Chapter 67: Where Did Your Younger Brother and Sister Hide?

With wings on its back, Mo Lin’s speed became faster than ever before.

In the blink of an eye, it caught up to the child running at the very front.

All the children who tried to flee from the snake horde had their lives mercilessly taken away by Mo Lin amidst fear and hatred.

The rest of the snakes climbed upon the elders and women who had no time to escape, biting and coiling around them, poisoning them and magnifying, magnifying, and magnifying again the resentment they felt at the brink of death.

“Spawn of evil! You are not some true Yinglong! You’re just a shameless snake dressed in false skin!”

“You’ve committed such heavy bloodshed, in the future you will surely face retribution!”

Watching their closest kin die, Hong Tianyun and the others had bloodshot eyes, their teeth grinding as they poured every venomous curse they could onto Mo Lin.

Of course, this was precisely what Mo Lin had intended.

With these emotions of hatred present, their souls—even without the tempering of the Soul-Respecting Banner—would likely transform directly into vengeful spirits.

After finishing off the defenseless villagers, the snake horde climbed upon the necks of the snake hunters.

Deprived of their ability to fight, the snake hunters could only watch helplessly as the very snakes they once captured, or that once claimed the lives of fellow hunters, now came to claim their own.

The Soul-Respecting Banner fluttered in the sky.

Every passing second meant another life extinguished, and it eagerly absorbed their souls, enriching its treasury.

“Uncle Yun…”

The only one still able to move, not yet killed, and curiously untouched by the snake horde, Hong Wen tugged desperately at a several-meters-long python coiled around Hong Tianyun’s neck.

But he could only watch as the python’s tightening body strangled the color from Hong Tianyun’s face, turning it purple-blue.

Before he could even utter a final word, Hong Tianyun died.

The time it took for tea to cool later, aside from Hong Wen, all the villagers of Hongjia Village lay sprawled across the altar in the village, as though some wicked cult was using it for a sinister ritual.

Hong Wen collapsed weakly onto the ground.

The flames of revenge he once held upon seeing Mo Lin seemed gone.

His gaze was emptier than ever:

“Why… why didn’t you kill me like the others?”

“Do you just want to flaunt your current strength before me?”

“Or do you want to torment me with an even more venomous method?”

Mo Lin folded back its wings, resembling nothing more than an enormous python, and slithered up to Hong Wen:

“Letting you watch all your fellow villagers die because of a single small act you committed years ago—I think that’s already the most painful torture for you.”

Hong Wen’s eyes were lifeless:

“Yes… you’re right. So what then? You’ve slaughtered all of Hongjia Village. Are you satisfied now? You can kill me now.”

“I do not resent that I failed to kill you back then, nor do I resent you for returning now to take vengeance on me. I only beg you to kill me quickly, so I may reunite with everyone from Hongjia Village.”

Mo Lin shook its head:

“Of course not. This was the vow I swore back then.”

“But what I want is for Hongjia Village to be erased from this world. Since it’s erasure, naturally not a single survivor can remain…”

Mo Lin lowered its massive python head beside Hong Wen.

Its cold serpent eyes were nearly as large as Hong Wen’s curled-up body:

“So, could you tell me where your younger brother and sister ran off to?”

Hong Wen’s pupils shrank, disbelief flashing in his eyes.

Gone was the emptiness from moments earlier.

Mo Lin raised its body, sneering:

“Surely you don’t think I didn’t notice that your younger siblings aren’t among these corpses?”

“You pretended to be despairing only to trick me, to make me believe that everyone in Hongjia Village had already perished tonight, so that you could protect those two siblings of yours who scurried off to hide somewhere, isn’t that right?”

“Hong Wen, you are still far too naïve.”

Hearing Mo Lin’s words, Hong Wen no longer bothered to hide.

He immediately ripped the snake scale from his chest and stabbed it into Mo Lin’s chest, his eyes burning with ferocity:

“Mo Lin! If you dare touch my brother and sister, I’ll never let you go, even in death!!!”

But how could the snake scale from two years ago harm the Mo Lin of today?

How could the curses of Hong Wen, which once posed a threat two years ago, weigh upon Mo Lin now?

Mo Lin’s body quivered, easily snapping the preserved snake scale that Hong Wen had kept for two years.

With a sweep of its tail, Hong Wen’s legs vanished into nothing.

“AAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

The searing pain drove even the hatred-filled Hong Wen to scream in agony.

Mo Lin coiled its tail around Hong Wen’s half-body:

“You don’t have to tell me. I remember what they look like. I’ll find them, and then I’ll eat them. That way, your family can reunite inside my stomach.”

“As for my grudge with you, let this half of your body serve as repayment.”

With that, Mo Lin, uninterested in hearing more, tossed him into its mouth and refined him in an instant.

At the last moment, as Hong Wen lost consciousness, his hatred for Mo Lin and his worry for Hong Sheng and Hong Yu both faded away.

All that remained was a single thought:

If I hadn’t struck that blow years ago, would everything be different now?

The next moment, his awareness ceased.

After refining Hong Wen, a scorching heat spread through Mo Lin’s entire body.

Its eyes glimmered.

Just as it had expected.

Back when it devoured Hong Wen’s father, Hong Tianfeng, it had felt this same sensation.

After slumbering for an entire winter, it transformed from an ordinary snake into a snake demon.

At that time, it had already suspected: if it ate Hong Tianfeng’s children, would the same effect occur? It never imagined that two and a half years later, this would indeed be proven true.

Yes.

Refining Hong Wen was Mo Lin’s strategy to break through into the Earth Rank.

It had pondered long and hard, staking its hopes on a human—one who had once been its hostage, surrounded by Earth Rank swordsmen.

It was a gamble.

If refining Hong Wen allowed it to break through to Earth Rank before obtaining Earth Vein Yin Marrow, it would be all the more secure.

And as Mo Lin had guessed, the result was exactly so.

The sensation from refining Hong Wen was so strong, surpassing even the benefit from devouring Hong Tianfeng back then, that Mo Lin felt the barrier between Profound and Earth shaking violently.

But this outcome was not mere chance.

Before slaughtering Hongjia Village, it had devoured an entire mountain stronghold of bandits, as well as a Profound Demon at about its level.

Its foundation was already deep enough to push it into a new evolution.

With Hong Wen consumed, the delayed transformation had finally arrived.

It could be said that this was not solely “thanks” to Hong Wen, but rather “thanks” to everyone.

Without hesitation, Mo Lin ordered the snake horde to drag all the corpses of the Hongjia villagers before it, along with all the zombie-snakes, and devoured them in one sweep.

The sense of transformation immediately grew even stronger.

Mo Lin spread its wings and flew away from Hongjia Village.

With the entire village slaughtered, who knew if the Bureau of Heaven Monitoring would detect it later? It needed to hide itself to complete this evolution.

And the best hiding place near Hong Mountain was, without question, the Dragon Cave—the very Earth Vein it had slumbered in for two years.