20: Chapter 20 The Second Flood Dragon

The moment Li Zhengyang skidded to a halt, his mind was already racing.

A Rank Four in front, a Rank Three behind.

He was an eighth-rank Great Martial Master.

He could beat the Rank Three, but not the Rank Four.

Fight both at the same time? In his dreams.

Run? Both front and back were blocked.

The Flood Lizard skin was already stored in his space ring. Throw it out, play dumb, and apologize? Magic beasts weren't humans; they didn't accept returns.

The male Flood Lizard lowered its head, its slit pupils scanning the area ahead before locking onto Li Zhengyang.

Two streams of hot air snorted out from its nostrils.

It smelled the scent of its mate's blood and the scent of the shed skin, both coming from this human.

Hiss.

A hissing sound squeezed out from the depths of its throat.

The female Flood Lizard behind had also caught up, her cries sharper and more urgent, as if she were complaining to the male.

The two Flood Lizards, one in front and one behind, sandwiched Li Zhengyang in the middle, each twenty meters away.

"Damn it, a husband-and-wife tag team."

Li Zhengyang cursed under his breath and gripped his mountain-piercing spear tightly.

He had two choices now.

First, fight head-on. A Great Martial Master against a Rank Four magic beast was pure suicide. His astral qi thickness, total vitality, and maximum attack power were completely crushed in every aspect. No matter how fierce the Mountain-Splitting Spear Arts was, it couldn't make up for the gap of an entire major realm.

Second, get beaten to a pulp and then eaten. The outcome was about the same as the first option, with the only difference being that it saved some energy.

But there was a third option.

The male Flood Lizard took three steps into the cave, the ground trembling with every step.

Li Zhengyang didn't retreat. Instead, he pressed himself against the left rock wall.

He noticed a crevice in the cave wall that was less than a meter wide. Its depth was bottomless, but a person could squeeze in sideways, whereas the Flood Lizard couldn't fit.

Startling Cloud Step.

The moment he rushed toward the crevice, the male Flood Lizard moved.

Its speed was ridiculously fast. Its ten-meter-long body whipped around, its tail sweeping across the cave passage laced with astral qi.

The Martial Spirit Rank was not something a Great Martial Master could compare to.

The astral qi fluctuations whipped up by that tail tore through the air, producing a piercing screech.

Li Zhengyang dodged sideways, narrowly sliding past the range of the tail swipe.

He didn't dodge it completely.

The tip of the tail grazed his left ribs.

In an instant, three of his left ribs snapped, and his protective astral qi was torn through in a single strike. He crashed into the rock wall, sinking half a body length into the stone.

A metallic taste rushed into his mouth, and blood spilled from the corner of his lips.

It hurt.

But painful as it was, he wasn't dead.

The male Flood Lizard lunged forward, thrusting its head toward the opening of the crevice.

It was too narrow. Its head couldn't fit inside, so it could only claw its way in, sending stone chips flying everywhere.

Li Zhengyang was wedged half-deep inside the crevice. His left hand pressed against his broken ribs, while his right hand still gripped his spear.

Clang.

He poked the Flood Lizard's reaching claw with the shaft of his spear. The Rank Four magic beast didn't care about this level of force at all and continued digging.

The crevice was widening.

At this rate, it would widen the opening within ten minutes and pull him out in one bite.

Li Zhengyang retreated deeper into the crevice.

After retreating five or six meters, his foot stepped into empty space.

He fell downward.

The crevice connected to a vertical underground cave passage of unknown depth.

Li Zhengyang jammed his spear horizontally between the two walls, hanging from the shaft.

The sound of scratching stone above continued.

Below him was pitch black, and there was no telling how deep it was.

The broken bones in his left ribs poked into his flesh; every breath felt like being stabbed with a needle.

He stared down into the darkness for a few seconds, then put away his spear.

He jumped down.

The fall lasted about three seconds.

He splashed into water.

