When everyone heard this, they immediately dropped their bowls and chopsticks, grabbed whatever makeshift weapons by the door such as hoes and rakes, and ran out the door.
Other villagers from Shishan Bay did the same.
By the time everyone rushed to Sun's house, it was already too late.
The Sun family's courtyard was in a mess, with overturned wooden frames and winnowing baskets everywhere.
There were obvious long drag marks on the ground, and the enclosure fences around the courtyard had collapsed.
Mrs. Sun hugged her husband, who had been whipped unconscious by the giant snake, sitting on the ground bawling.
The other children were so frightened that they couldn't even cry, huddling together shivering.
Only then did everyone realize that little daughter Sun was not dragged away by the big snake, but was directly swallowed alive by the beast.
The women stayed to comfort Mrs. Sun and the children, and tidy up the chaotic yard.
Jiang Yushan also grabbed a wooden stick and followed the villagers to chase in the direction of the trail.
Doctor Qiu went up to take the pulse of the Sun family man and found that his internal organs were bleeding, but it was not particularly serious.
He immediately used a gold needle to give him acupuncture to calm his chaotic qi. After taking a few doses of medicine, he would be fine with some rest.
None of the children were injured, just overly frightened. Doctor Qiu prescribed them a calming formula and asked someone to grab medicine from the county seat.
Mrs. Sun thanked them repeatedly, finally coming back to her senses, sobbing as she recounted her terrifying ordeal.
It turned out that the family was eating in the main hall when their little daughter, having finished eating quickly, ran out to the yard to play with the family dog. They didn't think much of it.
Suddenly they heard the dog barking frantically in the house, followed immediately by a loud crashing sound, as if something had collapsed.
The couple was startled and immediately ran out of the hall, only to see the most terrifying sight of their lives.
A giant snake about the thickness of a small bucket, with their little daughter in its mouth, swallowed her in just three or two bites.
The couple turned pale with fright. Her husband instinctively grabbed a wooden stick by the door to try to save his daughter but was slapped on the back by the snake's tail and passed out on the spot.
After eating the girl, the snake wanted to eat the husband too, but was bitten by the family dog.
The snake, in pain, thrashed around the yard twice, shook off the dog, and ate it too.
The huge commotion in their yard naturally attracted the neighbors. Everyone who ran over to see was scared out of their minds.
Regardless of whatever was at hand, any stones, bricks, wooden sticks, hoes, etc., they grabbed whatever was nearby to smash wildly at the big snake.
Having just eaten a person and a dog, the snake's belly was bulging and its mobility was significantly restricted.
Realizing it was no match, the beast spewed out a stream of venom at the villagers, let out a hiss, and fled.
Wherever its venom landed, the ground turned black and sizzled, just like being splashed with sulfuric acid. Thankfully it did not hit anyone.
Jiang Yuqing had thought it was a python earlier. In her impression, only pythons could grow to such a large size, but pythons are non-venomous.
This snake's venom was comparable to sulfuric acid. Plus, as the woman said, it had a big red "cockerel comb" on its head, so it definitely could not be a python!
Jiang Yuqing shook her head and helped tidy up the wreckage in the yard. Afterwards, she found a dropped snake scale under the collapsed fence.
The thing felt icy cold without temperature, about half the size of her palm, and was already slightly reddish. Jiang Yuqing looked at the trail left by the giant snake's escape, lost in thought.
When the yard was halfway tidied up, the people who went to chase returned.
Following the trail, they chased it to the entrance of an underground cave at Tea Package Ridge before it disappeared without a trace, most likely having escaped into the cave.
That cave was unfathomably deep and dark, so no one dared to be reckless. They could only curse angrily for a bit before heading back.
After this incident, everyone lost their appetite for dinner. The group bid Old Vegetable Worm farewell and went straight home.
Back home, everyone wolfed down some food. Old Man Jiang talked about the event with his family, and everyone sighed.
