Chapter 58: The Man with Serpent Eyes!

For several consecutive days, the Righteous Qi Dao Alliance in Shangshi had not a single moment of rest. Wang Dali led his team out on missions every single day.

Although it seemed that Wang Dali never really had to do anything by the time he arrived because every situation was already resolved, he still showed up every single time.

To an outsider, one might think that Wang Dali, being the leader, was simply trying to snatch the credit.

However, the combatants participating in the operations all understood that Wang Dali was the ultimate safeguard for every single mission.

Even though Wang Dali's talent for cultivation was so poor it could practically be considered nonexistent, that only applied to the cultivation of transcendent abilities. In the realm of ancient martial arts, Wang Dali possessed a certain degree of talent. From certain perspectives, these combatants were truly no match for Wang Dali when it came to hand-to-hand combat.

Should they ever encounter a fiend that everyone else was powerless to resolve, Wang Dali would be the very first to charge forward, sacrificing his life to buy a chance of survival and escape for the rest of the team.

And such a deed was something Wang Dali had already performed more than a decade ago.

Back then, it was with his life that Wang Dali earned the respect and conviction of the soldiers, which eventually led to the formation of this team.

Therefore, even though countless advance simulations ensured that every mission proceeded smoothly nowadays, reducing Wang Dali almost to a mascot, all the combatants still waited for their captain, Wang Dali, to arrive and command the overarching situation before every mission.

Thus, these past few days, while the Righteous Qi Dao Alliance had not been idle, the cultivators of Shangshi were equally busy to the point of exhaustion.

Through everyone's collective efforts, the root causes of this first wave of chaos were successfully brought under control.

Of course, while everyone was rushing about hither and thither, those individuals attempting to infiltrate Shangshi had already succeeded in slipping through.

Standing on the bridge over Tianshui River, Chu Tian gazed quietly at the river flowing beneath the bridge, right at the spot where he had previously gathered those wrongfully deceased ghosts.

The spiritual energy surging beneath the river currents resembled a volcano on the verge of eruption.

Energy flowed, converged, and compressed. Although it currently still appeared calm and tranquil on the surface, everyone knew that the longer this suppression lasted, the more earth-shattering the momentum would be once it finally erupted.

A light drizzle continued to fall.

It had not stopped for the past several days.

A faint mist hovered over the water surface, creating a hazy and boundless expanse of smoke and waves.

Chu Tian knew that at this very moment, both openly and covertly, countless gazes were fixed upon the state of the river, though many chose not to reveal themselves.

Suddenly, Chu Tian spotted a man who had appeared at some point on the distant riverbank.

The man was dressed rather strangely, wearing a white, hooded long robe with the hood pulled up, burying his entire person deep within the garment.

The very first moment Chu Tian caught sight of the figure, an inexplicable sense of discomfort welled up inside him.

Across a fair distance of water, Chu Tian gazed at the man, and at that moment, the man also raised his head to look back at Chu Tian.

As their gazes met, Chu Tian beheld a pair of amber, vertical pupils.

Those were definitely not human eyes.

Those were snake pupils!

The man looked at Chu Tian and suddenly broke into a grin. His mouth stretched terrifyingly wide, almost as if it were splitting apart, and then, with a sudden pivot, he vanished swiftly into the distance.

"A snake demon?" Chu Tian muttered to himself.

It seemed he had indeed encountered a fiend that had cultivated enough to attain climate and form.

Glancing one last time at the river surface, Chu Tian turned and departed from the spot.

The spiritual treasure within Tianshui River would surely not manifest today.

He only wondered how much longer it would take for it to gestate at the bottom of this river!

Shortly after Chu Tian left, the man with snake pupils returned. This time, he stood precisely in the spot where Chu Tian had previously stood.

Squatting on the bridge to observe the water, his gaze landed on an iron sword hanging beneath the bridge—something so inconspicuous that no one would notice or discover it without prior knowledge. A cold sneer crept across his face. Following that, the snake-pupil man flicked his wrist, and a pillar of water surged up from the river surface, crashing violently against the hanging iron sword and knocking it loose into the water below.

"The Dragon-Slaying Sword? Hah, does it even deserve the name?" the snake-pupil man murmured in a hoarse voice that sounded like grinding glass, harsh and grating to the ears.

Beneath the river, the coiled black-scaled giant serpent lifted its head slightly, its gaze seeming to pierce through the water to behold everything transpiring above.

Yet, almost as the serpent raised its head, the snake-pupil man on the bridge had already vanished from the spot once more, leaving the bridge behind.

Just as the snake-pupil man stepped off the bridge, a man wearing a suit and silver-rimmed glasses was standing right in his path.

"Sir, could you please move aside? You're blocking my way," the snake-pupil man said, looking up at the suit-clad man with a smile.

Wang Zhong raised a hand to push up his glasses, looking at the snake-pupil man before him as he said, "Your cultivation is not shallow. Several centuries? Since you managed to cultivate into human form, why do you still retain the traits of a beast?"

"I knew that being targeted by you mad dog would make it difficult to slip away," the snake-pupil man said, eyeing Wang Zhong. "Even before coming to Shangshi, I investigated. There are two troubles in Shangshi: one is Wang Dali of the Righteous Qi Dao Alliance, and the other is you, Wang Zhong the Mad Dog. If you are targeted by Mad Dog Wang Zhong, unless you flee Shangshi, it's a fight to the death with no truce."

"Knowing that, why still come here?" Wang Zhong asked, watching the snake-pupil man.

"Because I believe you cannot stop me," the snake-pupil man said with a beaming smile, his tone brimming with provocation.

"Arrogant!" Wang Zhong let out a cold snort, suddenly erupting into motion as he charged straight at the snake-pupil man.

The snake-pupil man tapped his toes against the ground, his body retreating at high speed.

Wang Zhong's fists were coated with a thin film of true qi. Although it was merely a single layer, it was more than enough to inflict damage upon these demons and ghosts.

"Clap, clap, clap, clap..."

A rapid succession of fist-on-fist impacts echoed through the air.

Wang Zhong's punches were tricky and fierce, yet the snake-pupil man's defense was equally methodical and orderly.

Every time the two collided, it sounded like the explosive roar of firearms.

"Is this the extent of Shangshi's mad dog?" the snake-pupil man chuckled while maintaining his defense.

A flash of anger crossed Wang Zhong's eyes. The true qi within his body surged violently, accelerating his movements by a full thirty percent. This sudden burst of speed threw off the rhythm of the snake-pupil man's defense.

"Fierce Tiger Descends the Mountain!"

Wang Zhong roared suddenly, his right hand forming a tiger claw that lunged directly onto the snake-pupil man's face. Gripping the man's face, he slammed him down toward the ground with the unstoppable momentum of a fierce tiger descending from the mountain.

He had once used this exact move when dealing with the ghostly ape.

"Now this is getting interesting." With his head pressed against the ground, the snake-pupil man instead burst into laughter. "Wang Zhong the Mad Dog, is this your true strength? Rather amusing, but I'm done playing."

"What?" The moment those words fell, Wang Zhong was struck with a jolt of astonishment, for he felt the face of the snake-pupil man he had been gripping so tightly suddenly turn into water, slipping away right through his fingers.

The snake-pupil man's body truly slipped from Wang Zhong's grasp like a snake, and with a soft plop, he plunged into the river water, leaving no trace behind.