Chapter Ninety-Five: Discovery of the Spirit Stone Treasury

At the next instant, Lu Chen felt something bite into the scales on his back. Before he could react, a massive, thick serpent body had already coiled around him in a flash.

It was the queen of the anacondas.

So close he could see the hideous, grotesque head in every detail, and the fury, savagery, and cruelty gleaming in its vertical pupils... along with a faint, feverish thrill.

That gaze was like a big cat staring at a tiny mouse.

Not eager to devour it at once, but intending to toy with it first. As the body slowly tightened, the immense crushing force gave off a faint creaking sound.

This creature... had probably noticed him long ago.

Lu Chen understood at last.

There was an old saying that made perfect sense: any creature capable of becoming the finest of its kind would never be simple.

For this group of anacondas to have evolved into mutated beasts in the first place, they were already anything but ordinary.

And this one, having defeated the other female mutants through brutal competition and become the queen of the colony, was clearly no fool. It already possessed a certain degree of intelligence and knew how to disguise and deceive.

It had taught Lu Chen a vivid lesson, showing him exactly what price had to be paid for underestimating the intelligence of a mutated animal.

After discovering that a predator was lurking nearby, it could have warned the others and saved several of its kind.

But it had not done so. Instead, in order to make the enemy lower its guard, it had remained utterly still.

In the end, it used the other members of its kind to lead the predator step by step into its hunting range.

Lu Chen’s mind rapidly reached its conclusion... but that did nothing to help his present predicament.

The crushing force produced by the anaconda queen was far beyond anything the other mutated anacondas could compare to. In just two or three minutes, Lu Chen already felt his heartbeat beginning to falter.

Between life and death there is great terror.

Yet he did not give up the will to survive. On the contrary, his mind was exceptionally clear. For Lu Chen, the anaconda queen was powerful, but not invincible.

As his heartbeat slowed, blood no longer rushed to his limbs and organs, causing his body to enter a strange, brief semi-dormant state.

This was also a way ordinary crocodiles endured extreme conditions.

And Lu Chen’s Heart Enhancement skill multiplied that method many times over.

This... was his advantage, meaning he could hold on for a far longer time.

There was another point as well: temperature.

The anaconda queen might adapt to cold water better than its kin, but it definitely had a limit.

Though this deep pool lay within a tropical jungle, the surrounding mountains and dense forest blocked the sunlight, leaving the water surface at a constant warm temperature year-round.

As for the water more than thirty meters down, the temperature had already dropped below ten degrees.

And so far, they still had not fallen all the way to the even colder bottom.

For Lu Chen, this was unquestionably an advantage.

After adjusting to the rhythm of the anaconda queen’s constriction, he struggled to move his limbs and finally freed one forelimb.

Then he swung his claws down onto the serpent’s scales.

In the water, Lu Chen’s attacking power was greatly reduced, yet each strike still carried several hundred pounds of force, enough to make his opponent suffer.

Once the creature sensed something was wrong, it instinctively writhed its body and turned its head.

The chance was here.

Seeing the anaconda queen alter its posture, Lu Chen, who had been waiting for an opening, suddenly opened his jaws and bit down on the serpent body before him. Because his body was still tightly bound, he could not move at all, and naturally he could not unleash a death roll.

So he could only twist his head with difficulty, tear off a chunk of flesh by brute force, and spit it out.

Agonized, the anaconda queen tightened its coils even more.

Thus the two bodies struggled violently in the water, sinking faster and faster toward the bottom of the pool. At last they slammed heavily into the mud and sand, sending up a vast cloud of murky current.

Just as Lu Chen had guessed, the water near the bottom was piercingly cold.

The anaconda queen’s crushing force began to weaken imperceptibly.

Feeling its body gradually stiffen, a flash of panic flickered in its vertical pupils. Before launching its attack, it had never imagined that this damned four-legged reptile would be so difficult to handle, its muscles and bones hard as stone.

Its proud crushing power had scarcely had any effect at all.

If it kept this up, it did not know whether it could kill the other party, but it was certain to freeze solid at the bottom of the pool.

Realizing it was at a disadvantage in this environment, the creature immediately released its prey and twisted its body, trying to rise quickly to the surface.

Trying to flee? Too late.

Just as the anaconda queen surged upward, Lu Chen instantly pivoted and locked into a tiger-like embrace, wrapping his limbs around the thick body and pinning it to himself. His sharp claws sank into the scales and clamped down hard without loosening, while his crocodile tail lashed and struck again and again.

Rumble... splash...

At the bottom of the pool, sand and mud churned violently, and the murky current roared.

The anaconda queen struggled fiercely, determined to break free from this hateful four-legged reptile.

As its body twisted, Lu Chen seized another opening, ripping off nearly ten pounds of flesh and swallowing it.

"Black-Scaled Anaconda, genus Anaconda, can provide 113 energy points..."

As expected, the quality of this creature’s flesh was far superior to that of the male mutated anacondas. A single pound could provide about ten energy points.

Lu Chen could not help feeling a surge of astonishment.

All the more reason not to let it escape.

After replenishing his strength with flesh energy, his combat power became increasingly fierce.

In just a few minutes, he had left several huge, bloodied holes in the anaconda queen’s body.

As its body grew more rigid, the creature’s struggle became slower and slower.

Lu Chen seized the opportunity and bit straight through its spine.

Much like the others before it, once the nearly thousand-pound mutated anaconda queen had its spine broken, it completely lost its ability to counterattack and fell into a state where it could be slaughtered at will.

Finishing it off cleanly, Lu Chen did not hurry to devour the anaconda flesh. Instead, he turned his head and looked around the dark, pitch-black bottom of the pool.

During the fierce struggle, he had already sensed something familiar drawing him toward the depths.

And indeed, after swimming forward more than ten meters, he suddenly widened his beastly eyes.

This was... purple stone!

This time, he was truly going to strike it rich!

Lu Chen felt almost delirious with joy.

The spirit stones he had been searching for so desperately were actually right here at the bottom of the pool, forty to fifty meters down.

A quick survey of the area revealed more than ten of them nearby. The pool bottom was dim and obscured, making it impossible to tell its exact size, but there were surely many more purple stones still hidden there.

As for why those anacondas had never discovered the spirit stones at the bottom... after a moment’s thought, Lu Chen already had his answer: it was likely still the temperature.

These creatures could not endure water at two or three degrees above freezing, and naturally would not venture to the bottom to explore. Thus they had stood beside a mountain of treasure without knowing it, only to leave it for him in the end.

Several months earlier, Lu Chen had killed a black-tailed rock python and found a broken purple spirit stone in its stomach. Now he had finally found its source.

It was highly likely that the stone had been swept into shallow water by an undercurrent and swallowed by the python by sheer coincidence.

As for the relationship between the black-tailed rock python and this mutated anaconda colony, that was beyond his knowledge.

Filled with anticipation, Lu Chen used his claws to pick up a stone and swallow it.

"First-grade spirit stone, can provide 518 energy points..."