Chapter 240: Profound Snake

At first glance, the exit seemed easy to locate at the lake bottom, but Lu Xingzhou had originally thought the possibility was low.

Because if it were at the lake bottom, wouldn't the strange beast below have gone out long ago?

This secret realm space was vast, with no end in sight; it would not be strange for a rift to appear anywhere.

Yet, it turned out to be exactly at the lake bottom.

"Teach me a spell first," Lu Xingzhou thought for a moment, then took out the dragon bone he had retrieved from his own Danxia Secret Realm: "You said this can cast some witchcraft curses on its own kind; do you know how?"

Ye Tinglan was not well-versed in witchcraft, but she could grasp the basics, so she pointed a finger at Lu Xingzhou's forehead and transmitted a spell technique.

Deep down, she found it somewhat amusing... If anyone else were traveling with her and met an enemy, they would absolutely never have this "I must also try to help" mindset. Didn't they realize how huge the gap was? If even she, Ye Tinglan, couldn't hold out, what could a mere fourth-grade little weakling do by learning some witchcraft on the spot? Yet he was really learning it so seriously.

Of course, it was good that he had this intention, and Ye Tinglan would not deliberately refuse to teach.

However, after teaching, for some reason, she added: "What should you call me?"

Lu Xingzhou said: "First... no, Lady. You said to call you Lady Ye."

Ye Tinglan's face turned as cold as frost, and she clenched her fist.

Lu Xingzhou jumped back: "Wait, don't rashly enter the water; I need to make some other preparations."

Ye Tinglan kept a stern face, watching him take out a pill furnace, start a fire, and throw all the poisonous creatures he had collected earlier into the furnace to refine them into pills.

Among them was a highly toxic herb; its toxicity made Ye Tinglan feel a bit startled: "Even without refining it into a pill, simply taking this directly could at least poison a third-grade cultivator to death; once refined properly, it would pose no problem to deal with a first-grade cultivator. Where did you get this?"

"From the collection of the Incense-Burning Pavilion. They don't have many other good things, only this poisonous herb is of the highest grade. I kept it not knowing where to use it, and now it is just right."

Ye Tinglan watched him refine the pills with great interest. Given the level of this medicine, it could at least reach second grade; she wondered if he would be able to refine it successfully.

It could be seen that Lu Xingzhou was trying his best to effectively fuse the flame inherent in his Fire Essence with the Destruction Golden Fire obtained from the Demon-Subduing Domain, attempting to possess both the stability of his own flame and the violent heat of the Destruction Golden Fire, but the effect was still not very good; these two characteristics were very difficult to fuse together.

Seeing Lu Xingzhou sweating on his forehead, Ye Tinglan could not help but say: "Your fusion is too forced... mainly because your own cultivation has not caught up. If you could break through the third-grade major bottleneck, this fusion would be more stable; currently, it is somewhat strained. With such a strained fused flame, you cannot refine a pill of this level."

Lu Xingzhou sighed: "It's just one thing after another; I have no time for stable cultivation."

Speaking with some grievance: "Originally, I could cultivate properly at the Pill Academy, but you brought me out."

Ye Tinglan snorted coldly: "Bringing you out happened to resolve the turmoil in your Tianxing Sword Sect; are you blaming me now?"

"No, no," Lu Xingzhou smiled apologetically: "Mr., can you help with the fusion?"

When there was business, it was Mr.; when there was no business, it was Lady.

Ye Tinglan was truly both angry and amused: "Your abacus beads are almost bouncing onto my face."

Lu Xingzhou glanced at her face and actually felt that Mr.'s expression nowadays was becoming more vivid day by day: "That... this is a matter of pill refining, within Mr.'s scope of guidance; Mr. cannot be irresponsible."

Ye Tinglan slapped his back with one palm.

Just as Lu Xingzhou was about to speak, he felt a hot flow surge into his meridians, and Ye Tinglan's voice came: "I am helping you fuse, but it is only a temporary binding; you will still need to master it yourself in the future and cannot take shortcuts."

