Chapter 81: Wits and Courage Slay the Giant Snake!

Xiao Qidi had no hesitation, using all his strength he staggered to his feet.

Even though his body was extremely weak, his gaze still carried supreme authority.

The Giant Snake was the ruler at the top of the food chain beneath Zhuiyingjian; it was precisely because his aura intimidated it that it had hidden nearby these days, secretly observing, only launching an attack after confirming his condition was poor.

Otherwise, on the day Xiao Qidi and Ning Jinli first fell down, the Giant Snake would have revealed itself as soon as it spotted them.

Xiao Qidi straightened his back, walked out from behind the fire, and step by step approached the Giant Snake.

The Giant Snake lifted its neck and head, three or four meters off the ground, with an even longer body still outside the cave, showing how huge it is.

Seeing Xiao Qidi willingly come before it, it did not immediately swallow him whole.

Instead, it cautiously twisted its body for further observation, then drew its tail into the cave and gradually coiled around Xiao Qidi's body.

Xiao Qidi did not struggle at all.

He only hoped that after the beast ate him, it would leave quickly, at least giving Ning Jinli a chance to escape this calamity.

Even if Ning Jinli didn't end up in the snake's belly this time, she would surely be no match for the beast afterward; but letting her live a little longer is still better than dying together with him now.

At this moment, Xiao Qidi's mind flooded with memories of all the times since he met Ning Jinli.

And these few days they had fallen together into the depths of the mountain ravine were, contrary to expectation, the most relaxed and happiest days he had ever felt in his life.

It's a pity……

By the time he truly realized his feelings for her, it was already too late to confess.

"Miss Ning…… farewell……"

Xiao Qidi slowly closed his eyes.

The Giant Snake's tail kept tightening, its terrifying force enveloping his whole body; he could no longer breathe, soon he would die of suffocation, his bones crushed, and finally the snake would swallow him into its belly.

Just then.

Footsteps sounded outside the cave.

Xiao Qidi, who had prepared to face death calmly, was startled and snapped his eyes open.

No need to think; it was Ning Jinli returning.

Why did she have to come back at this moment?!

Xiao Qidi's forehead veins bulged, his face flushed a liver-like hue.

He wanted to shout a warning, but could no longer make a sound.

And the Giant Snake also sensed the movement; it kept tightening its tail around Xiao Qidi while drawing its entire body into the cave, coiling up, arching its neck, ready to bite Ning Jinli the moment she entered.

As the footsteps drew nearer, Xiao Qidi grew more desperate.

"Ning…… miss…… quick…… run……"

A few words weakly squeezed out from between his teeth; even in this silent cave, they were barely audible.

Meanwhile, Ning Jinli, who had just approached the cave entrance, felt her heart jolt.

For no reason, a cold chill ran through her body, and a strong sense of unease welled up.

She hastily stopped, eyes wide, staring at the cave.

Something's off……

It's extremely wrong, utterly wrong.

The firelight shining from within the cave was very faint, as if it might go out at any moment.

Moreover, a peculiar foul odor drifted nearby.

At first she thought it was from not cleaning the wild boar's entrails properly, since she had vaguely smelled this odd stench during the day.

But now the stench was very obvious, even…… seeming to drift out from the cave.

Besides that, the surroundings were eerily silent, unprecedented.

Before this, whether day or night, one could hear insect chirps and toad croaks, and occasionally the rustle of small animals darting about.

Now, describing it as utter silence is not an exaggeration.

It seemed as if all living things had vanished.

"Xiao……" Ning Jinli instinctively wanted to shout, but immediately clamped her mouth shut.

After a brief thought, she gently set down the herbs she had been holding in her arms.

Then she gripped the rough homemade revolver she had picked up with both hands, imitating the gun‑holding stance she had seen in movies, crouching and tiptoeing toward the cave mouth.

At this moment inside the cave, the Giant Snake's head hovered above the entrance.

As soon as Ning Jinli outside stepped in, the Giant Snake would strike with lightning speed, one bite enough to swallow her whole.

Ning Jinli pressed her shoulder against the rock wall outside the cave mouth, now only one or two meters away, trembling with nervousness.

That intense sense of danger weighed on her heart like a mountain.

Her instinct again told her to run, the farther away the better.

But she cared about Xiao Qidi's safety; she had to resist this strong avoidance instinct and also withstand the immense danger.

This feeling was even more terrifying than that time she had to move a corpse alone in the middle of the night.

Ning Jinli secretly took a deep breath, striving to control her trembling, recalling gunfight scenes from TV dramas and movies to encourage herself; at this moment she was the protagonist of a gunfight.

"Huh……"

She gently exhaled a breath.

Her hands gradually stopped shaking, and her gaze turned sharp.

Finally she regained composure, slowly moving to the edge of the cave mouth.

