The serpent’s shattered golden eyes held an aloof indifference. For this creature of the deep pool, slaying a mere human was hardly worth a second thought. Its foul, gaping maw lunged toward Teng Qingshan.
“Hah~~” Teng Qingshan’s gaze was sharp and cold. His right hand transformed into a blade, raised high, meeting the monstrous mouth head-on with a chopping strike!
The hand became a blur of motion!
Whoosh! The water parted instantly!
Thump!
A palm imbued with terrifying force smashed directly into the serpent’s skull, eliciting a dull, heavy impact. Teng Qingshan was immensely strong; this blow drove the deep pool serpent’s head down a full zhang, but after dropping only that far, the massive creature arrested its descent.
The deep pool serpent let out a bizarre, enraged roar, fixing its gaze upon the human above it!
Teng Qingshan was rocketing upward!
“A monster! This is absolutely a monster. My palm strike could cleave an iron pillar, yet this serpent’s hide registered not a single scratch. And it neutralized the full force of my strike by simply dipping its head slightly. Unbelievable.” Teng Qingshan knew precisely the terrifying power of his own blows.
Precisely because he knew the extent of his strength, the serpent’s resilience struck him with greater dread.
“Moreover, there’s a tiny silver horn on its forehead. Could this monstrous serpent actually be a Flood Dragon?” As Teng Qingshan shot upward, shock coursed through him. It was only when he struck that he had clearly seen the short, one-foot-high silver horn protruding from the serpent’s head.
A horned python?
In his previous life, Teng Qingshan had never seen a python with horns. Such features were perhaps reserved only for the legendary Flood Dragons. Whether this beast was truly a Flood Dragon, Teng Qingshan couldn't say, but it was undeniably a true monster of the deep pool.
“Roar~~” The serpent’s shattered golden pupils constricted violently, and a furious roar erupted. The deep pool serpent finally regarded its prey with true seriousness. With a whoosh, it shot upward with speed that outpaced Teng Qingshan by several times.
“Only a hundred meters to the surface of the Cold Pool—not good!” Before joy could register, Teng Qingshan realized the serpent had closed the distance in the blink of an eye.
Boom!
Water surged as the thick, purple-red scaled serpent shot past him. Half its colossal body ended up above Teng Qingshan, and the other half below.
“How long!” Only now did Teng Qingshan gain a full sense of the monster’s length. “Perhaps thirty meters. Such a massive body, yet its scales are impenetrable, and its head force effortlessly absorbed my full-power palm strike. This serpent’s raw power must be ten times mine, maybe more.”
Standing vertically, this serpent rivaled a ten-story building.
If a creature whose head alone could dissipate the force of his palm strike, how terrifying must its inherent strength be?
The deep pool serpent stared at Teng Qingshan with those shattered golden eyes, radiating utter disdain.
Hiss-hiss~~
With lightning speed, the serpent’s immense body contracted violently around him, seeking to crush Teng Qingshan into pulp with its ten-zhang-long form. Teng Qingshan saw only a blur as the massive body pressed in from above, below, front, back, and sides.
“This monster is infinitely strong. If it coils around me, survival is impossible,” Teng Qingshan gritted his teeth.
Shhh~~ Teng Qingshan’s legs suddenly swelled, tearing his trousers apart. His veins bulged like writhing green snakes, and his powerful muscles tightened like interwoven steel cables. The internal Neijin surged within him like a raging flood, channeling violently through his feet and erupting outward.
“Break!” he roared, slamming his right foot viciously against the coiling serpent body.
Leg power generally surpasses arm power. For an ordinary man capable of lifting a hundred pounds, a hard kick might generate four hundred pounds of impact force—that was normal. Teng Qingshan’s arms alone possessed over a hundred thousand jin of strength; what about his even stronger legs? Now, facing death, the power of his ultimate kick, combined with the outpouring of Neijin, reached an unimaginable magnitude.
Pang! Pang!
A double kick from both legs, one after the other.
“Roar~~” The serpent monster let out a pained, furious bellow. The force of the kicks slammed its body against the cliff wall beside the Cold Pool, causing a violent tremor. The entire surface of the stone wall boomed, sending clouds of pulverized dust mixing into the water. Cracks spiderwebbed across the bedrock of the pool floor.
Whoosh!
Teng Qingshan seized the instant of reprieve and shot upward, draining his Neijin furiously just to accelerate.
“Monster, an absolute monster. Even my kick didn’t break its hide. I must have been too slow today; survival might be hard. Fifty meters left, forty, thirty…” Teng Qingshan could already perceive the light above, faintly hearing the splattering roar of the downpour outside.
“Roar~~” A furious, frantic roar echoed from the depths.