Lu Xingzhou clearly felt his two types of flames being temporarily bound together by an extremely domineering power, so domineering that it made no sense at all.

Feedback onto his own pill-refining flame, it truly achieved both his original stability and controllability, and the intense heat of the Destruction Golden Fire, suppressing all that uncontrollable violence; it was the form of pill fire he had long dreamed of.

Thus, the pill that was originally very difficult to refine gradually began to rotate and fuse, and the medicinal fragrance slowly spread.

"Your control also has certain problems," Ye Tinglan's voice continued: "At the current level, you should start paying attention to the influence of the environment on pill refining. Previously, I asked you to come to Frozen Moon Cold River for this very trial requirement, but you did not complete it... It is the same now; this is a closed realm lacking air, without wind or moon. Your pill-refining method can no longer be based on the daily norm; specifically how to adjust it requires feeling and adjusting with the heart."

Lu Xingzhou felt his spiritual sea become much clearer.

Originally, he used his eyes to look through the small window of the pill furnace to observe the changes in the medicine inside, but now it seemed he could "sense" it; the subtle changes and collisions of particles went straight into his spiritual sea, clear in his mind, as if he were truly seeing them.

In a sense, this was also "hand-in-hand teaching," but it could not stir up any romance at all; all his mind and spirit were completely invested in the pill furnace.

Under precise control, three pills gradually took shape.

Lu Xingzhou had essentially seen the techniques of a pill master above third grade in advance, and had also felt in advance what the vision of a third-grade Dao cultivator was like after opening the divine soul cultivation.

In their eyes, the world could be deconstructed anew... The world in everyone's eyes did not seem very similar.

Even the light of the sun and moon, things that seemed powerless to ordinary people, were different forms of energy in their eyes, and could even affect the formation of pills. No wonder the previous teaching said that what time of day to refine pills and how long they needed to be refined had different effects at higher levels; previously he could not understand, but now he had thoroughly experienced it.

The pills came out of the furnace; Lu Xingzhou stood up and sincerely bowed: "Thank you, Mr."

Ye Tinglan glanced at him sideways; now this young man's filial and respectful appearance could no longer deceive her... She knew clearly that giving him just a little color would make him open a dyeing workshop, and the moment she turned her head, he would come to touch her hand.

Lu Xingzhou took the pills and extended his hand to offer them: "First..."

Ye Tinglan instinctively hid her hand behind her back.

Lu Xingzhou: "..." He turned his head in a bad mood, threw the refined pills into the lake, thought for a moment, kept one, and only threw down two.

The pills dissolved upon entering the water, and soon the lake water was mixed with extreme poison.

Ye Tinglan leaned forward to take a look and finally understood what he was doing; he did not want to rashly enter the water but intended to force the opponent to surface and fight.

"Even if this lake is not very large, the lake water is enough to dilute the toxicity to almost non-existence; is doing this meaningful?"

"If someone were to fart in my room, I would definitely be very unhappy too..."

Before the words finished, a whirlpool suddenly rose in the lake water.

A roar like a dragon or snake came; a hornless dragon head suddenly burst out of the lake surface, and its green vertical pupils looked at the two people by the lake, flashing with cruel and greedy light: "Fresh... humans..."

That voice seemed to go straight into the brain, making people's heads buzz, extremely uncomfortable.

"Boom!"

The dragon head rushed straight forward, bringing with it the giant python body beneath.

Indeed, as Ye Tinglan had judged, a subspecies half-snake half-jiao, perhaps called the Profound Snake.

The lake water brought out splashed onto the lakeshore ground, making a "sizzle" sound; all the flowers and grass by the lake disappeared, and the ground was corroded into small pits.

In an instant, the dragon head moved from the center of the lake to before the two people; the huge dragon mouth opened, as if to swallow the two people whole.

Ye Tinglan waved her hand, sending Lu Xingzhou to a place hundreds of zhang away; she herself formed a spell technique with her fingers, and a dazzling light shot directly into the depths of the dragon mouth.

