Chapter 548: Chapter 278: The End
Xia Nan witnessed the entire process of the corpse’s transformation.
The corpse’s head, with its sparse gray hair, still lay quietly on the ground, while its similarly collapsed body began to convulse violently.
Accompanied by an increasingly clear hissing sound in the air, a fist-sized, bloody spherical outline emerged slowly from the neck stump, rising like a germinating bud.
"Pudou."
Purple-red rotten flesh burst through the fetid pus, and the fleshy orb exploded in an instant.
What met the eye was a slender and powerful dark green serpent head, its surface covered in dull, dense scales.
The bright yellow vertical pupils were almost identical to the cloudy snake eyes of the ground corpse’s head in front.
Shilaa——
Like some sort of crude assembly toy, the left arm of the corpse, which spasmed the most, snapped off cleanly at the ferocious wound on the shoulder.
The severed arm, like a fish out of water, struggled incessantly.
But like the head, a gradually swelling meatball bulged from the stump.
Unlike in games of past lives where one could only choose to "watch" or "skip" the cutscene.
Xia Nan certainly wasn’t going to just stand by and watch the transformation complete, doing nothing in the process.
In fact, the moment he turned around and noticed the corpse’s transformation, he already charged toward the corpse with a wooden sword engulfed in flames.
Yet, an indescribable sense of lethal danger from high perception forced him to stop.
His adventuring life was still relatively short; even though his progress exceeded others, his accumulation was still not deep.
Each battle skill was useful and high-quality, but the number of battle skills he mastered was very few.
This left Xia Nan facing this situation without ranged attack means, forcing him to use a kerosene bomb to probe.
"Boom!"
Dust and grease ignited into a raging flame under the spark, instantly devouring the writhing, swollen corpse.
The flames burned, nearly setting the form ablaze like a human-shaped torch.
Yet no sound of agony or pain was heard.
Zizi——
The scorching high temperatures evaporated the mucus that dripped between the snake scales and wounds, turning it into an ominous green gaseous fog that spread outward.
Despite being greatly reduced in concentration due to vaporization, the green mist still held astonishing corrosive power.
Where it passed, not just the surrounding broken metal objects, but even the marble tiled floor and the walls on either side smoked and corroded, melting away.
Grateful in his heart, he felt fortunate to have tested it with a kerosene bomb, or he might have been caught off guard by the toxic vapor if he had rushed in with a sword.
At the same time, he focused his mind.
Gravity Control silently took effect, creating gravitational wells above and around him.
The toxic mist rushing toward him seemed to encounter an invisible barrier, naturally sliding to the sides and above, blocked outside.
The shriveled flesh was hard to sustain the flame’s burning; it was like water with no source. Once the dust and grease of the flame bomb were consumed in breaths, engulfed in dense toxic mist, completing its "second phase" transformation, the swollen and distorted figure revealed itself before Xia Nan.
First was the slimy serpent head that emerged from the neck stump, replacing its original position.
Its surface’s dark green scales were more complete and dense than elsewhere on the body, manifesting the cold, pure reptilian texture;
The pair of bright yellow vertical pupils lost their previous cloudiness and vacancy, replacing them with an unsettling chill devoid of emotion, a bizarre sacredness felt intensely upon eye contact.
At this moment, it awkwardly tilted upward, gently swaying with the flickering flames ahead.
Next was the corpse’s left arm.
No, perhaps it shouldn’t be called an "arm" given its current state.
It wasn’t the humanoid structure composed of "shoulder," "upper and lower arm," "elbow wrist," and "hand."
From the tumor at the left arm stump burst three serpent heads, similarly covered in dark green scales, each with bright vertical yellow eyes.
They intertwined and entwined, bending and crossing in the air, their ends grotesquely fused with flesh.
The overall impression was that the corpse had been parasitized by a fearsome, terrifying organism.
The humanoid body was just a nutrient source, a tool providing a bed of flesh, while the long serpents emerging from limb stumps were its true essence.
At a glance, it was nauseating, a blasphemous fusion of flesh and alien texture, the embodiment of curse, mutation, and agony.
Eight vertical pupils, four pairs of snake eyes.
Almost simultaneously, they all stared straight at Xia Nan.
Goosebumps rose, his throat moved, dryly swallowing a gulp of saliva.
Encountering this strange entity for the first time, his scalp went numb.
Only the burning heat of the wooden sword [Green Pine] in his hand provided Xia Nan with any sense of safety.
Aong——
The wolf’s howl suddenly echoed in the air.
With its thick mane, the pitch-black Winter Wolf rushed ferociously at the prey ahead, its fiery teeth vowed to tear the flesh apart.
The explosive power of the full-level Teeth Hunting, surpassed the scope of response typical of an ordinary adventurer.