The Hehuan Sect cultivates alchemy; my senior sister helps me refine alchemy throughout the world.

As the light dimmed at the cave entrance, Bai Lu returned.

She changed into a moon-white dress and carried a skinned wild rabbit in her hand.

Seeing that Shen Yifei had woken up, he paused for a moment, then walked in as if nothing had happened and placed the wild rabbit on the campfire.

"You, a Golden Core cultivator, managed to withstand me for a whole night; that's quite an achievement. You absorbed most of what was inside me, and the rest has stabilized. I don't need to suppress it anymore."

Bai Lu turned the rabbit over the campfire, the grease dripping and sizzling. "Where are you going?"

"The Cold Pool. The Nine Heavens Mystic Lotus is about to bloom, and I must get there before it blooms."

Bai Lu paused for a moment.

"You went there for the Nine Heavens Mystic Lotus too?"

"Yes, my golden core is shattered, and I need it to refine elixirs, otherwise I will become a cripple sooner or later."

Bai Lu nodded slightly. "These past few days, all the demons with even a little cultivation in the Ten Thousand Mountains have been heading towards the Cold Pool. Some want to steal the Nine Heavens Mystic Lotus, while others want to take advantage of the chaos. I was originally planning to go too. The petals of the Nine Heavens Mystic Lotus can reshape the Golden Core, and the lotus seeds can stabilize the foundation. Your Golden Core is cracked like that, so you definitely need this."

After Bai Lu finished speaking, she handed over a rabbit leg.

Shen Yifei took the rabbit leg and took a bite. It was crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, with just the right amount of saltiness.

"You want the Nine Heavens Mystic Lotus too? Your Golden Core hasn't cracked yet."

"I don't need it, but I know someone who can."

"Who?"

Bai Lu didn't answer. She tore the remaining rabbit into strips and ate them in small bites. After a few bites, she spoke: "A friend. Her cultivation has been stuck at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage for many years. The lotus seeds of the Nine Heavens Profound Lotus can help her break through to the Divine Transformation stage."

Shen Yifei didn't press the matter further. It wasn't surprising that the demon kings in the Hundred Thousand Mountains knew each other; Bai Lu was at the Great Perfection of the Nascent Soul stage, so her friends' cultivation levels wouldn't be low.

"Let's go. It's still two hundred li from here to the Cold Pool, and we'll have to pass through the Black Pine Forest. That centipede demon in the Black Pine Forest is at the mid-Nascent Soul stage; I'll take care of it for you."

Shen Yifei stood up and took Bai Lu's dress off. He looked down at himself and saw that his whole body was covered in marks—his chest, shoulders, lower abdomen, and thighs were all red and purple, as if he had been beaten up.

He handed her the skirt.

"Your skirt."

Bai Lu took the dress, glanced at him, and smiled slightly.

The two of them left the cave one after the other and headed south.

The central part of the Ten Thousand Mountains is much quieter than the outer part.

Bai Lu walked ahead, releasing a sliver of her Nascent Soul Grand Perfection aura, causing all the demons within a ten-mile radius to cower in their lairs, too afraid to move. Shen Yifei followed behind, walking ten times more easily than on the way there.

After walking for about two hours, the color of the woods ahead suddenly darkened.

The pine trees were all black. The trunks, the needles, even the soil beneath them was black.

"The Black Pine Forest is the territory of the centipede demon. That thing dug a hole in the black mud for three hundred years, hollowing out the entire forest's underground." She kicked away a clod of black soil. "Look."

Beneath the soil layer lies a hollow space, riddled with countless holes, each about the thickness of a finger, crisscrossing each other. Black smoke billows from these holes, emitting a pungent, fishy stench.

Shen Yifei squatted down and took a look.

"What does this centipede demon usually eat?"

"It eats everything. Monsters, cultivators, mortals, any living creature that wanders into the Black Pine Forest, it eats them all. If it can't finish eating, it drags it back to its cave to keep it, and then eats it when it's hungry again."

"Have you dealt with it before?"

"I fought it once, a hundred years ago when I had just reached the late stage of the Nascent Soul realm. I was passing through the Black Pine Forest when it crawled out from underground and tried to devour me. I smashed half of its body and it burrowed back into the ground and ran away. I haven't seen it since."

"Why didn't you just kill it back then?"

"It burrows so fast. I just lifted up the ground, and it had already burrowed hundreds of feet below."

Shen Yifei nodded. If you can't beat them, run; if you can't run, burrow underground. This centipede demon knows how to survive—it can live for three hundred years.

The two walked deeper into the forest. The black pines grew denser, their needles blocking out the sun, making it so dark that they could barely see their feet.

The stench in the air grew stronger and stronger. Shen Yifei covered his nose with his sleeve, his stomach churning.

Bai Lu suddenly stopped.

"They're here."

The ground shook as soon as he finished speaking.

Shen Yifei looked down; the black mud beneath his feet was churning, making the ground bulge.

He took two steps back, and suddenly the ground beneath his feet collapsed.

A hole the size of a washbasin emerged from the black mud, and two tentacles as thick as arms shot out from the hole, coiling towards Shen Yifei's ankle.

Shen Yifei drew his Listening Tide Sword and severed the left tentacle with a single stroke. The right tentacle retracted into the cave, and a stream of black liquid gushed from the severed end, emitting a pungent, foul stench.

The ground shook even more violently.

A leg emerged from the crack; this leg was thicker than a bucket.

Then came the second, the third, and the fourth.

A huge creature emerged from the ground.

When the centipede demon's full form was revealed, Shen Yifei gasped in shock.

It was at least twenty zhang long from head to tail, its body segmented together, each segment thicker than a water vat. Its sides were covered with legs, like rows of curved blades.

The most terrifying part is its head.

It has two fist-sized black eyes on its flat head, and below the eyes are a pair of venomous jaws. Below the jaws is a mouth, filled with countless teeth.

Bai Lu stood still. She looked up at the centipede demon, her face expressionless.

"It's been three hundred years, and you've certainly grown a head."

The centipede demon's black eyes rolled, and it hissed as it spoke!

It recognized Bailu!

Three hundred years ago, it was this woman who shattered half of its body with a single blow. It hid in the black mud for almost two hundred years before it grew back.

The centipede demon opened its venomous jaws, its tips aimed at Bailu, and hissed a few times from its throat.

The centipede demon's body suddenly shrank into the ground, and when it was halfway inside, Bai Lu moved.

She raised her hand, her five fingers spread, and a ball of silvery-white light surged from her palm. The light condensed into a semi-transparent snake head, its mouth wide open, biting the centipede demon's exposed half-body.

"Click."

The centipede demon's body was bitten in two by the snake's mouth. Black fluid gushed out from the broken end, splattering all over the ground.

Its remaining half was still burrowing into the ground at an astonishing speed, disappearing more than ten feet in the blink of an eye.

I didn't chase after Bai Lu.

The snake's jaws loosened, flinging the severed centipede body to the ground. A dozen or so shattered segments of the torso lay piled together, black fluid oozing from the cracks. The legs were still moving, the claws opening and closing.

"It ran away."

"Let it run away then." Bai Lu withdrew her hand. "It has enough of its remaining half-body to grow for another two hundred years. During these two hundred years, it won't dare to leave the Black Pine Forest."