Chapter 41: Snake (Two-in-one)

One step out.

Xia Nan only felt the temperature of the air around his body drop sharply.

Everything went black before his eyes.

In the next second, the dense forest shrubs filled with moist mist before him were replaced by a bare stone wall.

"Ah..."

Pain, dizziness.

As if stepping into the air while walking down stairs, the momentary panic made his exhausted body unable to persist any longer.

He made a painful murmur in his mouth, and his whole body fell to the ground immediately.

Only using his last strength to lift his eyelids, he swept around.

Seeing no obvious danger, he closed his eyes again in the fatigue and pain that surged like a tide.

He didn't know how long it had been.

Hiss—

The cold and slippery touch came from his cheek, and he could vaguely feel the wriggling of muscles under the hardness.

Xia Nan opened his eyes slowly.

"Damn!"

He jumped up violently, throwing the reddish-brown long snake that had crawled onto him at some point to the ground.

The iron-grey cold light flashed in the dim air.

The snake head was chopped off, and the long snake body twisted and twitched.

Using the tip of his sword to pick up the snake head and throw it into the corner, he finally let out a sigh of relief.

Xia Nan leaned against the stone wall behind him, gripping the decapitation longsword with both hands.

Only now, after experiencing a short dizziness after a desperate escape, did he have the opportunity to carefully observe the environment he was in.

This was a closed cave.

There was nothing worth noting, and the bare grey stone walls almost filled every part of his vision.

Occasionally, strange fungi and grasses emitting fluorescent light grew on the rock surface, and because of the faint blue light they produced, the originally pitch-black cave became the current "dim" state.

For some reason, even though there were no obvious object characteristics, just looking at the dead grey stone wall before him,

Xia Nan felt from the bottom of his heart a sense of unreality that was out of place with the real world.

As if a small piece of a mountain from another world had been forcibly embedded into this world.

Just like the carriages, wooden buildings, courtyards... he had seen along the way, all from the same source.

Plus the fact that he had been fighting fiercely with the Petrification Lizard in the Mist Forest just a moment ago, and in just an instant, he had been teleported here as if he had fallen into some trap.

His face revealed a thoughtful expression.

He didn't act rashly.

After his sanity gradually returned to his body, and he confirmed that the place he was in was temporarily safe.

The first thing he did was check his physical condition.

His legs were the least injured, with only a few scratches on the side of his lower legs scraped by thorns in the jungle while fleeing, ordinary abrasions, which had already stopped bleeding;

There was a stinging pain in the middle of his chest and abdomen on the left, which was more obvious when breathing, but it was still bearable—perhaps a rib was broken?

The most serious was his right forearm.

Enduring the pain, he lifted the lining under the leather armor and found that a large blue-purple lump had swollen on the ulna near his wrist.

He hadn't felt much while fleeing because his attention was focused before.

But now, he felt bursts of soreness, numbness, and swelling coming from it, and even closing his five fingers and gripping the hilt of the sword felt exceptionally difficult.

You know, before this, in order to recover his mobility, he had drunk half a bottle of healing potion.

One mouthful, 25 gold!

A bit heartbroken, but he didn't regret it.

If it hadn't been for that life-saving potion, he wouldn't even have been able to hold on until now, and would have long since been turned into a statue by the lizard and bitten into pieces and swallowed.

In exchange for a life, let alone 25 gold, he would even be willing to pay 2500 gold!

Sighing in his heart, Xia Nan didn't stop his hands, somewhat laboriously taking out the "medical kit" he had bought before the trip from the backpack behind him.

Ordinary quality healing potions can save lives in a crisis and can also heal most minor injuries and slow down pain.

But for injuries like fractured bones, they didn't have an immediate effect.

They needed the adventurer to handle them himself.

"Ssh!"

He clumsily fixed his forearm with the splint that came with the kit, then used his left hand to hold the bandage and wrapped it around several times, finally biting off the excess bandage with his teeth.

According to the treatment method recorded in the 【Adventurer's Handbook】, it seemed that if the forearm was injured, it should also be hung up with a sling to prevent the injury from worsening.

Given the limited conditions, he could only do this.

His five fingers opened and closed slightly under the soreness, and although there were still traces of grey-white petrification at his fingertips, they had eased a lot under the effect of the healing potion, and he had regained some sensation.