Only Jiang Yuqing pulled Doctor Qiu aside and whispered, “Master, I will look for the beast to surely eliminate it. If my family looks for me, just say that I’m closed off in the medicine room making medicines.”
Doctor Qiu knew his precious young disciple’s abilities and did not stop her, only telling her to be extra careful.
So Jiang Yuqing went into the small medicine room, applied an invisibility talisman on herself, brought along Bai Xiaoshi, and rushed straight for Tea Package Ridge.
When she arrived, Jiang Yuqing released her spiritual sense and soon found the cave.
The cave was located between two piles of boulders. The small entrance could barely fit a person through.
Jiang Yuqing took out a lantern and put a piece of spirit crystal the size of a fingernail as fuel, using a combustion symbol as a wick.
She then used a technique to light it, instantly illuminating the entire cave as bright as day.
A large area of Qingzhou belonged to karst terrain. This cave was a typical underground dissolution cave.
The entrance was not big, but the space inside was not small. From the ground to the top of the cave was at least thirty or forty yards high, the size of half a basketball court.
There were stone teeth, notches, stalagmites, etc. everywhere, each with different shapes. In the light, the unknown sedimentary minerals on the walls glittered brightly and were extremely beautiful.
Jiang Yuqing roughly looked around, then drove the spirit lantern to continue searching forward following the traces left by snakes crawling on the ground.
The cave sloped downward with seven or eight turns. The widest part of the cave was as wide as a gymnasium, and the narrowest required bending over to get through.
After walking for an unknown length of time with all the winding paths, there was suddenly the sound of gurgling water up ahead.
When she walked closer to take a look, it turned out to be a flowing underground river with abundant water.
The trail on the ground disappeared when they arrived here.
Bai Xiaoshi complained, "You should raise a couple of tracking butterflies when you have time! Otherwise, we'll have to search blindly again when we run into something like this in the future."
Jiang Yuqing also felt Sprite's words made a lot of sense and said, "I’ll catch a few to raise when I go back."
This underground river was at least twenty yards wide. Although the current could not be considered turbulent, it was very deep.
If it was someone else, they would probably have turned back here, but Jiang Yuqing lightly leapt across.
Sure enough, she saw two more shed snake scales on the rocks on the opposite bank.
After walking another hour or so ahead, the air in the cave suddenly became pungent.
Bai Xiaoshi said, "The snake's lair is here!"
Jiang Yuqing released her spiritual sense and quickly found the man-eating giant snake in a naturally formed stone nest.
As the woman had said, it was as thick as a small bucket, with a blood-red cockscomb on its head, and its pointed tail had also turned dark red, coiled up like a small mountain.
It had originally been resting in the cave when the strong light suddenly shone on it. Sensing the intrusion of two unfamiliar auras, the giant snake let out a hiss, erected its snake head defensively over three yards high.
Realizing it was just two little "ants" after "seeing" clearly, it immediately cried excitedly and charged at Jiang Yuqing with its gaping maw.
From its icy vertical pupils, Jiang Yuqing read the words "meat delivered to the door”.
In that instant, Jiang Yuqing dodged with a flash. A white light flashed in her hand as her spirit sword appeared. Her body leapt high into the air and she fiercely slashed down at the snake’s weak point.
The spirit sword cut through the mortal snake like cutting through a melon. With a shriek, the snake head fell to the ground, rolled over twice, and convulsed without moving.
Only the snake body kept writhing ceaselessly, swept up the stones on the ground with loud rattling noises.
Jiang Yuqing slashed it into snake segments in a few more strikes. After struggling for a while, the beast finally died and could die no more.
At the same time, in a hidden cave several mountain ranges away, many animals were imprisoned, including leopards, tigers, wolves and other beasts.
Some of these animals were emaciated, listless in spirit, some were covered in wounds, hovering on the verge of death.
