“Moo, moo—”
This hurt the black figure, and it cried like a cow. Its long tail slapped the water as it charged around madly in the pond. It was in extreme pain.
Water splashed everywhere as waves tumbled, white mist rose, and the rocks crumbled!
Through the white mist, one could see the body of the black figure that was being exposed from time to time. It appeared to be an emerald green python with a bull’s head and horns and crocodile claws.
It was the Seventh-Grade Magical Beast—Crocodile-Backed Ox Python!
As a powerful Seventh-Grade Magical Beast, the Crocodile-Backed Ox Python was the tyrant of this area for a hundred-mile radius. This canyon and water pond were one of its lairs. Usually, not many Magical Beasts dared to trespass!
The Crocodile-Backed Ox Python had been sleeping at the bottom of the lake for a few days. Just when it had been about to go out hunting, it had found Meng Lei. Hence, it had swallowed Meng Lei in one bite and saved the effort of going out.
Unexpectedly, this was the beginning of a nightmare...
Its stomach was ravaged by flames, while a sharp blade was cutting through its intestines!
The suffering that it was going through was comparable to the Ten Great Tortures of the Manchu and Qing Dynastie.! The Crocodile-Backed Ox Python was in despair!
Its screams lasted for a full quarter of an hour before it gradually stopped. Finally, it died after experiencing the ultimate torment.
“Ding! One Crocodile-Backed Ox Python killed. 220,000 gold coins gained!”
“220,000 gold coins? Is this a Seventh-Grade Magical Beast?”
Meng Lei slashed its back and crawled out of the body. He felt sticky and smelly, and he almost vomited in disgust.
“Bah, bah! It’s so stinky!”
Meng Lei took his soap and shower gel out of the spatial ring. After rubbing hard for half an hour, the stench was gone.
“What the heck is this?”
Meng Lei felt a little helpless before recalling the monster he killed. It was a Seventh-Grade Magical Beast, and its magic core was very valuable. Well, it must be picked up.
Just as he thought of this, Meng Lei turned and looked around. He didn’t see any traces of the Crocodile-Backed Ox Python. He believed it must have sunk to the bottom of the pond.
“Let’s go take a look.”
It was pitch black at the bottom of the pond, and one couldn’t even see their fingers. However, this did not trouble Meng Lei. He dived to the bottom of the pond and executed the technique ‘Earthquake’!
A tremor gently rippled forth, and he received feedback on everything within a radius of 200 meters. Meng Lei easily found the corpse of the Crocodile-Backed Ox Python. However, he did not make a move.
He stared at the bottom of the lake as a strange expression flashed across his face.
“Below, the bottom of the lake is... empty?”
The magical thing about ‘Earthquake’ was that it could not only detect things on the ground, but it could also detect things one to two meters underground.
The tremors he felt were not from a piece of land.
Meng Lei made a miraculous discovery. The area one meter below the bottom of the pond was not earth or any geological formation. Rather, it appeared to be... an empty vacuum!
“Empty?”
“How could it be empty?”
“Weird!”
Meng Lei executed ‘Earthquake’ again. This time it was not to detect, but to... dig!
The mud deposit at the bottom of the pond slowly rippled outward. Within a short while, a hole with a two-meter diameter and a depth of one meter appeared.
According to Meng Lei’s conjecture, if the pond’s bottom was really empty, the water would pour into the ‘vacuum’ after he had dug the hole.
But he was wrong!
After the hole was created, the water did not gush into the hole. It was as if the hole did not exist at all. On the contrary, a dazzling red beam shot up out of the hole, blinding Meng Lei’s eyes!
After gradually adapting to the red light, Meng Lei couldn’t wait to look at the hole. He felt scorching heat on his face, making him feel as if he was in a volcano.
Right, this was the crater of a volcano!
He ended up discovering a red world below. There were red rock walls all round and red lava underneath.
Gurgle~
Gurgle~
The hot lava was like boiling water with bubbling black smoke, constantly releasing terrifying heatwaves and a pungent sulfuric smell.
“Underground... lava? Not possible!”
Meng Lei was dumbfounded. “This pond isn’t that deep. It can’t connect all the way underground. The only possibility... This is the crater of an active volcano! That’s why there is lava on such a shallow surface!”
Upon seeing the underground lava and experiencing the emitted heat, Meng Lei did not know why he was edgy with an itch in his heart...
He had an urge to jump into the hot lava and take a bath!
“Could this be due to the Fire Dragon bloodline in my body?”
Meng Lei quietly hypothesized as he popped his head into the hole to observe further. He felt that there was something strange about this crater as the water above it did not flow down. It was illogical!
“What is that?”
Meng Lei trembled violently as he stared in one particular direction. He was shocked and horrified as if he had seen a ghost.
“Dragon? Fire Dragon? That is a Fire Dragon?”
Meng Lei became a little incoherent. He saw an island sitting in the middle of the vast boiling lava lake. On it, there laid a giant beast of more than 50 meters long.
Its entire body was covered with fiery red impenetrable-looking scale armor.
Two dragon horns rose high up, as though they were trying to pierce