Xia Nan pondered in his heart:

He seemed to have seen petrification-type antidote potions in the alchemy shop, although he didn't remember the price, at least there was a hope of recovery.

It seemed there was also a church in River Valley Town that provided healing services for adventurers after missions, so he could go and see after returning this time.

Speaking of which, originally in the battle with the Rust Monster, Xia Nan saved the half-elf's life, making him owe himself a favor, and they agreed that he would help him contact a combat technique mentor as compensation.

And just now during the chase, the half-elf also returned a life to him, stalling the Petrification Lizard for Xia Nan and leaving him precious time to escape.

In this back-and-forth, he actually still owed the other party one more time.

Therefore, if Haian needed help in the future and he could exert some strength, he didn't mind helping the other party with a few favors.

Of course, the premise was that he could get out of this ghost place.

Xia Nan shook his head, throwing the thoughts unrelated to the current situation out of his mind.

After dealing with the injury, he checked the status of the equipment on his body.

Decapitation longsword—basically didn't leave its sheath during the escape, so it remained intact;

【Dead Line】 ring—"Deflection Field" had entered its 24-hour CD, and he was temporarily missing a trump card;

Healing potion—half a bottle left;

Leather armor—broken.

Xia Nan touched the special leather armor he had bought at Ba'en's shop for a "huge sum" of 10 gold with heartache.

Although it looked fine from the front, just stained with a bit of blood and grass clippings.

But its back had been completely smashed under the impact of the Petrification Lizard, full of dents and cracks, obviously no longer usable.

After returning to the city, this would be another huge expense.

"Sigh."

Sighing, Xia Nan put the tattered leather armor back on.

Standing up, he looked toward the depths of the cave.

Now that he had been teleported here, although he had escaped the pursuit of the Petrification Lizard, it didn't mean he was safe.

Without the support of his teammates, the only thing he could rely on was himself.

His chest rose and fell, and his breathing gradually became calm and firm.

He leaned against the wall with his body slightly, holding the iron-grey longsword, and had already stepped forward, groping along the only road in the cave.

"Crack."

The thick leather shoe landed violently, and two black scorpions the size of thumbs were crushed and ground to pieces.

A pale skull without a trace of flesh was picked up from the ground by a palm stained with mud and blood.

The position Xia Nan was in now was a deep and long corridor.

He didn't know how it was excavated, but the stone walls on both sides of the corridor were rough and uneven, without a trace of human labor.

But compared to the empty cave just now, there were many pale bones on both sides of the tunnel.

Getting close to the wall, relying on the faint blue light emitted by the fungi on the rock surface, he carefully identified the identity of the skull in his hand.

In his previous life, Xia Nan, who was not from a medical background, could never have easily looked at the skull of his own kind in his hand like this.

But now, having experienced so many life-and-death crises, simple bones were far from reaching the threshold that would cause his emotions to fluctuate.

"Human... another human."

He thought to himself.

Along the way, he had looked at all the bones whose identities he could distinguish within the scope of his current knowledge.

All came from humans.

In other worlds, perhaps this wouldn't be a surprising discovery.

But here, he was in a fantasy world that truly possessed special races like Dwarves and Elves.

And there were a large number of mixed-bloods.

If there really was a place filled with corpses of intelligent creatures, unless it was a massacre purely aimed at a certain race, it would be impossible for only this single species of human to appear.

Combined with the illusory and strange feeling the cave itself gave him, as well as the countless peculiar buildings on the road before,

Xia Nan also vaguely guessed something in his heart—

Perhaps, he had been teleported to an area that also came from another world?

Putting the skull back in its place, he continued to move forward, carefully exploring under the faint light.

Then, it was a dead end.

A cold, dark wall blocked his path straight ahead.

Xia Nan's expression looked calm and composed, but there was a slight fluctuation in his dark eyes.

This was the only road in the entire cave!

If the tunnel couldn't lead to the outside world, it meant that he, who had finally escaped the pursuit of the magic beast, would truly die here.

"Hoo..."

Xia Nan took a deep breath, trying his best not to let his mind wander to countless negative thoughts.

He took the initiative to step forward, groping on the wall with both hands, trying to find a possible door switch.

