quickly checked his status, only to realize he had no energy now. He had assumed 500 million energy at the start of the fight would've been enough. Now he saw how stupid he was.

'And now I have no energy,' he thought. With his mind in pain and now out of energy, he started to get annoyed.

'So what?' he thought to himself. 'If I don't have energy, I will use something else.'

The snake was once again already near the people who were terrified seeing it come onto them once again. 'You are not going to attack them,' Ning shouted, but no one could hear him since he had no energy.

Suddenly, the snake's skin started glowing slightly red. The glow however had nothing to do with the snake itself. Ning was now fully employing the Yin to Heat conversion to the best of his ability, thoroughly searing the snake's skin.

The snake made a hurtful shout and immediately turned around to go back into the water. The villager sighed in relief when they saw that.

"Inikaka is helping us," Hyesi said as he was the one most in the know about Ning's abilities.

The snake went deep into the ocean to find the coldness of water to overcome the heat it was facing. In doing so, it sealed its fate, for the depth of the ocean was one of the places with the most amount of Yin energy in it.

Suddenly, a violent amount of Yin energy gathered around the snake and immediately turned into intense heat that started burning the snake even more.

'AHHHHH,' Ning shouted internally using as much mental energy as he could to burn the snake alive.

<Host has used a lot of mental strength and is now at a critical mental state

'AHHHH,' he shouted in pain, but he did not stop. If he stopped now, the snake would surely return back to the surface and harm all of the people he had come to love dearly. He was immortal, they were not.

So, he decided to take all the pain onto himself so that the others could survive. Finally, he stopped being a coward.

His bravery showed as the snake's body glowed to a brighter shade of red at the depth of the ocean. Every fish that came close to the snake immediately ran away, terrified at the unknown enemy.

The snake ran as far as it could to get away from this pain, but it couldn't. it would twist and turn from pain, but the heat never stopped.

Ning also did not stop even though he felt like someone was physically ripping his brain out of his head.

By this point, he didn't even know how much Yin he had converted or how much heat had accumulated on the snake's body, but he kept going and going until… the snake stopped moving.

Confirming that the snake was in fact dead, he stopped accumulating Yin, and all the heat turned back to Yin once more.

<Host has overextended his mental capacity and crossed the critical state

<Putting host on coma to preserve his mental state

<System is going dormant

Suddenly, everything around Ning grew dark as he lost his consciousness, without knowledge of when he would be conscious again.

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