"Three months!"
Facing Meng Qingshuang's question, Wu Dao finally spoke, his voice booming like a tolling bell and rolling thunder.
"Ninety days. One hundred and eighty meals of pig slop that tasted like dog shit. Three hundred lashings and humiliations. The only meal with meat was a cursed, life-threatening thing."
As he finished,
Wu Dao reached out a scarlet hand and patted Meng Qingshuang's fair cheek. His eyes, as large as bronze bells, glinted with a malevolent light. "Little cutie, do you remember who I am now?"
"Are you insulting me?"
Meng Qingshuang turned his head to stare at Wu Dao's bloody right palm, which was larger than his own face. His eyes turned cold, not believing a single word Wu Dao said.
'A Mining Slave!'
'A wretch lower than an ant, a rat-like man who could be killed with a single lash!'
'If it was really done by such a filthy piece of trash,'
'what would that make me, Meng Qingshuang?'
'Worse than a rat?'
'What a joke!'
"Heh heh..."
An indescribable sense of humiliation made Meng Qingshuang laugh in fury. He no longer cared to guess what power might be backing Wu Dao.
He just wanted to—now!
Immediately!
Tear Wu Dao to shreds!!
"Hahahaha..."
His laughter grew increasingly shrill and piercing.
Meng Qingshuang's body also began to change.
GURGLE~
A sound of squirming and coiling arose from beneath his skin.
Starting from his abdomen, python-like sinews of cyan muscle rapidly spread through his limbs and body, even across his face, twisting and knotting together, causing his frame to expand at a terrifying rate.
In the blink of an eye,
Meng Qingshuang's body shot up to match Wu Dao's height. He glowed with a cyan light, seemingly wrapped in ten thousand snakes. From a distance, he no longer looked like a man, but a writhing, humanoid nest of serpents!
BOOM!!
The sound of a punch shattering the air rang out.
Like a viper striking, Meng Qingshuang's right arm—now thick as a bucket and formed from countless twisting cyan pythons—shot out with lightning speed. It tore through the curtain of fine rain that had begun to fall, blasting straight toward Wu Dao.
BOOM!!
Wu Dao, completely unfazed, met fist with fist.
Instantly,
a massive force crashed into him, sending him sliding back five or six meters. The ground was plowed into two deep furrows, a testament to the immense power of Meng Qingshuang's punch.
CRACK!
CRACKLE! POP!
Before he even came to a stop, the sound of bones in his fist shattering rang out like a string of firecrackers.
SPLASH!
Muddy water splashed as Wu Dao's massive frame skidded backward. He finally stopped by stomping his foot so hard it caved in the ground, halting him in a pit of bloody mud.
He looked down.
His right fist was a mangled mess of flesh and blood, and his entire right arm felt completely numb.
Heh...
Wu Dao lowered his head, a slow grin spreading across his lips, as if he couldn't feel the slightest pain from his broken bones and torn sinews.
On the contrary,
he was even more excited!
"You piece of dog shit! You think you're worthy of looking down on me?!"
Meng Qingshuang's mouth split open to his ears, revealing a maw full of unsettling, steel-nail-like fangs as he roared in fury.
His previous refined and slender appearance was completely gone.
The towering, brutish monster stood in the fine rain, its entire body covered in a layer of cyan scales. Beneath the scales, ten thousand serpents roiled and writhed, pulsing and breathing in a way that was psychologically unsettling to behold.
"Has his demonification reached this level already?"
Zhao Gou, who had long since retreated to the side, gazed at the monstrous Meng Qingshuang with a flash of envy in his eyes.
The Four Seas Gang possessed a Demon Planting Secret Technique that allowed a person to merge with a demon, forming a parasitic bond. The stronger the demon within, the stronger the person's power.
With this Secret Technique, not only would one's strength far exceed others in the same realm, but one could also overcome Innate deficiencies, forcibly Breaking the Cocoon and achieving a complete Rebirth.
The only drawback was,
the Cultivation of this Secret Technique required a large number of Demon Seeds as a resource, and the source of these Demon Seeds...
Zhao Gou glanced down at the twenty-odd snake eggs in the brocade box, unconsciously licking his dry lips as he wondered when he would be worthy of receiving the Secret Technique.
Hm?
But just then, his nose twitched, and his gaze snapped toward Wu Dao, the dying man in the pit of bloody mud not far away.
That's right.
In Zhao Gou's eyes, Wu Dao was already a dead man.
Meng Qingshuang was at the peak of the Martial Dao's Foundation Establishment, and he had unleashed his Demon Body. His strength was several times greater than that of other Divine Power Martial Artists in the same realm. In his enraged state, he was more than capable of crushing a normal Divine Power Realm expert.
It was just that...
this Divine Power Martial Artist of unknown origin didn't seem quite normal either!
HISSSS...
A sound like boiling water arose. In the pit of blood and mud, the liquid around Wu Dao's feet began to evaporate as if touching red-hot iron, forming wisps of white steam.
"Oh? Interesting!"
Meng Qingshuang's eyes narrowed, watching Wu Dao's transformation with great interest.
Within the Foundation Establishment Stage, his Demon Body made him invincible. Unless he encountered "one of his own kind" or a Soldier Cultivator with supreme killing power, there would be no surprises.
Wu Dao was clearly not one of his kind, and he was even less likely to be a Soldier Cultivator.
Meng Qingshuang couldn't sense any demonic aura within him, nor did he hold a weapon. No matter how much he struggled on the verge of death, he couldn't possibly turn the tables.
But in the next moment,
Meng Qingshuang's expression changed...
THUMP THUMP THUMP!!
The wild thumping of a heartbeat, like the roaring of a war engine, echoed without pause. The vibrations made the boiling blood-water in the pit surge violently, and its high temperature turned it into clouds of white steam.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Deep within his mind, shackles and iron chains snapped open one after another.
To the naked eye,
the muscles all over Wu Dao's body began to vibrate and burn like coals in a furnace, turning as red as blood. Bulging veins twisted and writhed across his skin like small, ferocious lava serpents.
The raging vital energy within him was so frenzied that it erupted from the countless pores on his body, dyeing the white steam into a thick, bloody mist.
SPLAT!
HISSSS...
Enveloped in the bloody mist, his large, fire-jade-like scarlet foot stepped onto the muddy ground, causing the sludge to sizzle and hiss, a testament to his soaring body temperature.
Like a lava Evil Ghost, Wu Dao slowly raised his head, revealing a terrifying, bizarre face that seemed to be of both Gods and Ghosts—a face that was no longer human!