67: hot

The mist dissipated, and Ning finally saw everything. He saw the snake coiled at the bottom of the shallow sea, he saw the ocean behind the snake, and he saw a group of Villagers running towards him and the small snake.

Once they reached the snake, they once again mercilessly attacked it with spears and claw-like hands. Deep cuts and wounds began to appear all over the demon snake's body. Their attacks were finally effective.

"Yes!" Ning shouted, seeing that his plan was working.

The snake began to feel uncomfortable as the damage it sustained suddenly increased, with creepy burning sensations all over its body.

It started to move its body around again, attacking the Villagers with its tail in the process. But now there were too many people attacking them. The snake couldn't target the Villagers one by one and began attacking them one after another.

Ning was delighted; his plan had succeeded. He had managed to strip away the Yin surrounding the snake, which essentially formed an armor protecting the snake from physical attacks. However, now that he had done so, it was taking a lot of damage.

"Even so, this is quite surprising. In fact, one could even say it's strange," Ning thought. "The snake only fights with its head and tail, and it hasn't tried to bite anyone yet. Even though it has fangs, does it not have venom?

The snake hadn't changed its attack pattern even once, which surprised Ning. Ning began to believe it was similar to many non-venomous snakes found on Earth. However, betting everything on a simple guess wasn't the right thing to do.

"System, give me information about this snake," he commanded.

Before the system listed all the information, he chose the middle version of the information and had it transmitted to his mind. Suddenly, a vast amount of information about the snake appeared in his mind.

The direct knowledge shocked him for a moment. "Is this... real?" he exclaimed in shock. Yin Demon Snakes are a type of fierce venomous snake; they are both dangerous and poisonous. However, because they are monsters, they take a long time to cultivate. Even so, they are faster than most creatures.

As they grow stronger, their size also increases. As for their venom, it depends on their age. Young Yin Demon Snakes, compared to the size of adults, are very small and do not produce enough venom to secrete through their fangs.

That is to say, the only reason the snake in front of Ning hadn't used its fangs was... "It's still a child. In comparison, this is a newly hatched snake," Ning was dumbfounded. This snake had terrified the Villagers, cut off their escape routes from the island, and stolen their food by occupying their sea territory, and it was just a very small snake.

"If this is a small snake... then how big are adult snakes?" The cultivation world began to fill him with a dread he was unwilling to admit.

Suddenly, the snake changed its attack pattern. At this point, it was bleeding heavily and was beaten to the point of gasping for breath, so in desperation, it coiled its long tail around the group of Villagers, attempting to crush them.

The Villagers stabbed with knives, clawed, scratched, punched, and pushed, trying everything to prevent the snake from crushing them with its body, but nothing happened.

However, at the last moment before they were suppressed, all the Villagers suddenly disappeared from the scene.

They reappeared on the beach more than 100 meters away.

"Is it... Inikaka?" they wondered. They were afraid to chase the snake again, but this time, the snake began to crawl towards them.

"Oh, no, you don't," Ning said, while simultaneously asking the system to teleport the snake as far away from the island as possible. Both he and the snake vanished from the beach, disappearing into the depths of the water.

Unfortunately, due to the snake's immense size and weight, the system couldn't teleport it very far. The snake, confused without hesitation, immediately began to swim away. Before Ning could realize it, he was already back on the beach.

"What?" He was stunned. He quickly checked his status and only then realized that he had no energy left. He had thought he would have 500 million energy points when the battle started, and now he realized how foolish he had been.

"Now I have no energy," he thought. His head was throbbing, and now that he had lost his energy, he started to get angry.

"So what?" he muttered to himself, "If I don't have energy, I'll use something else."

The snake once again approached those who were afraid to see it come at them again. Ning shouted, "You won't attack them!" but no one could hear him because he had no strength.

Suddenly, the snake's skin began to glow faintly red. However, this glow had nothing to do with the snake itself. Ning was now doing his best to convert Yin into heat, thoroughly scorching the snake's skin.

The snake let out a pained cry and immediately turned back into the water, and the Villagers, seeing this, breathed a sigh of relief.

"Inikaka is helping us," Shay said, as he was the one who understood Ning's abilities the most.

The snake went deep into the ocean, seeking the coldness of the water to overcome the heat it was facing. In doing so, it sealed its own fate, as the depths of the ocean were one of the places with the most Yin energy.

Suddenly, a large amount of Yin energy gathered around the snake and immediately transformed into intense heat, beginning to burn the snake even more.

"Ah ah ah ah," Ning screamed in his heart, trying his best to burn the snake alive.

<Host has used a lot of mental energy and is now in a critical mental state>

<Further loss of mental power will force the system to put the host into a coma to protect the host's mind>

"Ah!" he cried out in pain, but he didn't stop. If he stopped now, the snake would surely return to the surface and harm everyone he loved. He was immortal, they were not.

So, he decided to take all the pain upon himself so that others could live, and finally, he was no longer a coward.

His bravery manifested as the snake's body glowed an even brighter red at the bottom of the sea. Every fish that came near the snake was scared away by this unknown enemy.

The snake ran as fast as it could, trying to escape this pain, but it couldn't. It would twist and turn in agony, but the heat never stopped.

Ning didn't stop either, even though he felt like someone was pulling his brain out of his head with their body.

By this point, he didn't even know how much Yin he had converted or how much heat had accumulated on the snake, but he kept going, kept going, until... the snake stopped moving.

Confirming that the snake was indeed dead, he stopped accumulating Yin, and all the heat returned to Yin again.

<Host mental capacity overloaded, has passed critical point>

<Putting host into a coma to preserve his mental state>

<System entering hibernation state>

Suddenly, Ning lost consciousness, and everything around him turned dark, not knowing when he would regain consciousness.