Even after several days passed, the battle still commenced. Liu Xing was still busy shooting at his enemy, running around the forest as he fired. He maneuvered using the remaining trees and sometimes ran on the centipede's spine while shooting it. Throughout the entire battle, his most serious injuries were on his back, and the bleeding had already stopped thanks to his vitality. Right now, the centipede was no longer ridiculously large. He had successfully chipped away at the beast, and shrunk it to the size of a large shipping container, with fewer feet and significantly smaller heads and fangs. He felt that the time for chipping away was over; now he could defeat Ji Dongyang decisively!

The area around Liu Xing for hundreds of meters was now flat. No trees, mushrooms, or anything remained—just numerous holes and craters from his explosive bullets and the centipede's attempts to ram itself into the ground.

The centipede now moved like a train towards Liu Xing, its many heads staring at him with rage, each seeming to want to tear him apart. Its many feet propelled the giant body forward. He stood his ground and started shooting rapidly. Each bullet hit the centipede perfectly, blowing away several heads, only for others to replace them. As the centipede approached, he jumped into the sky and turned his body in mid-air. With feet pointing skyward and face downward, he shot rapidly, destroying the heads along its spine.

The wound soon regenerated, but he glimpsed something strange inside its body. Instead of flesh or bone, a brown shell resembling a chicken egg was visible in one part of its body. He didn't know the anatomy of a giant centipede made from thousands of spirit beasts, but that thing was certainly not normal. He suspected that was where Ji Dongyang was hiding.

Nodding to himself, he made that shell his target.

Having decided on his course of action, he landed on the ground. As soon as his feet touched down, he kicked off the ground and appeared on top of the giant centipede. Standing on a head resembling a giant wolf, Liu Xing watched the world rush by around him, as if he were a stuntman performing atop a speeding train.

Pointing his gun at several heads in front of him, Liu Xing pulled the trigger several times, creating holes in the centipede's body. Finding no shell where he shot, he moved forward and fired again.

By now, the centipede had realized he was on its back. It stopped moving forward and began burrowing into the ground. Liu Xing knew he didn't want to ride it while it tunneled, so he shot frantically, searching for the shell where Ji Dongyang hid.

After shooting the head of a bear spirit beast, causing it to explode into smithereens and create a hole in the centipede's body, Liu Xing spotted the edge of the brown shell.

"There you are!" Liu Xing shouted.

He rushed toward the shell. Another head tried to close the hole, but he shot it again. When he reached the blast hole, he spun like a whirlwind, digging into the centipede flesh with his lightning blade. After a moment, he stood inside the centipede with a half-buried shell that looked like a giant chicken egg in front of him.

"Ji Dongyang, come out!" Liu Xing slashed at the egg in front of him. A slimy liquid gushed out, and the giant centipede roared so loudly it created a shockwave. The roar sounded like a wounded beast, as if his slash had struck its most painful nerve. He slashed relentlessly, shattering the shell until he faced a monstrous creature with the face of an anglerfish. Its form melted away, leaving only the skull of an anglerfish with red light for eyes. When their eyes met, Ji Dongyang lunged at him, claws aimed for Liu Xing's neck. Quickly dodging, he unleashed his Lightning Palm Technique and struck the anglerfish's skull. Instantly, the skull shattered into dust.

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The centipede emitted a piercing roar, every fiber of its being vibrating as it disintegrated into a writhing mass of flesh. It seemed Ji Dongyang was the center of this centipede beast. Defeating him automatically made the centipede monster lose its form. The heads and flesh around him began to fall. Amidst the falling flesh, Liu Xing grabbed a writhing white snake that slithered out of the shattered skull. It bore a human head with bushy eyebrows and a bushy mustache. Ji Dongyang.

"Now," Liu Xing declared, "are you ready to talk, Ji Dongyang?"

The head grimaced, unable to flee, defeated and at Liu Xing's mercy.

***

He emerged from the melting flesh. He stood atop a mound of severed limbs and heads, looking like a hero who had slain a beast terrorizing the world. Surveying the area, he realized their battle had forever altered the Dragon Skull Forest.

"Will this place still be called Dragon Skull Forest?" Liu Xing muttered. Skull Hill, the forest's main landmark, was now leveled. Instead of a hill, a crater remained, filled with giant holes created by the centipede. Blood and spirit beast heads littered every centimeters of the crater, like remnants of a demonic ritual. Tilting his head, he noticed he was directly beneath the blue portal. Initially hovering a few meters above the ground, the portal now floated hundreds of meters above because Skull Hill was gone. The cultivators inside would fall upon exiting the pocket dimension, but they would likely survive the descent.

Liu Xing turned his attention to the white snake with a human head clenched in his right fist. Ji Dongyang struggled and tried to bite his hand, but his small snake body and human head were weak, barely stronger than a five-year-old. The bites wouldn't even scratch his skin. He squeezed his hand, making Ji Dongyang grimace.

"I'll talk. Please stop hurting me!"

Liu Xing loosened his grip and sat cross-legged atop a giant wolf head. "Wasn't that easy? If you had agreed to chat earlier, we wouldn't have fought for three days and two nights. Look what you did to Skull Hill." Liu Xing pointed around him. Ji Dongyang looked like he wanted to pounce on Liu Xing and slap him, but he swallowed his emotions.

"What do you want to know?" Ji Dongyang asked.

"What is the 'shadow' you use? Is it your technique, a byproduct of your cultivation, or something else?"

Ji Dongyang remained silent. When Liu Xing squeezed again, he finally spoke. "The shadow is two things: my technique and something else."

"Explain," Liu Xing demanded.

Ji Dongyang grimaced. "I obtained the shadow around three or four hundred years ago. At that time, I was a Sun Refining cultivator. I had a... disagreement with my sect, resulting in its disbandment."

Liu Xing raised an eyebrow. If he read that statement correctly, then what really happened was Ji Dongyang picked a fight with his sect and annihilated them. "What's your sect's name?"

"Blood Wing Sect, a small sect in the north. Our cultivation technique was... unorthodox, and we didn't get along with other sects."

"Blood Wing Sect," Liu Xing muttered. He tried to recall the name but had never heard of it. Probably because Ji Dongyang annihilated them, or because they are probably a demonic sect, and demonic sects tend to hide themselves. Demonic sects were the enemy of mankind. They justified any means to achieve immortality. Some refined pills from humans, some sacrificed other cultivators, and some possessed others for strength. When Ji Dongyang possessed Mo Yan, Liu Xing had suspected him of being a demonic cultivator but hadn't dwelt on it.

"All right, let's not beat around the bush. You're a demonic cultivator. Hundreds of years ago, you annihilated the Blood Wing Sect. Is that correct?"

Ji Dongyang's lips formed a straight line, then he nodded.

"I don't know if what you did was good or bad. On one hand, you annihilated a sect; on the other, the sect you annihilated was demonic."

Ji Dongyang snorted. "You don't need to think too much about it. You Purple Moon Sect disciples think there's a difference between demonic and righteous cultivators, but in reality, every cultivator is the same. Have you heard of the Jade Palace Sect's destruction? The one who destroyed it is called a saint, even though he did the same thing I did."

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