Unexpectedly, this dazzling light, whose power could almost smash a small mountain, entered the dragon mouth, was absorbed and disappeared by something unknown, and actually had no effect at all.

The Profound Snake's vertical pupils flashed with cruel light; the dragon mouth closed, about to swallow Ye Tinglan into its mouth.

Ye Tinglan dodged by shifting her body; the dragon mouth bit down heavily, emitting a grating friction sound.

Ye Tinglan waved again; two sword lights accurately appeared before the vertical pupils and pierced straight in.

The dragon eyes snapped shut tightly; the sword light stabbed against the eyelids, emitting a sharp metallic clashing sound, yet it could not break through the defense!

Ye Tinglan frowned slightly; that flood dragon seemed to sense this woman was not to be trifled with. Its body surged suddenly, the dozens-of-zhang-long form diving straight toward Lu Xingzhou's direction.

Ye Tinglan flashed aside with a whistle, blocking the way. Her slender hand lightly pressed the dragon's head, and the massive dragon body was held by her single hand, unable to advance an inch.

The dragon's vertical pupils finally flashed with a color of shock, as if unable to comprehend how such a delicate body could possess such immense power.

With one hand stopping the flood dragon, Ye Tinglan finally deployed a magic treasure with her other hand.

A divine sword appeared in the sky above, transforming into ten thousand rays of brilliance, stabbing into every suspected weak point on the flood dragon's snake body. At the same time, fierce flames suddenly rose beneath the snake's belly, and the dozens-of-zhang-long snake body became trapped in a sea of fire.

She was also a typical dual cultivator of Dao and martial arts.

However, this all-around fierce attack proved ineffective; all the sword light stabbed against the snake body was brushed aside by its naturally sticky and slippery skin, causing almost no damage. Meanwhile, the flames below did cause the opponent pain. In anger, it whipped its snake body, attempting to crush Ye Tinglan into minced meat.

Ye Tinglan frowned and dodged aside; the snake body slammed onto the ground, booming out a huge deep pit.

At this moment, Ye Tinglan was quite impressed by Lu Xingzhou's foresight in luring this thing outside to fight.

According to records, the Black Snake does not possess such strong defensive power; one does not know how this monster mutated. Fighting on land is already so troublesome; if one rashly enters the water, its movement underwater will inevitably be stronger than on the surface, making it even harder to deal with. If Lu Xingzhou were taken into the water as well, there might truly be no way to protect him.

His steadiness was not in vain.

The Black Snake itself was not too strong, roughly classified as Super Grade, but there were gaps in the sub-levels; being held by her with one hand meant its strength was at least insufficient to harm her, Ye Tinglan. The current problem was that its defensive power was slightly off the charts; they could not find any weak points.

This off-the-charts defensive power did not lack flaws. The attack just now driven into the dragon's mouth was certainly not erased by the monster itself; there was a high probability it was the result of swallowing some treasure. If fighting independently, Ye Tinglan would most likely choose to dive into its belly and stir up waves, but now, with Lu Xingzhou present, this decision was hard to make.

Taking him inside was, after all, an extremely dangerous choice; what if something went wrong?

Leaving him outside, she could not attend to him while inside the belly; what if she caused him to be crushed to death...

While pondering this, the snake tail whipped around, striking the distant Lu Xingzhou again. Ye Tinglan flashed and teleported directly, grabbing Lu Xingzhou and leaping far away.

Once again embraced by warm jade and fragrant beauty, Lu Xingzhou felt it could be matched with slow motion and a BGM...

But how could a grown man endure such a "beloved wife protecting her husband during battle" template?

"Mr. Ye Tinglan..." Amidst the flash, Lu Xingzhou suddenly spoke.

"What?"

"Into its belly, I go too."

Ye Tinglan looked down at him.

Just then, having dodged the snake tail, the dragon head happened to bite over.

Ye Tinglan hesitated no more; holding Lu Xingzhou, she dove directly into the dragon's mouth.

(End of this chapter)