Poison God's Heritage

Why is he willing to kill these many cultivators with this much oppressiveness?

Is he looking for something? I questioned as I looked around.

There didn't seem to be anything worthy of note here, most cultivators if not all were incredibly exhausted from the agony of having been dipped in a pool full of poison. Though I haven't had the slightest issue with that, besides reliving some sort of trauma. Which was frankly nothing new.

"You, the man with the plan, you figured anything out?" Dao Shen asked.

"Nothing but to kill every beast in sight, shit is not looking too good though," I said as I pulled a couple of miniguns.

"What are those?" Dao Shen asked, intrigued.

"Heavy artillery, I said as I pressed the trigger, and the barrels began spinning.

Then the echo of sweet 'freedom' began sounding through the large platform. Hundreds of bullets shot forward at blinding speed, they looked like rays of death, killing and culling anything in their path. The wolves were the first of the runners, and were the first to fall, whinging and screeching from bullets and bullet holes that rendered some of them immobile and some, outright looked like Swiss cheese.

"That's pretty interesting and all," Dao Shen said as he raised both hands up, "But beat this," he smiled as he slammed both hands down on the platform.

Ungodly amounts of Qi manifested in a form of a rising tide made purely of smoke.

The smoke tide surged forward, shaping itself into the jaws and shapes of beasts from all sorts of biomes.

The incoming monsters were so terrified of what was behind them they didn't really care if they were running toward their deaths as they charged the incoming wave.

The wave washed off against the howls and screaming of the beasts only for silence to prevail shortly afterward. 

The wake of the wave appeared after the smoke subside, revealing carcasses and half-melted bodies of the wolves that could barely twitch or shudder, breathing their last, and forcefully exhaling their final breaths.

"What do you think?" Dao Shen taunted.

"Pretty nice, but to be honest, for the creatures to still come charging at your spell like that means that whatever was behind them was scary enough for them to choose death over being caught," I said.

"Indeed, I still can't find the soul imprint of whatever that was chasing them, it seems far away, but still, something else is coming our way," Dao Shen said.

The sound came before I could see it, this infamous screech, a mix of a tiger's roar and a high-pitched scream, it washed over every one of us and we immediately recognized what it was.

"Nargacougars, they're coming," I said.

"You suppose your little toys can handle them?" Dao Shen asked.

"Not really," I shook my head.

"Then we better figure something, out because what I just used seemed to have exhausted me more than it should… the poison from the former rounds is acting," he said as he coughed.

I couldn't feel it, since the poison didn't affect me, but was affecting Shen Mo.

The rest of the cultivators, most of them decided to run.

Where are they running to though? This whole area is as flat as a board, and there is no hiding spot nor do I think there is a way out. The incoming beasts are something we have to deal with on our own.

Only a group of a hundred or more cultivators who seemed to be slightly more mentally adequate to take the fight and have realized that if we don't help each other we'll be picked off one by one.

"Shit, I didn't think I'll be using them right now, Come out, an army of a hundred," I said and immediately a hundred copies of X showed up, loaded up and armed up to the teeth.

The hundred puppets showed up and stood in a one file line, their right arms were all miniguns and their left opened revealing a single rocket launcher each.

"So many intricate toys, you made these?" asked Dao Shen.

"Yes, of course." I said as I pulled a cannister out and kicked it in the sky.

The cannister flew high up and once it reached a satisfying level, I pointed my handgun and shot at it.

The resulting contact caused a powerful explosion of sound that caused every Nargacougar in the air to immediately flinch, disabling their invisibility for a moment.

"Let it RIP!" I called and immediately thousands upon thousands of bullets flew up, with might and power enough to eradicate the skies themselves.

The Nargacougars were shot down like flies as their blood and viscera littered the ground.

The lucky ones decided to go up and avoid the confrontation, the lightly wounded decided that they wanted to take revenge for what happened to them. Bad decision.

The second arm of the puppets aimed and then shot, a single round of incendiary explosives. The closest thing to napalm I could make was a mix of a highly flammable poison made from replicating the saint beast Grizzly Spider. And a highly potent corrosive poison that is extremely volatile.

The explosions echoed in the distance, killing and disabling every Nargacougar that decided to come down and fight, while the result of the explosion caused more poison to spread in the air, making it heavier and fully saturated with a corrosive poison. 

"Thankfully there is no wind, otherwise this would have been really bad," I said as I looked at the stun-faced cultivators next to me, they had no idea what was going on, but seeing the beasts falling down to their deaths they realized that they were actually winning this fight.

They then decided to fully join in on the fight, using their techniques and martial arts, sending destructiveness upon the incoming Nargacougars. 

More beasts showed up, waves upon waves, and they were all culled and executed before they could even breach the puppet's perimeter.

More and more beasts showed up, but with the combined effort of all the cultivators present, the creatures were eliminated completely.

But something was still bugging me. Even after the dust settled and the monsters no longer came at us, we still couldn't figure out why they were running.

The hairs on the back of my neck suddenly rose up, I snapped back and saw Shi Situ slitting the throat of an unaware cultivator. He then pressed his arm right into the cultivator's back and pulled back what seemed to be a book.

"Got one," Shi Situ spoke as he pulled a Poison God's book.

Dao Shen looked keenly at Shi Situ and said, "I guess we only need to find one more," he said.

I thought for a moment before I asked, "I have Five books, Death, Body, Inscription, Alchemy, and Law… which are the ones you have?" I asked Dao Shen.

"Devouring, Carnage, Soul, Dao and Cultivation…"

"So, the only two left are Sword and Poison…" Dao Shen said

I shook my head, "No, the only one left is Sword."

"How would you know, I couldn't see the title it was covered in blood…" Dao Shen said.

"Because no self-respecting sword cultivator would ever have his neck slit without them fighting back."

"The book of Poison is one of the strongest though, Shi Situ is going to be a pain to deal with," Dao Shen said.

"Perhaps, but it shouldn't be too difficult for us," I replied.

Just as the two of us were about to come down on Shi Situ and eliminate him from this trial, a hiss echoed behind us. 

The world itself felt as if it had lost all color, and in the distant darkness, two red Serpentinian eyes appeared. The distance between the eyes was at least a kilometer in length, and that was all we could see from the creature in the distance.

The world itself seemed to wane at its presence, as it slowly crept its way toward us, revealing its appearance to us, a serpent of a size so great that it could be confused with a world-eating serpent.

The cultivators next to us seemed to lose all will and hope seeing the creature coming slowly and surely towards us, they dropped their swords, and some went outright mad with laughter.

"How are we supposed to fight this?"

"The Primordial Serpent God? Are you kidding me?!" another said.

I frowned; I'd seen the Primordial Serpent God… this was not it. Not by a long shot, the Primordial Serpent God was way larger than this, enough that I think this snake through massive wouldn't even be larger than its tongue. 

Dao Shen's expressions weren't friendly.

"We're in trouble," he said.

"You think? Tell me something I don't know," I said.

"Well the least of our troubles is this fake serpent god…" he said.

"Well, that's something I didn't know. What do you mean?" I asked.

"Look between its eyes… focus well, I only was able to see it since I am able to see Souls…"

Since the distance was pretty damn far, I pulled out the scope from my rifle and took a peek.

Almost regretting it instantly.

What I saw was something that shouldn't be happening.

Mei Ling was sitting calmly on the head of the serpent, while on its nose was a man standing confidently at the tip. In his arms were golden chains that were linked to the serpent behind it.

And that man, I just saw earlier…

"Du Shen…"