An evil-looking man was using a saltwater-soaked, barbed whip to fiercely lash a golden snub-nosed monkey chained to the cave wall and unable to move.
The golden snub-nosed monkey let out bursts of screams. Covered in bloody wounds, after the cruel torture, it soon languished on the verge of death.
Only then did the man throw down his whip with a sinister expression on his face. He turned around, took a sharp dagger and was about to stab the terrified golden snub-nosed monkey.
Suddenly, his heart violently lurched. The sudden tearing pain made his vision go black, and he vomited a mouthful of blood.
"Just who is it, who killed my, gold, crown..." Afterwards, it collapsed straight to the ground and completely fainted.
Jiang Yuqing cut open the section of the snake's body that was bulging the most. Sure enough, she discovered the corpses of a young girl and a dog inside.
Whether it was the human or the dog, both had pitch black bodies, having evidently been injected with the snake's venom before death.
The dog had thick fur and was a bit stronger, but the skin of the little girl had already been mostly melted by the stomach acid.
However, you could still vaguely make out her extremely cute features - what a pity.
Jiang Yuqing sighed and took out two white cloths and two empty boxes from her spirit realm. She separately packed the little girl and this loyal, master-protecting dog into them before storing them in her spirit realm.
Just as she was about to collect the snake head as well to bring back, she suddenly discovered a purple, cup rim sized, circular imprint on the snake's "cockerel crown".
This imprint was extremely round. Within the circle was a shape resembling some kind of pictogram. It looked very strange, clearly not naturally grown but seemingly branded on instead.
Bai Xiaoshi also noticed this imprint and blurted out, "A Spirit Contract Seal!"
"What what seal?" The country bumpkin master blinked blankly, shamelessly asking for an explanation.
"It's a Spirit Contract Seal. Spirit Contract Seals were a special contract imprint unique to the ancient cultivation world's Beast Control Sect. The Beast Control Sect relied on contracted spirit beasts to fight for them.
They had three or two types of contracts with spirit beasts. One was a lifebound contract where both sides equally shared benefits and injuries - the master prospers, the beast prospers; the master dies, the beast dies. Hence it was also called the Spirit Contract Seal and had a purple color.
The second was an equal contract - a relationship between the beast tamer and spirit beast as equal friends.
The beast tamer cannot force the spirit beast to do what it is unwilling.
If either side dies, the damage to the other side is small, at most suffering some insignificant backlash.
Generally speaking, the spirit beast's side has greater strength than the beast tamer for this type of contract, but is unable to avoid working for the beast tamer due to some reason.
Thus, this type of contract imprint is also called the Equality Contract Seal and is blue in color.
The final one is a slave contract. As the name implies, the master has formidable strength and orders the spirit beast around like a slave.
For this type of contract, there is little relation between the master's gains and losses and the pet. The master can even arbitrarily kill the spirit beast without any consequences.
This is thus called the Slave Contract Seal with a red color."
After the artifact spirit explained all this, the master immediately understood and sucked up to it for being so knowledgeable.
"So you're saying this snake was deliberately raised here by someone who is very likely a cultivator too?"
Bai Xiaoshi said, "Most likely. Though, they probably aren't that impressive since they formed a soul contract with a mutated common snake.
Also, look, the imprint's circle isn't complete and has a gap.
This shows the ritual wasn't fully completed, indicating this guy's low abilities.
It's also exactly because of this that the snake raiser possibly only suffered some injuries after you killed the big snake instead of kicking the bucket.
And since you killed their big snake, that person will definitely come seeking vengeance. You'd best be more careful over the coming days!"
Jiang Yuqing nodded. "What you said makes sense. I'll pay attention."
The artifact spirit immediately got cocky. "So you see, you have to treat me better. After all, you still need to rely on me at critical moments!"
The master immediately shamelessly flattered the artifact spirit. "Yes, yes! Our family's little Bai Xiaoshi is the best!"