She did not rush in headlong; instead she carefully turned her head slightly, gradually widening her field of view.

All she saw was the dim cave in disarray, the hanging wild boar meat gone, the branch‑made rack scattered haphazardly.

Because the fire was about to die out, the light grew dimmer, and the rest of the place could no longer be seen clearly.

With my vision limited, I still couldn't see whether Xiao Qidi was still lying in the grass pile.

Ning Jinli clenched her teeth, preparing to stick her head out a little closer.

In the cave, the Giant Snake's body pressed against the walls, its tail coiled around Xiao Qidi, all hidden in darkness, and it silently opened its gaping maw, revealing two rows of sharp teeth each half a meter long.

Xiao Qidi endured the excruciating physical pain and the torment of extreme despair in his heart.

He could only watch helplessly as Ning Jinli was about to meet her death at the snake's jaws, unable to do anything, which hurt more than being killed himself.

A faint footstep sounded again.

Xiao Qidi had already seen Ning Jinli's toes, then saw her long hair floating as her head poked in.

At that instant.

The Giant Snake's massive triangular head shot down like lightning from the cave ceiling, its gaping maw snapped shut, swallowing the head that had just entered.

Xiao Qidi's eyes seemed to split, his mind went blank, and his heart felt as if it were shredded into fragments by countless knives in that instant.

He actually saw Ning Jinli's head being bitten off by the Giant Snake...

But before Xiao Qidi could recover from his extreme grief and rage, the Giant Snake suddenly snapped its head back, opened its mouth and spat out the freshly severed head.

The head rolled with a gurgle to the side of the fire.

Xiao Qidi was stunned.

What kind of head is that?

It's clearly a stone wrapped in grass and thorns!

Just as the Giant Snake was in pain and a bit bewildered.

Bang!

A huge roar.

Flames lit up beside the cave entrance.

The Giant Snake startled at the commotion, quickly retracted its neck and lowered its head, looking uncertainly toward the entrance.

Ning Jinli leaned against the outside of the cave entrance, her face pale.

She had just had a flash of inspiration, probing with a stone, only to see a huge black, rumbling thing snatch the stone away, nearly biting her hand.

Immediately she pulled the trigger toward that direction.

By the flash of fire from the bullet's discharge, she saw what it looked like.

What a huge snake head!

She had lived over twenty years and had only ever seen a snake in a zoo.

But the pythons in zoos are only about four or five meters long; it's said the largest snakes in the world barely exceed ten meters, and reports of fifteen meters or longer remain unverified.

Now, judging from the size of its head, this snake she saw must be far longer than fifteen meters!

Ning Jinli was nearly scared out of her soul.

She could hardly imagine what would have happened had she not probed first but simply stuck her head in.

Wait...

With such a colossal creature inside the cave, wasn't Xiao Qidi already...

Ning Jinli's forehead erupted instantly, anger flooding her heart!

All the blood, sweat, and effort she poured into protecting that person, and it... got devoured by this beast?!

"I'll fight you to the death!"

Ning Jinli let out a roar, grabbed the gun in her hand and charged forward.

Just now, in her haste, she fired a shot, proving that the Revolver, though unsightly, was functional.

Whether it could hit or not, she had already thrown herself into it.

Bang!

Another gunshot.

The Giant Snake, which had intended to attack, was again frightened by the loud noise and flames, retreating repeatedly.

Considering it is the unrivaled beast of Zhuiyingjian, it had never encountered such strange commotion.

Ning Jinli's first two shots both missed.

After all, it was her first time using a pistol.

And this gun's accuracy was extremely poor.

But she didn't give up; as her fury peaked, she reached the Giant Snake, less than three meters from its massive head.

"Give me... death!"

Ning Jinli again aimed the barrel at the Giant Snake.

In extreme anger, she fired the third shot.

Bang!

Flames leapt through the barrel and the revolver's cylinder gaps.

The bullet flew out, striking the middle of the Giant Snake's head, instantly shattering scales and spattering blood.

The Giant Snake, in pain, violently thrashed its head, its massive body twisting along.

Ning Jinli found the bullet lodged in the Giant Snake's head; it wounded it but wasn't fatal.

The beast was simply too huge; its scales were as hard as iron, and its skull was surely far tougher than ordinary animal bones.

If it were a modern-made Revolver, perhaps it could pierce through.

But the one in her hand clearly couldn't.

Boom!

The Giant Snake's body rolled and slammed into the cave's rock wall, and in an instant it seemed as if heaven and earth were splitting.

Seeing the snake's body, thicker than two grown men, about to press down on Ning Jinli, she stood rooted, motionless, held her breath, and in the flash of lightning displayed extraordinary calm.

Bang bang!

This time, she quickly fired two shots in succession.

