A Strange Call

Chapter 5: A Strange Call

"No!" apart from Elder Duanmu the others reflexively covered their faces with their hands as the sharp wooden spear left Yun Feng's hands. The smell of death became cleare than they've ever felt before, it was an odd feeling to be getting from a mere mortal they could squash to death with their farts.

No one would believe it unless they saw it, Deities were actually being scared shitless by a mere mortal.

They all waited to be pierced to death by a mortal weapon with their hearts pounding louder than a drum on a Sunday morning.

In that moment, their lives flashed before their eyes, and all four of them felt a sense of regret.

Elder Duanmu personally regretted not killing Yun Feng when he had the chance.

Unfortunately, there wasn't any pill for regret in the world.

"Squeeke, splatter splatter!"

The sound of a shell cracking and liquid splashing all over resounded in the air, jolting them back of their lucid dreams

.

"As expected of a mortal trash like you! Even at such a distance, you can't hit your father I! Hahahaha!" The youngest Blue Phoenix disciple burst into laughter after removing his hands and noticing the wooden spear impaled to the floor just twenty inches away from him.

Having suffered so much at the hands of this skinny mortal, and with inevitable death looming over his head, he took great joy in watching Yun Feng miss and seized the chance to insult him as his body continued sinking into the swamp.

Elder Duanmu and the others also looked at Yun Feng with a mocking look on their faces. The longer they stayed alive, the more likely someone might come and rescue them, and judging from the rate at which their bodies were being gobbled up by the swamp since they stopped struggling to jump out, they still had like three hours each before their heads were completely submerged into the muddy disaster.

If Yun Feng kept missing his shots, they could wait it out and then make sure to release their entire anger on him. Unfortunately, all their thoughts of escaping were mere fantasies that the vindictive Yun Feng would never allow to come through.

"It's cute that you lot think that I, a master hunter in these woods, would miss my target... Sorry to inform you lots, I didn't miss." Yun Feng spoke slowly and coldly. His eyes were expectantly staring at where the wooden spear struck.

"Huh?!"

Elder Duanmu and the others' hearts skipped a beat immediately, and they all quickly did the same as Yun Feng, narrowing their eyes as they locked onto where the wooden spear landed.

Suddenly, they heard a hissing sound, and the ground began to move. Broken pieces of what looked like a snake egg broke out from beneath. The scene of what seemed to be an unborn snake pierced in the head by the wooden spear reached their eyes.

Why was a snake egg here? They all wondered. And shouldn't the hissing sound have seized since the snake hidden inside the egg was obviously dead?

Elder Duanmu had a bad feeling about this. He looked more closely, then his already pale face became even paler as soon as he noticed the patterns on the head of the dead snake. They were two golden stripes, an indication that the dead snake was of the golden back snake race, a fearsome race of snake monsters that lived in large numbers.

Every stripe indicated the snake had absorbed an entire decade's worth of spiritual energy and possessed power far greater than a level one Unsealed Red Lotus deity!

Such a beast could easily devour ten mortal men on its own, yet this unhatched snake actually had two golden stripes! even the disciples behind him were barely the match of such creatures after all the strongest of them was only a rank two Unsealed Red Lotus warrior.

Gold back snakes lived in groups of hundreds, with mother snake possessing immense might leading them, and lower-level snakes with unhatched ones being the weakest.

This meant there were at least a hundred more snakes equal or stronger than the now dead snake!

"We... are... truly... fucked," Elder Duanmu struggled to say under his breath. His entire body was shaking and sweating profusely. The swamp he was sinking into suddenly became the least of his problems. Sure enough, as the thought of impending doom crossed his mind, the dark, silent swamp began to vibrate. Its surface began to move, and then...

Pop! Pop! Pop! One by one, snakes with different stripes of golden lines burst out from within the swamp and quickly surrounded them.

Each and every one of the gold back snakes radiated an earth-shattering pressure that turned Elder Duanmu and the rest numb in fear.

"What the fuck is this? Why are there so many beasts here?!" The Blue Phoenix sect's disciples' faces warped in horror, looking at the countless ten-foot-long snakes slithering in the sinking mud with ease. Boom! After hundreds of snakes later, a ten-striped gold bark snake, ninety-nine feet tall and large and deadly, slithered out of the murky water. Its eyes were cold and dark; anyone that stared into it would feel like they had fallen into the abyss.

The large snake looked coldly at the destroyed egg beside the blue fire disciple, and its already turbulent aura exploded once more, causing heavy fluctuations in the usually silent swamp.

Then, the large snake's gaze finally landed on the Blue Phoenix sect members. Its eyes were red with rage, as if it was staring at the murderers of its father, it obviously thought that its hatchling was murdered by this puny human.