The water wasn't deep, just over a meter, with gravel and silt at the bottom.

Li Zhengyang crawled out of the water, drenched from head to toe. The broken ribs on his left side made him grimace in pain.

This was a tributary of an underground river.

The water wasn't swift. Glowing moss grew on the rock walls, barely illuminating a radius of a few meters.

The sound of scratching stone above grew distant.

The Flood Lizard couldn't chase him here.

He survived.

But he was also trapped underground.

Li Zhengyang sat down against the rock wall, placing his spear horizontally across his lap.

He pulled out his phone. Fortunately, it was waterproof, and the screen was still lit.

No signal.

As expected.

He opened his system and took a look.

[Current Vitality: 25,628]

[Current Realm: Eighth-rank Great Martial Master]

His vitality hadn't dropped, and his breakthrough hadn't regressed, but three of his ribs were broken, and he couldn't exert any strength in his left arm. A Great Martial Master's self-healing ability was ten times stronger than an ordinary person's, but it would still take three to five days for the broken bones to knit back together on their own.

He couldn't wait three to five days.

There were only two directions. First, go back up and fight the two Flood Lizards to the death. Second, follow the underground river downstream and gamble on whether there was an exit.

He had no choice.

He picked himself up and headed downstream.

He walked for about half an hour.

The underground river grew wider, and the water became deeper, reaching his waist at its deepest point.

The glowing moss on the rock walls grew denser, so he didn't have to worry about lighting.

As he walked, an open space appeared ahead.

The ceiling was over ten meters high, and a pile of things lay scattered on the cave floor.

Bones.

Human bones and animal bones were mixed together, piled half a person high.

Li Zhengyang slowed his pace.

This seemed to be a lair.

No wonder the magic beasts had stopped chasing him. It turned out they had reached home.

He looked up and surveyed his surroundings, trying to find a way out.

He walked dozens of meters further inside.

Rust-stained iron bars appeared before his eyes, welded shut.

Wait.

Why would there be iron cages here? Magic beasts didn't know how to weld.

He walked closer.

The cage on the left was empty, its door smashed open and its iron bars bent out of shape.

There were people in the cage on the right.

Two people.

They were huddled in a corner, their clothes tattered beyond recognition.

One of them heard footsteps and raised his head.

It was a man in his early thirties with sunken eyes and dried bloodstains on his face.

He wore a military-green training uniform whose color was barely recognizable, with a half-torn emblem on the left side of his chest.

Li Zhengyang recognized it.

It was a military emblem.

"Are you military?"

The man stared at Li Zhengyang for several seconds. His lips were chapped, and he had to open his mouth twice before making a sound.

"Y-You... are human?"

"Cut the crap. Do you think I'm a transformed Flood Lizard?"

The man's body swayed slightly.

Another person lay beside him, motionless but with a rising and falling chest. He was alive.

"We are from the Special Operations Battalion's scouting team. Three days ago, we received a scouting mission regarding the abnormal movement of magic beasts in Xishan..." the man spoke haltingly, his voice hoarse. "We encountered two Flood Lizards, one male and one female. Out of six people... only the two of us are still alive."

A six-man scouting team, with four lost.

Li Zhengyang looked at the lock on the iron cage.

He grabbed the iron bars with one hand, exerted force, and twisted.

The iron bars deformed, and the cage door popped open.

The man touched the cage door, which had been indented by the iron bars, looking somewhat dazed.

"What is your strength level?"

"Great Martial Master. Got any water?"

The man shook his head.

Li Zhengyang rummaged through his space ring, pulled out a canteen of water and two packs of compressed rations, and threw them to him.

"Eat something first. Can you walk? What about the other guy?"

"Old Zhou's leg is broken." The man took the water canteen and gulped down two mouthfuls, coughing for a while. "He is our team leader, a seventh-rank Great Martial Master. His right leg was snapped by a swipe of the male Flood Lizard's tail, and he passed out."

A seventh-rank Great Martial Master had his leg snapped by a single tail swipe.