Her hand didn't tremble, her heart didn't panic.

Both bullets actually hit the Giant Snake's one eye precisely, one after another.

This was its most vulnerable spot.

Pfft!

Accompanied by a sound like a glass water bottle shattering, the Giant Snake Head twitched, froze for two seconds, then with a boom crashed heavily to the ground.

The speed of the snake's body twisting also suddenly slowed at that moment.

Only then did Ning Jinli roll to avoid it.

After a while, the Giant Snake was completely still.

Ning Jinli collapsed like a deflated balloon, plopping down on the ground.

The fire was about to die out, its light dimming to candle‑like, flickering on and off, illuminating Ning Jinli's sweat‑drenched, deathly pale cheeks.

Everything fell silent.

Ning Jinli's eyes were hollow, staring at the Giant Snake's corpse twisted like a pretzel before her.

"It's over…… it's all over…… Xiao Qidi is just gone……"

Two streams of tears spilled from her eyes.

Tears blurred her vision; she stared blankly for a few seconds, then suddenly sprang to her feet, grabbed a branch and a stone from the ground at random, and began frantically smashing the Giant Snake's corpse.

"Give him back! Give Xiao Qidi back to me!"

Ning Jinli's eyes bloodshot, she went mad and started pounding at the snake's belly.

"Xiao Qidi! You mustn't die! Hold on for me!"

"Even if you're inside the snake's belly, I'll dig you out!"

Her furious, despairing howl echoed through the cave.

In the dark corner of the cave, the Giant Snake's tail twitched, and Xiao Qidi painfully stretched out a hand from beneath it.

Ning Jinli had already descended into madness, unaware.

Xiao Qidi looked at her, wanting to shout, but having just been nearly strangled by the Giant Snake, he hadn't recovered and couldn't make a sound.

Ning Jinli's hands were raw and bleeding from the branches and stones, yet not a single scale had been knocked off the snake's belly.

She had no strength left.

She knelt powerlessly before the Giant Snake's corpse, lay upon its belly, and wept uncontrollably.

Xiao Qidi bit his tongue until it bled, and, relying purely on willpower, painfully crawled to Ning Jinli's side, his voice hoarse: "Ning…… Ning lady…… I……"

Ning Jinli thought she was hallucinating from excessive grief, and she cried even harder: "Wu…… wu…… wu…… Xiao Qidi, I'm sorry…… I failed to save you……"

Xiao Qidi squeezed out his last strength, struggled to sit up, grabbed Ning Jinli's shoulders and pulled her into his embrace: "I'm not dead…… you…… you saved me……"

Ning Jinli shuddered all over, her whole body stiffening.

She lifted her head in shock, and only after seeing Xiao Qidi's face clearly did she react, bursting into tears instantly.

Xiao Qidi also had tears streaming down his face at that moment.

The two, having survived the calamity, clung to each other weeping, unable to speak a word.

After a while, Ning Jinli calmed down, cupping Xiao Qidi's stubbled face in both hands, she planted a hard kiss on him, tears welling, and said: "Get some rest, I've found the herbs—I'll brew the medicine for you right now!"

Without waiting for Xiao Qidi to speak, she wiped her tears and ran out of the cave.

Xiao Qidi's pallid face flushed a hint of color; he lifted his hand, gently touched the spot where she had just kissed him, and murmured softly: "This seems…… more effective than taking medicine……"

That night, Ning Jinli boiled the herbs in a bamboo tube, gave them to Xiao Qidi to drink; afterward, the two, exhausted and sleepy, had neither the will nor the strength to tidy the cave, so they lay down on the grass among the Giant Snake's corpse and fell asleep in each other's arms.

One night passed.

When Ning Jinli opened her eyes, it was already daylight.

She hurriedly rose and looked around.

The Giant Snake's corpse was gone, and Xiao Qidi was nowhere nearby.

"Xiao Qidi…… Xiao Qidi!" Ning Jinli, gritting her teeth against the bone‑deep ache all over her body, scrambled up and shouted anxiously.

"I'm here!" Xiao Qidi darted in from outside the cave in a single leap.

Recalling last night's danger, Ning Jinli was still shaken; she flung herself into Xiao Qidi's arms, clutching him tightly: "Just knowing you're here is enough…… I…… I've realized I'm truly terrified of losing you."

Xiao Qidi lowered his head, his lips brushing her cheek, and whispered: "Me too……"

Without letting him hold her longer, Ning Jinli suddenly let go, grasped his shoulders and examined him up and down: "How do you feel now? Are you still running a fever?"

Xiao Qidi smiled and said: "Thanks to the medicine you brewed, my fever has broken and I feel much better."

Ning Jinli raised a hand to feel his forehead, then asked anxiously: "What about that snake? Could it…… not be dead after all, and have run off?!"