Suddenly, Yun Fei was forcefully thrown aside. The snake had come to a halt. Yun Fei just hoped that he'd be able to escape soon and increased the pace of his attacks.

He was going all out but just as one of his slashes was going to land, he tumbled down again. Loud noises rang out from outside as the snake writhed.

It felt as if it was under relentless bombardment. Yun Fei could feel muffled blasts all around him.

Even the layer of muscle in front of him rippled from the force. Suddenly, it stiffened; contracting before subduing the blasts to a degree.

The battle outside had picked up. In this situation, it was hard to strike continuously and the Qi infused muscles hardly showed any damage from his meagre attacks. Yun Fei decided to make each of his slashes count instead.

Since the muscle layer in front of him had flexed and hardened, he predicted that it would become easier to slash through.

Having a rigid outer layer was currently more suitable for the snake. It functioned to reduce the blunt force trauma from reaching its internal organs.

But this just served as an opportunity for Yun Fei, making it easier for him to cut out a path.

"SLASH"

This full blown move clearly had a better effect as it cut very deep compared to the earlier ones. Consequently, this had also made his whole arm ache as well as expended a lot of Qi.

He transferred the dagger to his left hand and did a matching slash with speed as he was once again hurled to a side.

It was just a feeling, but he liked to think that the snake had finally felt a pang of pain from the last effort.

Yun Fei was rolling around because of the constant movement of the snake. While he waited for the muscles in his arms to heal, all his Qi had already recovered due to the efficiency of the branch crown.

The fight outside had continued for some time. He felt that the snake was on the losing end. The onslaught still continued, the blows seemed to carry more variation now.

It had already stopped issuing cries, just slithering forwards; striking fast or running away from the attackers.

Gradually, the attacks on the snake ceased. Its movement slowed down. Yun Fei was just about to start slashing again but suddenly,

He felt like he had been submerged into ice cold water. He could sense the acceleration from that feeling in the pit of his stomach. The rapid movement leaving him pressed against the flesh wall.

BOOOOM!!!

Shui Ling stood far away as she witnessed this. Duan Xiang had decided to explode his body when he wasn't able to set off the talisman. The snake had pushed him to this degree.

Self-explosion was always the last straw for any cultivator. Especially after reaching the nascent soul stage. This was because, cultivators in and beyond the nascent soul stage had an added safety measure.

For them to truly die, their souls had to be destroyed. Otherwise, they could possess a body or condense another through various measures. That wasn't easy though, body reconstruction usually involved a lot of hardships.

Even if they succeeded in gaining a new body. They would remain weak for extended periods of time and it would ultimately affect their cultivation. This was the reason why the explosion of the body was usually the last resort.

She kept watching the jaw of the snake which had been mangled from the explosion. She was waiting for the Nascent Soul of Duan Xiang to escape and her Qi to recover fully.

No matter how much she waited, there was no trace of Duan Xiang. His soul wasn't coming out from the jaws of the snake. It was as if, it had been swallowed.

The mangled jaw of the snake rearranged and fit into its previous position. Although hurt, the snake had survived once again.

Sustaining incessant damage for such a long period of time had finally started showing its effects. Its movements had slowed down and the beast Qi emanating from it suggested that it's cultivation level was only on the first stage of Nascent Soul.

It turned its head towards Shui Ling, the spirit in its eyes clear to see. It was never going to give in just like that, it wasn't one to leave a threat at its back.

Shui Ling was shaken by its resilience but she was also aware of the damage it had taken. Unwilling to back out right now, she drew her sword yet again.

Duan Xiang's nascent soul was pushed down the throat of the snake. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't escape under the colossal pressure still bearing down on him.

Along with the pressure, there was also the corrosive nature of the Qi eroding him. If it continued like this, he would be digested sooner or later. The process would be much easier after he lost his mental faculties. That didn't seem to be too far off.

The deeper he was pulled, the more corrosion he had to resist against. He had never imagined that this treacherous serpent even had the ability to digest souls.

Just as the erosion and the pressure he had to face reached the peak in the stomach of the snake, Duan Xiang spied an opportunity. He saw a perforation in one of the stomach walls that looked like a tunnel.

Rushing into it, he suddenly saw something that he had never expected to see in this place. It was a human.

A human was inside the stomach of the snake!!

It was a kid in Qi Condensation and he was laying down in the darkness, chewing on muscle fibers of the snake as he cultivated. Duan Xiang's mind blanked.

While they were fighting the behemoth from the outside, this little kid had created a flesh tunnel and was trying to escape in this way.

He felt like he had been given another chance. What he needed to survive this predicament was a body. And the body was right in front of him.

If the kid wasn't affected by the corrosion, there was no way he would be affected after he took over his body. He could even escape from here.

Right now, he wasn't able to use his cultivation strength to do anything because the insides of the snake seemed to have an inherent restriction on the soul.

However, once he acquired a body, he could use some of the power of his soul to easily tear his way out of here. Unlike the kid who never had a chance to damage the scales in the true defensive layer of the snake.

Duan Xiang did not think twice when he made the decision to end Yun Fei’s life. In the world of Cultivation, success meant standing at the top… upon a mountain of corpses.

Judging by different standards he and countless others like him, the so-called righteous old masters would be mass murders.

Even genocide and patricide were not deal breakers. Because when there was no one to judge you, how would a sentence be passed? The only justice in this world was strength, everything else were mere excuses.

With this thought, Duan Xiang's soul rushed towards Yun Fei's body and entered it.

Yun Fei was concentrating on healing his arms when suddenly he felt something like an intrusion. His body seemed to be saturated from something that was not him.

Before he could sense more, Yun Fei's consciousness started fading as he heard a single muffled sentence.

"Kid, you were never going to escape from here anyway. Lend this master your body so at least your body can see the outside world."

