As he descended from the air, Liu Xing surveyed his surroundings. The number of spirit beasts was dwindling. Although hundreds still remained, he knew it was only a matter of time before he defeated them all.

Firing rapidly at the spirit beasts gathering below, Liu Xing pondered how many he had dispatched. Hundreds, perhaps thousands. If he could absorb the energy from the bullets created from all the beast cores, he might advance to the seventh stage or even reach the Core Splitting realm already. It frustrated him that he couldn't cultivate while moving.

Upon landing amidst the remains of spirit beasts, Liu Xing scanned for Ji Dongyang.

There had been no sign of him for hours, and Liu Xing worried that Ji Dongyang might have fled. The only reason Liu Xing hadn't run away himself was to uncover the truth about Ji Dongyang's shadow.

Suddenly, the ground trembled beneath Liu Xing's feet. He watched in horror as a massive centipede emerged from the ground, its roar echoing like the scraping of glass against glass. This colossal creature was so immense that Liu Xing felt dwarfed, as if standing before a skyscraper.

Upon closer inspection, Liu Xing realized it wasn't a single centipede but a conglomeration of thousands of spirit beasts forming a gigantic centipede. Every inch of its body, from its myriad feet to its torso and even its face, was composed of spirit beasts. It appeared as though a bored child, playing with countless spirit beast dolls, had glued them together to create this monstrous amalgamation. The only genuine centipede features were its two enormous fangs. Jutting from its forehead was a single figure—Ji Dongyang.

"Liu Xing!" Ji Dongyang shouted. "You forced my hand! The Purple Moon Sect will become my enemy, and I will hunt down your clan and slaughter your entire family!"

A cacophony of roars, screams, and growls erupted from each head of the giant centipede. As if accusing Liu Xing of Ji Dongyang's creation of this monstrous form, all eyes fixed on him. He gulped. The centipede cast a shadow that obscured half of Skull Hill, eclipsing the sun. Initially, the thought of fleeing crossed his mind. After all, battling a horde of spirit beasts was vastly different from confronting a colossal single entity. His gun was better suited for hordes rather than singular titans.

However, escape was not an option. He had to find out the truth about Ji Dongyang's shadow. What if Nui, Joni, and Mamat suffered because he ran away from that giant spirit beast? He knew that as friends, they would shout about how stupid of him to think like that, but he couldn't forgive himself for letting them down. They were his friends, and the mission to fight the darkness was the most important task in his current life.. He wasn't going to give up on that mission. He had to try to defeat this creature and force Ji Dongyang to reveal the truth.

The centipede shrieked, and the remaining spirit beasts rushed towards it, seemingly wanting to merge and increase its size. When all of them had merged, it lunged its head at Liu Xing. Quickly dodging, he watched as the centipede burrowed into the ground, raising a cloud of dust that billowed into the sky. Moments later, the centipede emerged from beneath him. Ji Dongyang was still sticking out of the centipede's forehead, his anglerfish face melting away, leaving only bones and slimy appendages with a pink hue. His eyes glowed crimson red, like pools of glowing blood.

He fired at Ji Dongyang three times, each bullet infused with beast core qi and Exploding Fist Technique. Several spirit beast heads moved, forming a shield in front of Ji Dongyang, and exploded. For a brief moment, he saw the raw red beneath the decimated heads, a gush of red blood flowing like a waterfall, before new heads sprouted and sealed the wounds, and Ji Dongyang sank into the flesh of this monster.

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It seemed that while each individual head remained intact, the rest of their bodies melded into a single mass of flesh. Every head on its body resembled a living tumor. Seeing this regenerative ability, Liu Xing grimaced. If every wound on the creature could regenerate, what chance did he have of winning?

The centipede monster opened its massive maw wide, attempting to devour Liu Xing. He leaped aside as the centipede burrow underground again, the creature's body arcing through the sky before disappearing completely into the earth. As he moved around, he understood Ji Dongyang's plan. Although the creature was large and formidable, it wasn't particularly fast, and it didn't seem to possess any special abilities beyond ramming or trying to eat him. Liu Xing was faster, and as long as he made no mistakes, he could easily dodge its attacks. However, he lacked a way to harm this colossal opponent—this was Ji Dongyang's strategy. His goal was to discourage Liu Xing from fighting, to convince him that victory was impossible, while still leaving a tempting escape route.

However, his focus quickly returned to his gun. He had fired three bullets, leaving him with three remaining. Yet, he now realized his gun was once again loaded with six bullets. His main concern suddenly vanished. He realized that he wasn't fighting one big monster. Each head on its body counted as a separate spirit beast, likely because each still contained a beast core. This meant Liu Xing wasn't fighting one monster, but a horde of monsters moving as one.

"Alright!" Confidence began to grow in his heart. He would defeat Ji Dongyang and make him talk. He would chip away at that giant centipede and win.

When the giant centipede burst from below his feet with its mouth wide open, Liu Xing jumped away, aiming at the six spirit beasts in its heads and shooting rapidly. Each head exploded, and his gun refilled with bullets again, which he fired once more. The centipede roared, rising to the sky like a tower and crashing down towards him. He jumped backward several times. When the centipede hit the ground, the entirety of Skull Hill trembled, and some ground began to cave in.

Jumping lightly into the sky, Liu Xing shot six more bullets. When he landed, the giant centipede burst from the ground and tried to devour him once more. He started running downhill. The centipede chased him, and Liu Xing turned around several times to shoot its heads, creating wounds that always closed after several seconds. When the centipede tried to crash into him again, Liu Xing moved, and so the dance began anew.

Liu Xing dashed forward, firing relentlessly. For now, every head he shot was quickly replaced, but he knew that sooner or later, it would run out of spirit beasts to regenerate.

From a distance, Skull Hill began to lose its shape. Before, it resembled a giant lizard's head, but with so many holes and destruction around it, it now looked like a fragile mound of dirt full of holes. And after Liu Xing ran around the hill and the centipede tunneled inside, the hill began to collapse.

He ran and fired amidst huge boulders, stones, and debris flying around. The centipede destroyed what remained of Skull Hill like a drill piercing tofu. Since the centipede mainly attacked from underground, his bullets also exploded what was left of Skull Hill, flattening it until it changed from a fierce-looking hill to a wide, flat bowl full of holes made by the centipede and craters from explosions.

As a cultivator at the fifth stage, his stamina was tremendous but not monstrous. If he fought normally with his own qi, Liu Xing would be half-dead after half a day. However, since all his attacks used energy from the beast cores, he only used his qi to maintain the Lightning Cloak.

He felt very familiar with this technique now, as if he had used it since birth. But what amazed him was how ridiculously efficient this Lightning Cloak was. The qi intake was so efficient that he felt he could maintain this technique nonstop for a week, which again made him realize how amazing his gun was.

And so, several days passed.

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