Ye Lingyue didn't expect to bump into Xia Houhong in a place like this.

What caught Ye Lingyue's eyes were the two men beside Xia Houhong.

Previously in the army camp, the two were cloaked in capes and their faces were not clear.

After entering the wetlands, the two men in black removed their cloaks, revealing their true faces.

One had ears that stood out prominently, while the other had a nose that resembled a pig's snout.

The man with the pig nose sniffed around the underbrush and pointed towards a small fork in the path.

"Fourth Prince... All is quiet around us, very safe," the words of the man with prominent ears came intermittently.

The Fourth Prince and his party then headed down that forked path.

Clearly, both the Fourth Prince and Ye Lingyue had discovered traces of the Double-headed Python.

It was heard that Xia Houhong performed heroically in pacifying the beast chaos, a far cry from his earlier days in Xia Capital.

The army's evaluation of him was quite high, and it seemed that this year, the change was not in Xia Houhong himself, but in the two mutant people by his side.

Ye Lingyue did not dare to approach too closely and kept a moderate, cautious distance from the Fourth Prince and his party for the time being.

Until a muddied yellow river appeared in front of them, the river was wide and expansive.

Around the Xixia Plain in spring and summer, the rainfall is plentiful, the river had already spilled over both edges of its banks.

The entire river was at least a hundred feet wide, its depth unknown.

A wooden bridge that had been constructed over the riverbank was already destroyed by the flood.

The current was too rapid, and whether unknown Water Beasts lurked at the river's bottom was a mystery.

"Fourth Prince, the scent of the Spiritual Beast disappears here," the Bi Emperor shrugged his nose, shaking his head helplessly with some frustration.

The appearance of the river conveniently masked the scent of the Spiritual Beasts by the waterside, but he was certain that they were very close to the Double-headed Python's lair.

After some discussion, Xia Houhong and a few personal soldiers chopped down several ancient trees and quickly made a few simple dugout canoes.

Yesterday, after returning to Qi City with Hong Fang, Xia Houhong began ordering his people to leave the city and search for the whereabouts of the Double-headed Python.

Xia Houhong's subordinate, the mutant known as Bi Emperor, had the most sensitive nose.

He memorized the scent of the Double-headed Python in the village and after searching through the night, he finally detected the scent of the Double-headed Python this morning.

After notifying Xia Houhong, the latter couldn't wait and left Qi City in haste, with Hong Fang of Qi City still kept in the dark.

"My Lord, should we also cross the river immediately? If we're late, I'm afraid they'll get ahead of us."

Ye Lingyue and Jin Wu Old Monster, among others, were hiding atop a tree a kilometer away from the river, with Little Jiao coiled on the tree. Everyone was using the dense foliage to conceal themselves.

Seeing this, Jin Wu Old Monster became somewhat impatient, suggesting so.

"Wait a moment," Ye Lingyue patiently said.

They had Little Jiao to cross the river, so there was no need to hurry.

Her gaze was fixed on the water's surface, where the currents were swift, with small whirlpools appearing from time to time.

An occasional leaf that drifted by, as soon as it neared a whirlpool, was quickly swallowed up by it.

Ye Lingyue suddenly spotted a triangular head amidst the dense water grass beside the river water.

Two eyes were half-submerged, their patterned skin blending with the color of the river, making it look like a log if not observed closely.

In fact, it was a snake head, and it was the season for various spiritual beasts to breed in the river, so having snakes in the water wasn't unusual.

Xia Houhong and the others also noticed the snake, but considering the size of its head, they thought it was just a small snake that wouldn't pose much danger and didn't pay much attention while continuing to cross the river.

Originally, Ye Lingyue thought the same, but as she was about to avert her gaze, she felt a sudden thumping at her brow.

At a distance about half the height from the river's surface, she spotted a tail.

That tail barely skimmed the water's surface.

But as that snake head twitched, the tail followed suit.

Ye Lingyue immediately felt her mouth go dry; this was a snake at least half the width of the river, at least 50 to 60 feet long. Goodness gracious, who could say a snake of 50 to 60 feet in length was small.

"Don't move, I'll be right back," said Ye Lingyue as she used her Flower Pinching Jade Shattering Hand technique, crawling along the tree trunk slowly towards the riverbank.

The tree trunk was long, its branches stretching out a good ten feet over the river. Crawling on her knees, Ye Lingyue quietly approached the snake's head, while the other end of the snake at the river bottom remained motionless.

Ye Lingyue crawled slowly, but the Star Saliva darted out swiftly. With a cold flicker in her eyes, the Star Saliva shot out, striking right at the python's tail.

As the blade struck, there wasn't the expected splatter of blood; instead, there was the clang of metal striking metal.

The Star Saliva, forged from Meteorite Iron, didn't even leave a cut, merely scraping a few scales off.

"Such tough snake skin," even Ye Lingyue was dumbstruck at the sight.

The python, upon being attacked, became uncontrollably furious. The snake head that had been hidden underwater suddenly burst out like a thunderclap.

One foot, two feet, the length of the remarkable snake body was way more than 50 to 60 feet—it was at least a hundred feet long.

What was more disconcerting was that another snake head emerged following the first from the water. Compared to the first head, this second head was even more ferocious, about four or five times the size of the original.

Its body was thicker than a wooden barrel, and on its back grew densely packed scales the size of shields, with a snowy white underbelly. At one-third and two-thirds the length of its body, there were pairs of claws on each side.

Just as Aguduo had predicted earlier, this was a terrifying spiritual beast, half python and half dragon.

The double-headed python emerged, raising its heads proudly high with bulging eyes, scanning its surroundings with an angry gaze.

Regrettably, the vision of python-type spiritual beasts was always poor during the day; it could only vaguely make out the surrounding scene, and eventually, it spotted a few canoes in the middle of the river.

What a fierce double-headed python!

On the canoe, Zhao Feng, who was sitting at the bow, also heard an unusual sound at this moment.

"Not good, it's a double-headed python," Zhao Feng and Bi Emperor realized, but the double-headed python had already caused huge waves to churn in the river.

It had already taken the Fourth Prince and his companions on the canoes as the culprits.

On the river's surface, the muddy waves were monstrous, and the infuriated double-headed python rolled its body, slamming into the nearest canoes with a body tougher than Meteorite Iron. The frail boats were no match and were smashed to pieces in an instant, washing away several of Xia Houhong's personal soldiers.

On the canoe, Xia Houhong was petrified.

It was only by witnessing the giant python himself that he understood the formidable power of a Ninth-grade Peak Spiritual Beast.

On the tree, Ye Lingyue, who had seen her scheme bear fruit, was about to pull back and avoid getting involved in this dog-eat-dog fight.

But then, her gaze suddenly paused, falling on the underside of the double-headed python.