"W-w-wait, we didn't kill it, it was th-" The Blue Phoenix sect member standing closest to the broken egg tried to explain. He raised his hands to pin the blame on Yun Feng, who was on a tree. Unfortunately, the branch where Yun Feng once stood was devoid of any life, but Yun Feng had long since disappeared.

"I can explain. It really wasn't me, someone else was here" In panic, the Blue Phoenix sect disciple hurriedly and desperately tried to beg this monstrosity in front of him, a strong smelly odor came from him as his lower robes were soaked in pee even inside all that mud.

His actions were pitiable in the eyes of others. Why would a predator want to hear the ramblings of its prey? Swoosh! His pleas fell on deaf ears as the next moment, the large snake moved at a speed even Elder Duanmu found it nearly impossible to follow.

Then,

chomp! Gulp!

With just one large bite, the entire upper body of the blue fire disciple was chewed off and swallowed. It was a truly terrible and bloody scene that sent chills to the others. After killing the unfortunate man, the huge snake hissed silently.

Whoosh! Whoosh!

As soon as it hissed, the remaining smaller snakes sprang into action, pouncing on Elder Duanmu and the other three.

"If you don't want to suffer a torturous death, ignite your red lotuses... grant yourself a quick death," Elder Duanmu, whose waist-down part was currently covered in mud whispered to the two remaining disciples as he glared helplessly at the hundreds of snakes surging towards them from all sides like a rip tide.

He had come out with hope of encountering something that would advance his cultivation. Who knew he would succumb to the plots of mere mortals! He didn't even try to offer resistance, he couldn't anyway since his entire body was stuck and weak as a result of the swamp's powers.

The thought of resistance never crossed the minds of Elder Duanmu and the rest. What they desired now was a way out of this hellhole, but there was none. If he could use his heavenly energy, maybe he had a chance to leave here, but now there wasn't.

There weren't just a few snakes. There were too many, and they were too powerful. The snakes were like a black ocean, their scales shining in the faint light as they slithered towards the group with rapid speed.

" Punisher Dragon Deity Yun Feng, I know who you are!! You will die a terrible death!!!" Elder Duanmu roared to the skies, his red, angry eyes fixed at the spot Yun Feng had once stood on the tree. His voice was terrible to the extreme, filled with immense hatred and a hint of madness! but mostly regret if he had known this mortal was that man he would have been more cautious and maybe they wouldn't be in such a helpless situation now..

But that was that, He had no intention of going down like this!, Just then, his body began to glow brightly as he circulated the spiritual energy still flowing through his meridians in reverse.

He then shattered his own meridians, which led to a big bang explosion that swallowed his entire body and the swarm of snakes frantically rushing to swallow him whole

. The entire swamp trembled slightly under the might of that explosion. There was no more Elder Duanmu in this world, nor were there over thirty gold back snakes. The remaining two Blue Phoenix sect disciples soon met with terror.

They were surrounded and stood helplessly as hundreds of snakes nibbled chunks of flesh out of their skins. The snakes were too numerous, their venom deadly and fast-acting. One by one, the men fell, their bodies writhing in agony as the snakes coiled around them.

Ear-splitting screams spread across the swamp as the Blue Phoenix sect members were introduced to the worst pain right before their deaths. Yun Feng watched as his captors were brutally murdered from a safe distance.

'been decades since I was called that name' Yun Feng muttered to himself, pain flashing in his eyes, for a brief moment he looked rather dignified a polar opposit of his usual chill self, the next moment his eyes became confused again, his expression odd.

'what did I just do? what did that old fogey mean by dragon something?' A bucket load of questions arouse in Yun Feng's mind, every that just happened felt unreal to him, from being forced to come out, to luring those cultivators to their death, it all felt so unreal.

For some reason the past couple of hours , he felt like he was watching his body from outside, without control, every thing that he did was just pure instinct.

His heart was heavy, this was his first time indirectly being the cause if the death of another but his mind was oddly at peace for someone who just killed three powerful men.

"this damn blanks in my memory" Yun Feng felt an headache coming as the oddness of gus reaction dawn on him, he felt like there was another part of him that was lying hidden, ready to pounce - whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, he couldn't tell.

"well , Fuck it"

Shaking all that worry off, He stealthily and steadily made his way out of the swamp of those scary, ugly snakes.

While he felt a sense of satisfaction and relief wash over him, he knew he still had something he needed to do.

He looked to the west with a fervent look on his dark moon eyes .

He knew that there was something powerful waiting for him, something that he was meant to find. But what lay ahead was unknown, and he could only hope that he was making the right choice.