Chapter 2: Reborn as a Black Snake, Heaven-Defying Comprehension!

Comprehensive Martial Arts World.

Taohuadao sea region.

Lead-gray clouds hung low, pressing down on the sea until it could barely breathe.

Bean-sized raindrops slammed down, stirring up ripples across the ink-blue seawater—ripples that were instantly swallowed again by the surging waves.

Beneath the deep, dark water, the light was dim, the cold biting straight to the bone.

Ning Chuan's consciousness drifted awake amid such chaos and cold.

He tried to moan, but no sound came out.

He tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids were heavy as a thousand catties.

All around him was endless darkness and a pressure that stole his breath.

"Where am I?"

Fragments of memory came flooding back like the tide; the last frozen image was of him being sent flying by a runaway truck as he tried to save a little girl.

Agony, then boundless darkness.

"It seems… I'm dead."

A chill rose from deep in his heart and quickly spread through his whole body.

He struggled to move, but felt something utterly strange, something he had never felt before.

No arms, no legs.

In their place was a slender, supple body brimming with power.

His skin seemed to be covered in fine, dense scales—cold and smooth.

"What's going on?"

A trace of bewilderment rose in his heart.

He tried to sway his body; a strange instinct guided him, and his form slithered and wound through the water with an impossible agility.

He "saw" his own body.

Or rather, sensed it.

A snake, roughly three meters long, covered all over in fine, dense ink-black scales.

A black sea snake.

Ning Chuan's consciousness stalled for a moment.

He, Ning Chuan—an utterly ordinary young man from Earth—had actually become a snake.

This absurd reality left him feeling a complexity beyond words.

He was a snake.

A snake, alone in this unknown stretch of sea.

Once the initial surprise and discomfort had eased a little, an extraordinary calm began to take command of his thoughts.

Since he had come to this, he might as well accept it.

Becoming a snake was already a fixed fact; what mattered most now was how to survive.

Just as Ning Chuan began to think calmly, a strange voice suddenly rang out in his mind—ethereal and mechanical:

【Ding! Host soul strength detected as meeting the standard…】

【Heaven-Defying Comprehension System activating…】

【Activation successful!】

"System?"

Ning Chuan's spirit jolted sharply; even in a snake's body, he could not suppress the surge of delight rising from the depths of his soul!

As a young man who had read web novels by the cartload, he knew this scene only too well.

This was absolutely his turning point—a heaven-sent turning point!

【Heaven-Defying Comprehension: You possess the ability to comprehend beyond all living beings in the world—a single thought brings blossoms, a single instant masters any skill, all laws of the universe can be grasped in sudden enlightenment.】

A brief introduction, yet one that contained an unimaginable, overwhelming might!

Heaven-Defying Comprehension!

Ning Chuan savored those four words carefully, and an inexpressible ecstasy instantly flooded his entire consciousness!

The gloom in his heart was swept clean away, replaced by endless excitement and exhilaration!

If he truly possessed such comprehension, then becoming a snake was not a dead end at all—on the contrary, it was a heaven-sent opportunity! The future brimmed with infinite possibilities!

He could feel that, with the system's activation, his thinking had become clearer than ever before, and his perception of the outside world had grown several times sharper.

The cold seawater, the faint undercurrents, the feeble stirrings of distant schools of fish… everything presented itself clearly within his perception.

"Wonderful! Truly wonderful!"

Ning Chuan was so thrilled he nearly wanted to throw his head back and roar; were it not for the limits of a snake's body, he would certainly have been dancing with joy.

With Heaven-Defying Comprehension, he could not only survive in this unknown world, but live brilliantly—exploring those unknown mysteries!

Yet after the surge of joy, a grim problem presented itself before him.

Hunger.

A powerful weakness and hollow emptiness rose from deep within his body.

As a three-meter-long sea snake, he needed vast amounts of energy to sustain his bodily functions.

Food had become his most pressing need at the moment.

Just then, a fierce sense of danger suddenly came from his rear flank!

Ning Chuan's heart clenched; relying on perception far keener than an ordinary snake's, he "saw" a massive shadow rushing toward him at tremendous speed.

It was a giant sea fish, over five meters long, jaws bristling with sharp teeth, its appearance hideously ferocious!

Its gaze was fierce and greedy, clearly having set its sights on Brother Ning Chuan.

A life-and-death crisis.

Brother Ning Chuan's snake pupils contracted sharply, but his mind became incomparably calm in an instant.

He had only just accepted his new identity, only just obtained the system, and now had to immediately face a test of survival?

The instinct to survive rose within him, but even more was the deliberation on how to resolve the predicament before his eyes.

Although his current body was somewhat stronger than an ordinary sea snake, facing such a ferocious predator still put him at a disadvantage.

Meeting force with force was not a wise move.

What to do?

Flee?

The opponent's speed was clearly above his own, its long, narrow fins cutting efficient trajectories through the water.

At the critical moment, within Brother Ning Chuan's mind, "Heaven-Defying Comprehension" quietly began to operate.

His attention was highly focused, and everything around him seemed to slow down.