Li Zhengyang looked at his own left ribs, three of which were broken.

Well, they were brothers in misfortune, both crippled by a single tail swipe.

"Does this cave have an exit leading outside?"

Munching on the compressed rations, the man shook his head. "I don't know. We've been dragged in here for three days. We tried to look, but Old Zhou can't walk, and I didn't dare to run too far alone."

Li Zhengyang looked around the underground cave.

The underground river flowed in from the east and extended out to the west.

Aside from that, there were two dry crevices on the cave walls, their directions unknown.

Three possible paths.

Which one to choose?

"How often does the male Flood Lizard return?"

"There's no pattern." The man wiped his mouth. "Sometimes a few hours, sometimes half a day. Every time it comes back, it comes from that direction."

He pointed toward the upstream of the underground river.

Which was the direction Li Zhengyang had come from.

"Upstream leads to the lair, so that's ruled out. That leaves two paths. Which one did you explore before?"

"I explored the western underground river for two hundred meters. It gets narrower and narrower, until there's only a palm-wide crack at the end. A person can't pass through."

The underground river was ruled out.

Only one path left.

The two dry crevices on the cave wall.

One was to the north, and the other to the south. No one had explored them.

Li Zhengyang walked up to the northern crevice and peered inside. It was pitch black, with no end in sight.

The air was circulating; there was a faint breeze.

Where there was wind, there was an exit.

"What's your name?"

"Xing Feng, Second Lieutenant of the Special Operations Battalion."

"Li Zhengyang, junior college student."

Xing Feng glanced at the silver-white alloy spear on his back.

A junior college student could afford this kind of gear?

"Could you help me carry Old Zhou?" Xing Feng tested his legs; he could stand, but he couldn't muster any strength.

Li Zhengyang walked over to the unconscious man, hoisted him up, and slung him over his shoulder. A man weighing around a hundred and sixty or seventy pounds was carried with one hand as easily as a sack of grain.

The broken bones in his left ribs ground together, causing him to frown, but he could endure it.

"Let's go."

The three of them squeezed into the northern crevice.

They walked for twenty minutes.

The crevice grew wider as they went, and the wind became stronger.

Finally, a sliver of light filtered in from ahead.

It wasn't the fluorescent glow of moss, but natural light.

Li Zhengyang quickened his pace.

The moment they emerged, the sunlight stung his eyes, forcing him to squint.

They had come out from the other side of the mountain. Located halfway up the mountain, they faced east, with a barren slope below.

Xing Feng followed closely behind. The moment he saw the daylight, his legs nearly gave out, almost sending him sitting on the ground.

Li Zhengyang lowered the man from his shoulder and leaned him against the rock wall.

He pulled out his phone.

There was a signal.

Two bars. Good enough.

He first sent a picture to Su Jin: "Got the skin. Remember to transfer the seven hundred thousand."

After sending it, he glanced at the system again.

[Current Vitality: 25,628]

Li Zhengyang looked at Old Zhou, who was still unconscious, and then at Xing Feng, who was leaning against a rock and panting heavily.

The military's Special Operations Battalion.

Saving people like this was definitely worth it.

"Second Lieutenant Xing."

Xing Feng looked up.

"I saved two of your lives. Do you acknowledge this?"

Xing Feng was taken aback for a moment, then nodded. "I do."

"Good. Let me ask you something."

"What is it?"

"Do you have any money on you?"

The corner of Xing Feng's mouth twitched.

This guy had just saved his life, and the very first thing he asked about was money.

The mountain wind blew past, and a muffled roar echoed from deep within the crevice.

The sound was far away, but very clear.

It was the male Flood Lizard.

It had discovered that its prey was gone.

The roars became more frequent and urgent.

It was searching.

Xing Feng's face turned pale.

Li Zhengyang grabbed the man on the ground and ran down the mountain.

"Don't just stand there, let's go! This beast is coming for its meal!"