The wall was pitch-black, not made of stone, and the touch was colder than the stone wall, as if made of some kind of metal, the smooth surface had countless fine textures, distributed in flakes, and it even felt a bit sharp when touched against the grain.

The threat of death made Xia Nan's inspection incomparably meticulous, from top to bottom, from left to right, every texture was traced with his fingertips.

Finally!

When he was half-squatting, groping to the bottom right corner of the black wall.

A trace of extremely faint fluorescent light attracted his attention.

It was the same faint blue light unique to the fungi in the cave, but its source was the rock crevice in the corner of the black wall!

"Could it be..."

Xia Nan's eyes flashed with a color of surprise.

He lunged down, using his palms to move the loose rocks.

For those with small gaps, he even pulled out the dagger at his waist, using all his strength to pry up the stones.

About twenty minutes passed.

In the corner of the black wall, a small hole half a person high appeared before Xia Nan's eyes.

The faint blue light became increasingly bright.

Alone, not caring about his posture.

He crawled in along the light with his hands and feet.

Unexpectedly, the small hole was not deep.

Just crawling a few steps, the originally narrow passage suddenly opened up.

A vast space capable of producing multiple echoes appeared before his eyes.

Fungi were densely distributed on the surrounding stone walls, illuminating the entire space.

And Xia Nan, who crawled out of the small hole, subconsciously turned his body and looked at the black wall that had blocked the tunnel horizontally.

Hum—

Time seemed to stop at this moment.

Sweat dripped from his forehead, leaving a small patch of water stain on the cold ground.

Xia Nan still maintained the posture of turning his head, but his whole body was stunned on the spot in an instant.

Motionless.

His gaze was fixed on the direction he had come from.

Black wall?

No, that was not a so-called man-made wall.

The cold touch like metal, the delicate flake-like texture...

That was a massive snake body as thick as a train, enough to fill the entire tunnel!

It was hard to describe Xia Nan's experience at this moment in words.

It was like waking up in the middle of the night, through the moonlight, suddenly seeing a section of snake body on the bed.

Your first reaction might be to jump up in panic, but at the same time, not quite the same, your gaze would subconsciously follow the snake body, looking for its head, judging whether it had crawled into your quilt or was just circling the bed.

In the shock of his heart, Xia Nan's gaze instinctively followed that massive snake body, all the way up.

Ground, wall... top of the head!

"Damn!"

He felt a chill rise from his tailbone to his crown, and goosebumps rose all over his body.

A terrifying snake head capable of swallowing a whole elephant was staring at him unblinkingly above his head, with its cold and violent vertical pupils.

The massive pressure from the disparate size made him give up resistance with just one look, subconsciously closing his eyes.

One second, two seconds, three seconds...

Xia Nan stood stiffly on the spot, the stinging pain from his chest and abdomen as he breathed reminding him that he was still alive.

He opened his eyes slowly.

It was still that massive and shocking giant snake.

But... also motionless.

"Gulp."

His Adam's apple rolled, and he swallowed a mouthful of saliva.

Xia Nan vaguely sensed something wrong, and his gaze continued upward along the long snake body.

Sure enough!

At the very top of the cave dome, a brown stone cone from who knows where was pinning the giant snake dead to the stone ceiling like a thumbtack.

Right in the vital point of the seven inches.

The giant snake's seemingly cold and ferocious eyes had long since lost their luster.

The massive body, like a train, had already become a corpse with no possibility of rebirth, just like the countless white bones outside the cave.

He let out a sigh of relief.

Only then did Xia Nan have the opportunity, and could also, in a living state, carefully examine the appearance of this giant snake.

Pitch-black, covered in ink-colored scales that were cold and hard like metal, the thick and long snake body coiled and climbed in the cave, unable to judge its specific length;

The facial scales were snow-white, without any impurities, making the snake eyes even more emerald green, like jade, with deep and dull pupils;

And in the middle of its skull hanging in mid-air, there were a few pure gold scales flickering with golden light, decorated behind its head like a headpiece.

For some reason, looking at this terrifying giant snake before him.

Suddenly, what flashed through Xia Nan's mind were the scenes of him cutting off Goblin ears and digging out Rust Monster poison glands.

A bold, but extremely reasonable idea gradually brewed in his heart.

As an adventurer, bringing back some loot...

It should be normal, right?

Happy New Year, I wish everyone happiness every day!

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(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 42 =====