Lin Mu looked at the viper's remains — beaten into a shapeless pulp by his own fists — and let out a long, slow breath from deep in his chest.
In this fight, he had crushed a powerful enemy head-on, through nothing but his own strength and Gu worms.
He had Corrigently recaptured something he had not felt in a long time — the raw, visceral satisfaction of a fight decided by flesh against flesh.
It was also the first time since breaking through to Rank 2 that he had unleashed the full, terrifying force of his Rank 2 upper stage cultivation without holding anything back.
Utterly satisfying.
The excitement faded, and Lin Mu's sharp mind turned to a quiet observation.
"This viper had a formidable body and devastating constricting power, but fortunately it had no wild Gu worms parasitizing it."
He felt a quiet relief at that.
In the ten-thousand mountains, once a demon beast and a Gu worm formed a symbiotic bond, the resulting creature was several magnitudes more terrifying than an ordinary beast of the same rank. The Blood Jade Python was the most obvious example.
Had this viper been harboring some lethal Gu worm within it, tonight's fight would have devolved into a grinding war of attrition with far too many variables.
He confirmed there was nothing worth harvesting from the carcass and saw no reason to waste time collecting materials.
Without hesitation, Lin Mu dropped from the canopy like a falling leaf and descended into the pitch-black forest below to find Lin Wuxie.
Lin Wuxie had a powerful body and peak Rank 1 cultivation. But against a Rank 2 demon beast's enraged strike, even that formidable flesh had its limits.
Lin Mu calmly activated the Hound Scent Gu, supplemented by the faint tracking sense of the Blood Scent Gu.
Moments later, following the thick scent of blood, he found Lin Wuxie half-buried in the earth among a patch of undergrowth, barely clinging to life.
Lin Wuxie had sunk deep into the mud. Blood welled steadily from his mouth.
By sheer fortune, he had managed a crossed-arm guard at the last instant, which had spared his heart and lungs from being shattered outright by the impact.
But both arms hung limp, the flesh peeled back as though scraped away by a blade, white bone exposed beneath — a grim sight in the dim moonlight.
Yet when Lin Wuxie, lying in a pool of his own blood, saw Lin Mu walk out of the darkness completely unharmed —
That paper-white face broke into a brilliant, incongruous smile.
"S-Senior Brother... you're alright... thank goodness..."
To Lin Wuxie, his own grievous injuries meant nothing. As long as he had been of use to his Senior Brother, that was the fullest meaning his existence could have.
Faced with that unquestioning loyalty, Lin Mu did not hesitate. He gripped a Primeval Stone in his left hand and steadily activated the Rank 2 Wound-Mending Gu with his right.
Hum——
A gentle, vitality-rich radiance poured from his palm and spread slowly over Lin Wuxie's bone-deep wounds, forcibly stabilizing the life force that was bleeding away.
In the fight just now, if Lin Wuxie had not thrown himself into it with reckless abandon — wrapping that viper around the trunk with his bare hands and forcing the Rank 2 serpent into a confined, close-quarters brawl — Lin Mu would never have finished it so cleanly.
After this, Lin Mu was fully certain of Lin Wuxie's reliability.
At least until the day this elaborate lie unraveled, Lin Wuxie was the most useful and most loyal piece on his board.
The thought struck him as absurdly funny. The corner of his mouth curved upward despite himself.
He thought of Fang Yuan in the original story of Reverend Insanity — how Fang Yuan had used the exact same trick to keep Tai Bai Yun Sheng completely devoted, even willing to give up everything of his own accord.
Seeing Lin Mu suddenly smile, Lin Wuxie — wincing through the pain — had no idea what was funny, but he bared his blood-stained teeth and laughed along wholeheartedly anyway.
Lin Wuxie had grown up an orphan, bullied and discarded by his clan.
After obtaining his incomplete inheritance, his power had grown, but his days had become a living hell — teetering constantly on the edge of going berserk and being consumed by the backlash.
Lin Mu's arrival had not only saved his body, but given him something he had never had: a sense of belonging, a reason to exist.
In Lin Wuxie's simple understanding of the world, it was straightforward: You treat me well, my life is yours. Wherever his Senior Brother's blade pointed, even if it was the edge of a bottomless abyss, he would walk forward without looking back.
——
The Wound-Mending Gu was, after all, only a Rank 2 Gu worm.
Effective as it was — rapidly staunching blood loss and stimulating tissue regeneration — regrowing flesh over Lin Wuxie's exposed bone and restoring him to full condition would still take time.
As a result, their pace slowed considerably over the following days.
But as they pressed deeper, the terrain Lin Mu observed began to match Lin Wuxie's memories more and more closely.
They were less than ten li from their destination, at the edge of a dense stretch of forest.
"Stop!"
Lin Mu threw up a hand sharply, signaling Lin Wuxie to silence.
A strong sense of unease flashed through his eyes.
Beside a stretch of muddy swampland ahead, he saw them clearly — enormous hoof prints pressed deep into the earth, each one the size of a washbasin.
"That size... and the violent aura still hanging in the air, so dense it's almost tangible..."
Lin Mu crouched and carefully pinched a small amount of the still-faintly-warm mud from within one of the prints. His expression darkened.
"The degree of condensation in this aura has absolutely crossed the threshold of Rank 2."
"Peak Rank 3."
"And this is undoubtedly a true Thousand Beast King."
"Go around it. Do not disturb this thing under any circumstances."
Lin Mu gave the order to detour without a moment's hesitation.
Against a peak Rank 3 Thousand Beast King, charging in would be suicide — not just at his current Rank 2 upper stage, but even if he were Rank 3 himself.
However — just as Lin Mu led Lin Wuxie in a wide arc around the side where the deer king's tracks had been detected —
The Hound Scent Gu parasitizing his nose caught something unusual.
"Something else is here."
Lin Mu immediately leaped up into the canopy of a towering tree and looked ahead from the high vantage point.
Hiss...
What he saw made his scalp prickle.
It was a massive, raucous beast colony — reeking of blood and raw aggression.
A tribe of over fifty powerfully built apes, each with thick, muscular arms, occupied the forest ahead.
They swung and leaped between the branches in a frenzy, filling the air with ear-splitting shrieks at irregular intervals.
And at the center of the group, seated with casual indifference, was a giant ape — two stories tall, its body layered in muscle that looked like cast iron, its blood vitality roaring like a furnace.
It simply sat there. The subordinates around it trembled and kept their distance.
"Peak Rank 2. A Hundred Beast King."
Lin Mu stood in the shadows of the deep forest, brow furrowed, expression shifting.
Two paths lay before him, and both were lethal.
One path might bring him face to face with the peak Rank 3 Thousand Beast King — the Deer King.
The other required forcing through the territory of a peak Rank 2 Hundred Beast King commanding a colony of fifty apes.
The choice now facing Lin Mu and Lin Wuxie was simple.
Which path did they take?