Just as Duan Xiang tried to assimilate with the new body he had acquired, his brows wrinkled up in the resistance he had to face.

The body was resisting him more than normal. Without thinking too much, he went ahead with the possession. For that was the only path remaining for him.

The fault in his decision was illuminated right a moment afterwards. A soul piercing shriek, as if coming straight from the bottom of the hell erupted from the mouth of Duan Xiang.

He felt his soul tear apart along with the modicum of sanity that had remained inside him. The possession had failed completely. It was like when a person from one race tried to possess someone from a completely different one.

The backlash was usually proportional to the degree of differences they had. The backlash that Duan Xiang faced was such that his mind had become incapable of even simple thought processes.

The soul which exited out of Yun Fei's body seemed to be torn paper pieces exiting from a shredder. The only thing that the ethereal clump of mush was capable of was weakly murmuring,

"Not a human. Not a human. Not a human. It's not a human........"

While the soul was about to dissipate. Suddenly, the forest king's crown on Yun Fei's head lit up a pale green.

Vines which seemed like lively tentacles made up of the pale green halo extended from the crown and reached towards the floating heap of soul.

The soul and all the little parts that had separated from it were sucked cleanly inside the crown; the vines vanishing as if they had never existed.

After some time, Yun Fei woke back up. He remembered almost nothing from the possession. The only thing he noticed was that he had a small headache which the crown was working to elevate.

Yun Fei closed his eyes and concentrated on all the information he could get from his senses. He tried to perceive what was happening outside just through the heightened senses he had from Sun Ming's Eye technique.

For a long time now, his senses had been enhanced to an unbelievable extent. As one practiced this technique, there was an increase in the information that their senses, especially their eyes could glean.

To accompany this increase in investigative ability, the very cellular structure of their brain was changed.

This was the reason that the energy from the technique was focused in the head of the practitioner. It was also the reason why the rest of the senses were enhanced too.

Even if a human were given a pair of glasses or some such optical aid that let them perceive information on extra wavelengths of light such as UV… they would still fail to 'do' anything with it. They were simply incapable of processing that extra information.

What Sun Ming's technique did was to literally broaden the horizons of a cultivator. They were able to access information that was usually hidden from their senses.

Heat, vibrations, sounds, smells; the minute chemical reactions that take place on the insensitive skin. They all combined into something truly amazing, perfect vision.

This was on par with pseudo divine sense that Qi practitioners of the 10th level gained.

Divine sense could move the receptors and consciousness of the cultivator outside his body while also enhancing the cognitive abilities. This brought the explained phenomenon to a whole new level.

His sense expanded slowly but he still couldn't perceive anything out of this flesh tunnel. His focus built itself up and his senses penetrated into the walls, frantic for tidings.

Yun Fei's head burst, painting the pulsating walls with blood. Or at least that's how it felt as a splitting headache overcame him. His vision was overwhelmed and a burst of nausea assaulted him.

He saw complicated lines and blurs that flitted in and out of existence. Circular patterns that doubled in his sight and couldn't be seen clearly.

In a whimsical fit, rather than withdrawing Yun Fei focused himself, concentrating on a small part to the exclusion of all else. That part gradually became clearer. He could finally see all the lines in it properly.

At this moment, his head ached to an unbearable degree forcing him to avert his gaze. Even under the effects of the crown Yun Fei felt like he was going to go crazy if he didn't divert his gaze.

As soon as he averted his gaze, the crown once again worked to soothe his headache. He instinctively felt that he could get seriously injured doing this.

The green crown had worked very well till now. It helped him recover his Qi and reduce the pain that he received from changing the structure of his body.

However, this time even with this treasure he was averse to taking another peek. He feared that he might just die the next time.

Yun Fei was flabbergasted, he knew that what he encountered could only be the meridians of the snake. But beasts did not have meridians. Their Qi was concentrated and condensed into a core, not circulated in channels like humans.

That was what he thought. This whole experience had made him confused, there were still many things that he was not aware of.

'This isn't the time to concentrate on this thing, I'll have to research about this when I get back to the city.'

He clearly remembered the last pattern he had concentrated on and he didn't think he was going to forget about it anytime soon. It had burned itself into his memory. The priority was still to escape from here, or everything would be for naught.

Fully recovered, he once again started hacking away at the hole in a cycle of rest and exertion.

The snake’s movements had slowed down drastically. The attacks seemed to be sparser than before but more rhythmic. It seemed like both the snake as well as it's opponents were spent.

This made it obvious to Yun Fei that the fight outside was drawing to an end. Things seemed to be better for him because the snake probably lost the battle. It was taking more than it returned.

Yun Fei looked forward to seeing the experts that had managed to defeat this enormous serpent.

'If they managed to bring this beast down then they will certainly be of an exceptional cultivation.’

Thought Yun Fei, not knowing that one of them had already been devoured by him and his crown.

‘I've already cut through half of the muscle layer. The final boundary is very near.'

He tightened his grip on the dagger and moved to slash one more time. However, just as his dagger touched the muscle layer the snake screeched, alarming Yun Fei.

Light suddenly illuminated the dark blood filled tunnel. Yun Fei was shocked to see that the place he was slashing at was now a hole to the outside world.

'Damn, did I suddenly become super powerful? No. Aruwakenai-daro. It should be something else.'

Yun Fei didn't understand what happened but at this point he didn't care how, he just wanted to escape from this place.

He put his dagger and crown back into his space pouch and also stored a lot of the muscle fibres lying around in the space pouches. They would make a nutritious snack after drying and any benefits he could obtain after this ordeal were well deserved.

He ran towards the hole and looked out. He was currently twenty or so meters up from the ground. In front of him was the massive head of the snake that opened its jaw and streaked towards a person carrying a sword.