Chapter 855: The Giant Python's Cave

At seven the next morning, before Watching Huo Zhun's squad assembled, Xia Qing drove Qi Fu, Zhao Ze, and Yu Shou out of Northern Zone One through the north gate and reached the parking lot at the base of the third peak of Mountain Fifty.

After sending the three-person construction crew into the hidden valley to widen it, Xia Qing circled around to the cave where the weasel family lived, settled the barter goods owed for the herbs Little Bai Mao had gathered last time, and added twelve Green Lantern chicken eggs as thanks.

The three herbs Little Bai Mao had gathered in time had earned her idol a new batch of Red Eleven guards, so a thank-you gift was only right.

Then Xia Qing hurried straight on to Mountain Fifty-Five.

After arriving, she didn't start work right away, but first lowered a climbing rope with a stone tied to it into the Python Pool to measure the water's depth.

The measurement confirmed Xia Qing's suspicion from yesterday.

Holy crap, the drop point is more than five meters deeper than yesterday — the stones she spent two days rolling down are nowhere to be seen!

Xia Qing immediately pulled up the rope and backed away from the Python Pool, called Broken-Back Wolf over, and asked, "Broken-Back, is there still a giant python in this pool? That big… black python?"

Seeing Broken-Back Wolf's dead-serious face, Xia Qing knew she'd guessed right and was speechless. "Didn't Xiong Qun give Mountain Fifty-Five back to you guys? Why won't the giant python leave?"

Seeing Broken-Back Wolf still dead serious, Xia Qing knew this wasn't simple: although the giant python and the giant bear were allies, the python didn't take orders from the bear, and it hadn't left the territory it had already occupied.

So unless this hole was blocked, the wolf pack couldn't settle here in peace — which was why, after the bears retreated, the alpha wolf and Broken-Back Wolf had hurriedly given Xia Qing two Yishi stones to get her to fill the pool.

Having taken the payment, Xia Qing didn't back off because of the difficulty. She pulled out the power-evolver's reinforced shovel, charged up the boulder she'd spent half the previous day chipping at without budging, and got back to work.

Just because I toss one stone down, that black loach in the water moves one away, right?

Come on, try moving this one!

After more than an hour of chiseling and prying, Xia Qing finally got the nearly circular boulder — five meters across and close to three hundred tons — rolling toward the Python Pool.

The boulder hit the water and sent up a huge splash that came down like a torrential downpour. Xia Qing dodged in time and didn't get splashed at all.

Listening to the dull thud of the boulder hitting the bottom, Xia Qing felt a lot better.

The five little wolves lying on the mountain all stared wide-eyed, clearly startled by the huge rock too. Broken-Back Wolf, standing halfway up the slope, was delighted — it bared its little fang tips and threw back its head in a long howl.

Listening to Broken-Back Wolf's joy as she kept prying at the rocks, Xia Qing smiled too. While working, she taunted the black giant python in her head:

Black loach, if you've got the guts, move this few-hundred-ton rock, crawl out here and fight me — I swear I'll beat you to death!

But a few minutes later, Broken-Back Wolf's howl changed tone.

With her much-improved hearing, Xia Qing caught the warning in it and immediately grabbed her shovel and ducked under a rock. The little wolves on the peak also slipped into cracks in the stone. Several adult wolves quickly gathered and took positions on either side of Broken-Back Wolf.

Seconds later, a black giant python burst out of the water, rearing high in the center of the pool, flicked its forked black tongue at Broken-Back Wolf, and let out a furious hiss.

It was the first time Xia Qing had ever heard a python make a sound — clearly the creature was truly furious.

Hunched honestly behind the rock, Xia Qing's heart was in her throat:

Was it because the boulder she'd rolled down hadn't sealed the opening tightly enough, letting the giant python come back through the underground river into the Python Pool?

Or was there a cave inside the Python Pool, and the stones she'd rolled down had disturbed the black loach hiding in it — so it crawled out, found the passage into the underground river blocked, and angrily came up to the surface to see what the wolves were up to?

The furious giant python roared, and Broken-Back Wolf immediately threw back its head and let out a long howl — Xia Qing could tell it was calling for reinforcements. Soon, several evolved wolves Xia Qing recognized came running from all directions and gathered at the pool's edge.

Seeing more than thirty strong evolved wolves ring the Python Pool, the black giant python pulled in its tongue and slowly sank back beneath the water.

Xia Qing stayed hunched for over ten minutes before standing up to keep prying rocks, but she hadn't worked long before she heard Broken-Back Wolf's warning again.

This time, from behind the rock, Xia Qing stared in astonishment as the black giant python — wrapped in more than twenty bright red Qiang snakes, accompanied by six medium-sized pythons, several dozen small ones, and dozens more Qiang snakes — swam slowly toward the outlet that connected the Python Pool to the outside.

Beyond doubt, the pythons living here were moving out.

It had to be because the boulder Xia Qing had pried down had blocked the underground river, making it impossible for the giant python to reach the river from the Python Pool, so it had no choice but to leave via the surface waterway.

The fact that it had fled the moment things looked wrong, and even knew to use Qiang snakes as bodyguards, showed this python's intelligence was extremely high. Watching the beast, well over ten meters long, Xia Qing's heart was pounding.

Protected by the Qiang snakes, the python moved on, and the wolf pack didn't give up — they chased along the bank, looking for a chance to kill it. The eagle species that prey on snakes also noticed the commotion and gathered above the waterway. Xia Qing used her phone to record the rare scene. When she saw the python had chosen to head north along the waterway, she finally breathed a sigh of relief.

After pocketing her phone, Xia Qing rolled a few more two-meter-cubed stones into the pool. When no python surfaced, she took out her tent and set it up in a safe spot.

The little wolves on the peak saw Xia Qing crawl into the tent and not come out, so they ran around to the other side of the mountain to watch their dad lead the pursuit of the giant python.

When Xia Qing crawled out of the tent, she had already taken off her protective suit and put on a diving suit.

She'd brought the diving suit today to gather underwater herbs for points. But now she had a second goal: to find where the python had been hiding inside the pool.

Her gut told her the python's lair must hold something good — otherwise this brain-evolved python wouldn't have stayed here refusing to leave even after the wolves returned.

What was it? She'd know once she went down. Xia Qing hung the black short knife at her waist and jumped into the pool.

She was wearing the AR smart diving goggles Yan Long had asked Huo Zhun to give her. When submerged, the lenses displayed depth, water temperature, and elapsed time, and also had night-vision capability, so Xia Qing didn't need any underwater lighting gear.

When she reached a depth of ten meters, a crocodile over four meters long shot out of a crack in the rock at the pool's edge, jaws wide, charging at her.

Seeing the little thing, Xia Qing felt a wave of nostalgia. When it closed in, she sidestepped, grabbed its short forelimb pressed against its torso as a pivot, and punched it hard until it passed out.

After surfacing twice for air, knocking out eight crocodiles big and small, and slashing through two medium pythons, Xia Qing — watched by a few wolves — finally found the giant python's cave fifteen meters below the surface of the pool.