Mo Fan's face went ashen white in an instant, cold sweat sliding slowly down his forehead.
Earlier, because the distance had been too great, this cluster of faint, chaotic life fluctuation had been completely obscured by the terrifying aura of the Peak Golden Core snake molt.
So when he'd opened his [ Death Vision ] on the fringe, he hadn't detected the eeriness within it at all.
It was only now, with his Death Vision pushed to its limit, that he'd finally discovered the fatal anomaly hidden within this vast husk.
As if to bear out this conjecture...
Mo Fan turned his head and carefully looked toward those mutated demon beast corpses scattered across the ground around him, drained of their blood essence and left with nothing but slack husks of skin.
He suddenly noticed a detail he'd overlooked before.
It wasn't just that these corpses had died in the most wretched of states.
Their skulls, astonishingly, had all eerily turned to face the direction of the snake molt!
And what was more terrifying, the nearer the corpses lay to the molt, the more withered their bodies became.
Mo Fan crouched down and carefully examined a rock lizard corpse lying closest to the molt.
At the ruptured opening of that corpse's withered abdomen, there actually remained strand after strand of exceedingly fine, dark red flesh threads, all but fused into the very rock!
These flesh threads spread along the ground as though they were living things.
And in the end, every one of them bored into the gaps between the scales beneath the snake molt up ahead!
Like the roots of some evil plant sinking into the soil.
Or like a set of greedy conduits used to suck up flesh and blood and pipe in nourishment!
"Holy shit..."
Mo Fan sucked in a cold breath.
Those mutated demon beasts on the fringe... They didn't die from killing each other at all.
Every one of them was sucked bone dry, alive, by this thing hidden inside the snake molt?!
The instant this judgment surfaced in his mind, a powerful unease immediately rose in Mo Fan's heart.
He didn't have Mo Yan rashly enter that gash.
Instead, with a stir of his mind, he summoned the nearby Necrotic Centipede over.
"Go. Probe the situation."
Massive though the Necrotic Centipede was, its body was pieced together from a great many flexible bone joints, perfectly suited for boring into such narrow scale gaps to scout.
Mo Fan directed the Necrotic Centipede to slowly crawl toward one of the huge gaps nearest to it.
At the same time, he quietly attached a strand of his consciousness to the Necrotic Centipede, following its perception deeper inside.
Rustle, rustle...
The Necrotic Centipede's densely packed bone-white jointed legs gripped hard at the edges of the dark red scales.
Half its body slowly bored into the murky, foul-smelling interior of the snake molt.
One meter. Two meters. Three meters.
At first, its field of perception was pitch black, and it discovered no anomaly at all.
Only the thick reek of blood and rot grew heavier and heavier.
But just as more than half the Necrotic Centipede's body had bored into the gap, about to touch the core region where that chaotic life fluctuation lay...
From the fathomless interior of the snake molt came, all of a sudden, an exceedingly faint sound, eerie enough to set the surrounding air resonating.
Thud.
The sound was dull.
There was something clammy and stomach-turning in it as well.
It sounded like a huge, deformed heart of flesh and blood suddenly giving one powerful beat!
Mo Fan's expression changed abruptly.
An unprecedented sense of crisis instantly shrouded his whole body.
Not good! Come back! Retreat this instant!
Without even time to think it through, he directly issued the highest-level forced retreat command in his mind.
The Necrotic Centipede's vast skeletal body gave a sudden lurch.
Then its densely packed jointed legs began scrambling madly in reverse, swiftly withdrawing backward.
But in that split second...
The huge snake molt, which had been deathly still and rigid for who knew how many years, astonishingly and most eerily...
Contracted!
BOOM!
On both sides of the gap the Necrotic Centipede was retreating through, the huge dark red scales, hard as iron just moments before, abruptly snapped shut inward!
Like a bloody maw suddenly coming alive, they viciously clamped down on the half of the Necrotic Centipede's body that had not yet withdrawn!
CRUNCH!
Along with a burst of ear-piercing bone-shattering sounds...
The Necrotic Centipede's hard body, reinforced from Tier-2 demon beast bones, was instantly severed clean through the middle under that terrifying bite force and ground into powder!
"Ngh!"
The instant the centipede's body was forcibly severed, Mo Fan's brain felt as if it had been struck hard by a great hammer, his head splitting with pain!
But he still clenched his teeth tightly and, without the slightest hesitation, cut off the mental link, forcefully dragging the remaining half of the Necrotic Centipede's body out of the gap.
The next moment...
The transformation began.
The blood-red mist around him, which had still been drifting slowly outward, suddenly seemed to be drawn by some terrifying force.
It began rolling madly backward into the interior of the snake molt like a tsunami!
Thud.
A second heartbeat echoed dully from the depths of the snake molt.
This time...
The sound was clearer and more forceful than before.
It even set the rock beneath Mo Fan's feet trembling slightly along with it.
And then...
Mo Fan's pupils abruptly contracted.
Near the snake molt, those dark red scales, each fully the size of a tabletop and originally meshed tightly together...
Began slowly standing on end in some eerie rhythm, one after another from far to near!
Layer upon layer.
Like an enraged forest of steel blades!
This husk, long since dead, now astonishingly seemed like a peerless savage beast roused from a long slumber, beginning to awaken bit by bit!
"Fall back!" "Whole army, retreat!"
His scalp prickling, Mo Fan didn't hesitate for a moment.
He led the undead legion in a frantic retreat, flying several dozen meters backward.
All the undead swiftly formed ranks again, staring fixedly at the transformation ahead.
Under Mo Fan's disbelieving gaze...
That huge snake molt ahead, originally hollow and empty, astonishingly began to deform in an exceedingly eerie manner!
Those scales and outer skin, once impregnable as metal and stone, now seemed to have become clods of mud melted by raging fire, kneaded and pulled at will by some unseen force.
The huge snakeskin was forcibly propped open.
And just like that, hollow and twisted, it slowly stood upright at the empty cliff bottom!
Owing to the swelling and pulling of the force within, the python's originally more or less intact snake molt abruptly shattered amid a burst of tearing rrrip sounds.
One after another, huge, irregular, ink-black cavities were revealed.
And then...
Those mutated demon beast corpses on the ground, already withered dry, seemed to receive some kind of summons.
Drawn by those dark red flesh threads, they surged madly toward the interior of the snake molt!
Countless severed limbs, ruined carcasses, and shattered flesh entangled and fused ceaselessly upon some tissue within the snake molt.
Along with a nauseating sound of flesh and blood reorganizing...
Within that huge gash at the head of the snake molt, the countless severed limbs and gore finally, forcibly, condensed into two terrifying eyeballs...
Each fully the size of a lantern and dripping with fresh blood!
Viscous blood dripped ceaselessly down the surface of the eyeballs.
And within Mo Fan's [ Death Vision ]...
This vast serpentine body still had no complete, independent cluster of soul-fire.
But within those two blood-red eyeballs, just condensed into shape, there churned an extremely chaotic, savage, and twisted life fluctuation!
Mo Fan stared fixedly at those two blood-red eyeballs slowly rotating within the gash.
An exceedingly absurd notion surfaced in his mind in an instant.
The true source of this mist, perhaps, had never been that Blood-Red Python at all.
But rather something hidden inside the snake molt.
Some kind of bizarre thing.