The deep pool serpent below thrashed its body, surging upward once more. But Teng Qingshan was nearly at the surface of the Cold Pool. Seeing it couldn't catch him in time, the serpent opened its maw—
Hiss-hiss~~
Black mist jetted forth. Wherever the mist spread, the water of the Cold Pool instantly froze solid. In the blink of an eye, the twenty meters of water, from the serpent’s mouth to the surface, transformed into one massive block of ice.
Teng Qingshan was instantly entombed within this frozen mass.
“Cold, so cold.” All of Teng Qingshan’s Neijin churned wildly, his blood surging to an extreme peak, solely to resist this terrifying extreme cold.
“This serpent monster actually has this trick. The black mist it sprays can freeze the water of the Cold Pool!” The water here resisted freezing, yet it had solidified. This revealed the sheer coldness of the attack. Fortunately, Teng Qingshan was inside the ice. If he had been struck by the even colder ‘black mist,’ he would likely have frozen to death instantly. After all, anything capable of freezing the Cold Pool so easily must project mist far more frigid.
“Monster, truly a monster.” While desperate, Teng Qingshan pounded his fists against the ice block.
Pang! Pang!…
His fists moved like lightning, and the ice above collapsed and shattered rapidly.
When Teng Qingshan called the deep pool beast a monster, in truth, he himself was a small monster in his own right.
“Roooar~~~” The serpent surged upward, shattering huge volumes of ice. It swiftly pursued Teng Qingshan, determined to devour him.
Boom!
With a deafening crash, masses of ice exploded outward from the Cold Pool surface in every direction. Simultaneously, a figure burst from the water and landed near the pool edge.
“Finally out.” Teng Qingshan allowed himself no relaxation, sprinting toward the nearby satchel. The rain was torrential now, the world a blur of water. He snatched the bag, ripped it open with a shhh-la sound, and retrieved the Bintie Spear, broken into two segments.
Roar~~
A furious roar erupted, followed by a splash as the terrifying serpent monster smashed free of the ice in the Cold Pool. Its huge, menacing head swept around, instantly locking onto Teng Qingshan.
Whoosh! Teng Qingshan had no time to reassemble his spear. He immediately executed the Tianya Xing movement technique, transforming into a streak of green smoke and fleeing halfway up the slope.
He leaped up, plunging from the mountainside toward the valley below!
“Roar~~” The massive serpent body shot out, its jaws snapping toward Teng Qingshan, who was suspended in mid-air.
“Get lost, you!” Teng Qingshan roared. The half-segment of the Bintie Spear in his hand became a blur, hurled away from him, trailing a sharp sonic crack as it pierced toward the serpent’s head.
Ch-ch~~ The tip of the spinning half-spear scraped against the serpent’s scales, managing to bore a tiny hole with agonizing effort. The spearhead sank just beneath the layer of scales, and blood welled up from the serpent’s head, momentarily halting its attack.
Teng Qingshan plummeted into the deep mountains below.
The world was a vast expanse of rain and mist; the serpent monster could no longer see a trace of him.
The enraged serpent whipped its head, flinging the segment of Bintie Spear toward a nearby cliff face. The stone seemed like tofu; the spear embedded itself deep into the rock.
The blood-stained serpent head roared furiously, opening its cavernous mouth to spray indiscriminately in all directions. Black mist billowed out, and wherever it touched the surrounding cliffs, the stone silently disintegrated into fine powder, flowing downward.
“Roooar~~~”
Midway up the mountain, the terrifying serpent monster roared toward the heavens, venting its fury. The surrounding rock faces shuddered, seemingly trembling in response to the beast’s rage.
After a long time, the serpent retracted into the Jade Cold Pool. Calm returned to the water, and soon, a thick layer of hard ice reformed over the pool’s surface.
...
At the base of the cliff, Teng Qingshan stood amidst the trees, oblivious to the downpour, looking up toward the middle slope. When he saw the serpent monster rear its head and roar at the sky, his heart jolted.
“What lies at the depths of that underwater passage, to nurture such a terrifying creature? If I hadn't run fast enough today, I would have lost my life there.” Teng Qingshan understood well that where spiritual energy flourished, allowing humans to grow stronger, terrifying monsters would also arise.
“My ultimate technique, the Poison Dragon Drill, could only scratch its scales. A true monster,” Teng Qingshan sighed.
From the age of ten to sixteen—over these six years—when his body was resting, Teng Qingshan devoted himself to studying spear techniques. Before age ten, he had developed the Ruying Suixing (Following Like a Shadow) and Hunyuan Yi Qi (Primal Unity) spear forms. During these six years, through constant meditation in the Cold Pool, Teng Qingshan finally evolved his water-attribute 'Drill Fist' into the 'Poison Dragon Drill' spear technique, a move of immense power. One thrust, resembling a venomous dragon emerging from water, could easily bore a hole through an opponent. Its destructive force was enormous.
Every advantage has its drawback. The ‘Poison Dragon Drill,’ upon execution, caused the spear to momentarily slip slightly from precise control. But compared to its sheer power, this flaw was negligible.