20 The Breakthrough

Although the snake's vision was quite poor, its other senses were extremely keen, and the giant snake had easily sensed the pressure from Wei Gaoyuan and realized that the man in the front was not an ordinary warrior. Therefore, rather than a quick attack, it slowly wriggled close to its target.

Wei Gaoyuan had not been so sure if he could kill or defeat this giant Spirit Animal, which was really much bigger than he had imagined. So his aim was clear that he had to do his uttermost to fight with it to earn more time for his teammates' escape, and then manage to get out of the battle when all in the team ran away far enough from here.

The giant snake was coming very near to Wei Gaoyuan and suddenly raised its head and spewed out a stinking smell from his mouth, which made Wei Gaoyuan feel very sick at his stomach and almost vomit. He moved not fast in the direction of the forest and always kept his blade close to his chest for protection.

The giant snake seemed to read his intention and launched the attack suddenly, flicking its long tongue like a whip to roll up to Wei Gaoyuan's waist.

Wei Gaoyuan slashed it with his sword, unexpectedly, the cunning snake withdrew its tongue quickly before opened its big mouth and bit him from high.

Looking up at the mouth which was so big that it seemed like covering the sky above, Wei Gaoyuan quickly rolled himself on the ground to dodge, and the snake bit into the air as its tongue flashed out to roll over again. This time, it did twist Wei Gaoyuan's legs tightly before he could react.

With great terror, Wei Gaoyuan swung his sword with great strength to cut the long tongue. At the same time, the giant snake opened its mouth and withdrew its tongue at a high speed, which forced the sword to get almost dropped off his hand. Just in a blink of an eye, everything around Wei Gaoyuan turned black— he'd been pulled into the giant snake's mouth.

In a hurry, he realized that the long sword was still in his hand and stabbed into its throat with a heavy sword strike.

The giant snake suffered terrible pain, rolling up violently on the ground. Wei Gaoyuan was stunned, turning and rolling over in its mouth while his hands were always gripping the hilt of the sword into its throat — that was the only weapon for surviving.

The giant Snake was constantly twisting and churning its huge body, which made the long sword finally slip off its throat and Wei Gaoyuan was also slipping down into the snake's abdomen like riding a roller coaster.

He instinctively stabbed the sword into the muscles of the big snake's abdominal cavity, then came another roller-coaster-like flying in darkness which made him deadly giddy. He just didn't know when the long sword had pulled off its muscle again.

The whole world around still kept rolling, and with no exit to escape and less and less air inside, a feeling of suffocation and desperation soon pushed and overwhelmed him.

" I mustn't die here! I must get out!" this voice from his heart thundering in his ear again and again, Wei Gaoyuan gradually turned into calm and even breathing before he felt slipping into the snake's stomach. The worse smell and the undigested stuff here made his stomach awfully sick again. Suppressing an inclination to throw up, holding his breath and clenching his teeth, Wei Gaoyuan crazily kept swinging his sword to slash the same area of its stomach.

The giant snake rolled up again. The snake blood in the stomach pouring and splashing onto Wei Gaoyuan's face, he couldn't refrain from it anymore and kept vomiting violently.

In spite of that, Wei Gaoyuan never stopped smashing the same part of the giant snake's stomach again and again. The sword was finally pierced through its stomach and muscle, but its scales, very hard as steel, formed the snake's last line of defense, which separated Wei Gaoyuan from the path to survive.

As his swinging got slower and slower, Wei Gaoyuan's eyes slowly closed, falling down into complete unconsciousness…

His face already getting purple because of suffocation, Wei Gaoyuan was rolling out of consciousness in the stomach of the giant snake who was also painfully rolling around on the ground…

Pow!!!

Just at this moment a dark golden seal emerged between Wei eyebrows, which shot a golden light into and easily through the giant snake's scales and instantly disappeared into the sky. The snake's belly was then blown up into a big hole before a lot of air poured in.

Wei Gaoyuan was still in a coma, knowing nothing about what had happened; more precisely, he was now sitting cross-legged in the dream space, only feeling the Internal Qi expanding and rolling rapidly in his Dantian rather than perceiving a large amount of energy, power and essence of the giant snake gathering and rushing towards him now and absorbed by his body unconsciously.

The body of the giant snake was getting dried up at a high speed. Moments later, the huge Spirit Animal only left a light gray skeleton wrapped in a dry wrinkled snake skin.

When Wei Gaoyuan opened his eyes like waking from a blur dream, he felt full of energy. But the weird and disgusting wreck around him made his stomach rolling again. He quickly jumped out of the piles of bones.

He got quite surprised at what he turned to see. Obviously, he was swallowed by the giant snake, but how could he survive? Why did the giant snake die? And why did it turned out to be such a…dry skin and skeleton?

Did someone who was far stronger than him pass by and kill it to save himself, and then left quietly? The great hero in the story, he thought, always got no interested in such a troublesome thanking-after-saving involvement.

He had heard that it was most likely to get an precious Inner Essence in the body of the Spirit Animal, which contained the essence of the Spirit Animal's energy and consequently was worth a lot of money and had kinds of wonderful uses such as using for lighting in darkness.

It was said that the huge flying ship which took them to this island was supplied with abundant power by an Inner Essence of a Yaoist, far more powerful than an Inner Essence of Spirit Animal.

Such treasure should be taken away by that hero who saved him, however Wei Gaoyuan still got into the skeleton of the giant snake, held his breath and searched for a while. Finally, he got an egg-sized ball, which seemed a dark gray stone and was felt little power or energy in it

"The energy and essence in it must be absorbed completely by that hero…" little disappointed in heart, he kept searching in the skeleton and got the snake gall, a little bigger than his fist, which was too big to swallow and surely hard to drink so much bile straight…

It was the gall of the spirit snake, too wasteful absolutely if just left it here, he thought. then he held his nose after a sigh, stabbed the gall and drank it all down…

After that, Wei Gaoyuan quickly sat crossed-legged beside the giant skeleton and fell into the state of meditation soon.

…

The sky was getting dim and another dark night came. When Wei Gaoyuan opened his eyes from meditation, he felt that his Dantian was full of Internal Qi, obviously much more plentiful than before. He couldn't help but shoot a palm-strike — a small tree in the front broke in half with a crash!

'I'd been…stride into the eighth level of the Mystery?' Wei Gaoyuan stared at his hand in huge surprise and sheer joy.

Assuming that he's able to keep such an incredible progress pace in the Martial Arts, even if he didn't join any sects, he would be… then quickly shaking his head to wake himself from the day-dream, Wei Gaoyuan came to the stream and washed his face with cool water. Setting off to find his teammates and then getting the pine crystal should be given top priority right now, and he just heard the loud rumbling in his stomach...

Surely, the strong warrior at eighth level of the Mystery like himself had to eat.