"I'll give you this Rank Three Snake Flood Dragon. I won't fight you for it. Just let me go tonight."

Faced with a mortal threat, Leng Shuang had no choice but to abandon her own interests.

Without her life, material things were meaningless.

She was filled with bitter resentment. The plan had been so perfect, the Rank Three Snake Flood Dragon within her grasp, only to be foiled by this pawn.

The Purple Gold Snake spoke, "This Snake Flood Dragon was never yours. Now, you have only one fate: to be swallowed and end up in my belly."

"Snake Spirit, don't push your luck! Do you really want to make an enemy of the human Demon Management Bureau?" Leng Shuang's stunning face was tinged with a deathly pallor. She had never imagined she would die, let alone suffer a death as cruel as being eaten by a Giant Snake.

She was a true prodigy, an Awakener with extraordinary Talent. How many people awakened with an Elemental Attribute Ability?

They were one in a million.

'How can I die here?'

"I'll give you one chance to strike. Use whatever tricks you have," the Purple Gold Snake said, looking at the white-robed, ethereal Leng Shuang with a hint of mockery.

Leng Shuang bit her lip, preparing to go all out. A deep blue aura flared to life around her. Faint moonlight slanted down from behind the clouds, casting a hazy silver glow on her face and enhancing her ethereal beauty.

"Ice Arrow Piercing Heart!"

Her voice, clear and cold, echoed from her peerlessly beautiful lips, sharp as ice and resonant as shattered jade—the sound of one fighting back from the brink of death.

The Ice Frost Power within her body erupted all at once, and her face went deathly pale as she swayed, on the verge of collapsing.

Suddenly, countless ice blades materialized before Leng Shuang—a dense, terrifying swarm, lethally sharp and radiating an intense chill.

SWISH! SWISH! SWISH!

The countless blades tore through the air, their bone-chilling temperature darkening the sky as they flew, as if to riddle the Purple Gold Snake full of holes.

"Is this your last resort?"

The Purple Gold Snake's pupils reflected the swarm of ice blades. A single one of those blades could freeze a person solid in an instant or pierce their heart, ending their life.

It was a devastating area-of-effect attack, yet the Purple Gold Snake's eyes filled with contempt. It didn't even entertain the thought of dodging.

One by one, the ice blades struck its Snake Scales. They failed to pierce its defenses, but they instantly froze solid upon impact.

Inch by inch, the Purple Gold Snake's colossal body was encased in ice, on the verge of becoming a complete ice sculpture.

'Still the same old trick,'

Tu Xiao'an thought with a sneer, tensing his body to shatter the ice.

But in the next moment, he froze. The ice was incredibly thick, encasing his thirty-meter body in an airtight prison.

For a moment, he actually couldn't break free.

'Now! I have to run!'

Like a fleeting shadow, Leng Shuang retreated. She had no chance of winning against this freakishly overpowered Snake Spirit. She had to get back to Wencheng, back to the Demon Management Bureau, immediately.

The Rank Three Snake Flood Dragon... A greedy glint flashed in her eyes, but she knew she had to abandon it.

'My life is more important. Once I get back to the Monster Management Bureau, I'll get my revenge for this.'

'I'll make it so there's nowhere in this world for that Snake Spirit to hide. I'll have every last human Martial Cultivator hunting it down.'

In just a few seconds, Leng Shuang was already outside the limits of Ping'an Village. A hint of joy appeared in her eyes. 'The Snake Spirit is really trapped by my Frost Power!'

'If I can just buy myself ten minutes... no, five minutes is all I need to get out of this forest for good.'

Death? Leng Shuang had never considered it. She was destined to become one of the legendary Rank Three Creatures, to transcend her mortal flesh.

She shot forward, her speed rivaling that of a sports car at full throttle.

Hearing no sound of pursuit from behind, the anxiety in Leng Shuang's heart began to subside. 'I'm safe. I've made it out alive.'

Suddenly... 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

A dazzling white light flashed above Leng Shuang's head. She instinctively looked up.

In that instant, a thunderbolt pierced through her slender body.

Leng Shuang's eyes flew wide open, her sharp mind coming to a dead halt.

Her entire body went numb, as if all her strength had been ripped away in a single moment. Like a kite with a snapped string, she plummeted from the sky.

'The Snake Spirit... it didn't let me go...'

As Leng Shuang drifted down like a falling leaf, the colossal thirty-meter Purple Gold Snake appeared beneath her. It angled itself toward her descent and opened its massive, terrifying maw.

'No... don't...'

How could Leng Shuang not understand? The Snake Spirit's words echoed in her mind: "To swallow you, one bite is all I need."

'Am I really going to become this Snake Spirit's food?'

Leng Shuang struggled desperately, fighting with all her might to shake off the paralysis that gripped her body.

CRACKLE!

Another thunderbolt shot through Leng Shuang's body, extinguishing nearly all hope of escape.

She was like a beautiful, exotic flower about to be consumed by a volcano, leaving not even ashes behind.

Leng Shuang was completely immobile, able to do nothing but watch herself fall toward the Giant Snake's mouth. In that moment, her eyes caught sight of the moon. It was pale, perfectly round, and drifted through the misty clouds with an eerie yet sorrowful beauty. Compared to the terror of death welling up from the gaping maw below, the moon was breathtaking. Its soft light was like a dream, utterly mesmerizing...

One second... two seconds... three seconds...

Leng Shuang's world went dark—an inky blackness, devoid of all light.

The Giant Snake's mouth snapped shut.

'Sorry, I had no choice but to use Devouring on you. In your next life, try being an ordinary woman without so much ambition.'

Tu Xiao'an never expected that the first human he would have to swallow would be such a peerless beauty, the kind of woman who seemed utterly untouchable.

What he had done was even more cruel than crushing a beautiful flower.

By closing his serpentine jaws, he had ended Leng Shuang's life.

For some reason, Tu Xiao'an felt nothing out of the ordinary. To a thirty-meter-long colossal body, swallowing a human was no different than having a tiny morsel stuck between his teeth.

A moment later...

*Ding... Congratulations, Host, for successfully Devouring a Level 29 Human Awakener and breaking through your psychological barriers. Reward: Level +1.*

*Now beginning to fuse with Ice Frost Power.*

Before he could even feel happy, a flood of new memories entered Tu Xiao'an's mind—they were Leng Shuang's.

Unlike the Crowned Snake and Vampire Snake he had devoured, a human's memories were vast, spanning from early childhood to her school days, all the way to how she had become an Awakener.

There was so much...

Notably, Tu Xiao'an even saw memories of a time when Leng Shuang had been in a relationship. It was her first love.

She had fallen for a senior at her school, so deeply that she couldn't pull herself away.

At the time, Leng Shuang had already become an Awakened Martial Cultivator, and her dream was to become a Rank Three Creature, to become utterly superior and transcendent.

She believed love would be her downfall, so she personally put an end to her first romance.

She cruelly murdered the senior she had been so hopelessly in love with.

From that day forward, her Cultivation progressed by leaps and bounds.

People always say that falling in love will affect your studies. For her, falling in love meant she couldn't focus wholeheartedly on her Cultivation.

Only by completely severing her ties to love could she achieve her transformation.

'It's just the law of the jungle. She doesn't deserve any pity. What's done is done.'

From this moment on, he, Tu Xiao'an the Snake, would have no more reservations. His mindset had been irrevocably changed.

A demonic light glinted in the Purple Gold Snake's pupils.