Chapter 1473: Chapter 1473: Swallowed
Zen's spirit was a tumult of conflicting emotion, but his face merely betrayed confusion. He hesitated.
After everything, he did not have the heart to kill this woman...
The ground shook beneath him. His breath caught as he saw the massive body of the Formless Sky Python rushing towards him. As he turned to run, bursts of wind began to form underneath his feet, propelling him forward.
Behind him trailed the Princess Royal. She had a sly smile on her face as she flew through the air.
Her strength was that powerful, but she had cultivated her own cultivation method diligently. She easily matched his speed, and even began to overtake him. He raced forward, and she followed steadily in his wake.
The martial artists of the Spirit Transformation Realm had formed a procession behind her and kept pace.
The beast seemed less than a hundred miles away from them. Suddenly, in one swift motion, it wound up like a coil and sprang into the air with an agility that belied its size. Zen thought that it must have crossed at least ten miles with that leap alone. Such was the beast's immensity and power. Though the party continued to flee, they all looked back when they heard a low and terrible rumbling. As the earth groaned, they saw the great animal rear one of its heads up and then smashed it down from the height of tens of thousands of feet. Their breath caught in their throats. Then, without warning, the winds parted and the monstrous head raced down towards them, its numerous eyes gleaming.
The air trembled with a sound like thunder, as the first head of the Formless Sky Python, vast as a mountain, fell from the sky.
Zen's face froze in shock and the Princess Royal began to panic. The warriors of the Spirit Transformation Realm turned white with fear.
“Run! It's coming down!”
“Burn the blood essence!”
“No, it's too late! We can't escape this!”
Faster than they could believe, the giant head came rushing down.
Its massive shadow created a canopy of darkness over the land. If they wanted to survive, they all knew they had to run out from under that shadow as fast as they could.
Zen suddenly heard the Princess Royal draw a deep breath. He turned and saw her heave in and out as the oil-paper umbrella in her hands began to spin, emitting a faint glow. By now, it was pulling her forward as she sprinted. She flew with blistering speed, overtaking Zen in a heartbeat.
His fear returned, however, when he once again saw the beast's head.
“Only four thousand feet above us now,” he breathed. He looked back at the horizon and surmised that there must be at least another twenty miles until they were all out of the shadow, and safe from being crushed by the Formless Sky Python's head.
“Twenty miles is nothing at this speed,” he said to himself. The wind howled and the sky seemed to crack like a whip. As Zen glanced up towards the noise, he suddenly realized that he was wrong. The great beast's head was rushing down even faster than before! It was now closing in on him! Even at his speed, he wouldn't be fast enough to escape.
He despaired, and wondered if he was fated to meet his end here in the Divine Refinement Forbidden Land. He had never thought that he would be swallowed up by an enormous beast right after he landed in this world.
He felt helpless, but he also wouldn't accept it. He couldn't believe that this would be the end.
Before his journey into the Divine Refinement Forbidden Land, he had prepared thoroughly.
He had even thought to use the fairy palace as his refuge!
He would have used the token of the mountain to drill into the fairy palace if he encountered great trouble or danger, and inside he would be safe.
The head of the Celestial Position race, however, had told him that he could not flee the Divine Refinement Forbidden Land in this way!
In other universes or in the divine land, Zen could have easily entered the fairy palace through the space node created by the token of mountain whenever he wished.
Be that as it might, it was apparently one of the cardinal rules of the Divine Refinement Forbidden Land that no one was to use any unnatural methods, like portals or space treasures, to leave there.
Zen, confused by this law, asked for an explanation. The head of the Celestial Position race had thus told him that while building a space node and hiding inside of it was an extremely rare feat in the universe, it was commonly practiced in the divine land. ʀάN𝐎ΒĚṣ
Great heroes and talents from various universes and divine land could enter the Divine Refinement Forbidden Land in this way. Divine as it was, there were still rules that had to be followed here.
If everyone from the divine land were to bring a space treasure to enter the Divine Refinement Forbidden Land and use it whenever they encountered any danger, the significance of the existence of the Divine Refinement Forbidden Land would disappear...
The crack of thunder brought him out of his reverie.
Zen's strength was at its limit, and he was running faster than he ever had before, but the Formless Sky Python's head was falling ever closer.
He kept his eyes focused on the edge of the shadow, calculating the distance left...
“Only six or seven more miles,” he said.
'I probably would've escaped by now if I haven't turned to slash at the Princess Royal earlier, ' he thought to himself.
The Formless Sky Python's mouth stretched open, and the sight within chilled Zen to his core. It reminded him of a hollow tube of bamboo, with sickly spikes spiraling from its lips all the way to the depths of its stomach. It was a staircase to perdition. Nothing less.
At such a close distance, Zen could smell the deathly aura that emanated from the beast's belly. It smelled of rage, blood, and death. He wanted to vomit even as he ran.
The numerous eyes around the beast's head had all trained to look at the Princess Royal.
Zen was close enough that he could see the woman's reflection in all of those eyes, like a kaleidoscope of numerous mirrors on a wall.
Suddenly, a fair and slim arm grabbed him. It was the Princess Royal, holding her umbrella in one hand and Zen in the other. She summoned her full strength and they raced even faster; far faster than Zen would have been able to go on his own.
They were both out of breath by this point, but they had no choice. They had to keep going.
The rotating umbrella seemed to exude a strange force that removed all resistance in their way. Air parted in front of them, and the ground turned to a blur beneath their feet. The wind built into a roar in Zen's ears.
There was a sound like the splitting of the earth and the crash of ten thousand thunderbolts.
The Formless Sky Python drove through the earth like a spear through flesh. The tumult of sound had come from behind them. They managed to escape!
As the massive body of the Formless Sky Python drilled into the ground, the earth gave way and a tsunami of rock was sent rippling outward, its crests like mountains and troughs like valleys.
The wave hit Zen and the princess, pushing them forward in the hurricane of dust. After ten miles, the cloud had lost its strength and the waves had returned to the ground. The two caught up in the wind, and continued to fly forward.
Shock. Terror. They saw carnage as they spun around.
The procession of Spirit Transformation Realm warriors following the princess had long disappeared without a trace, swallowed in the bowels of the Formless Sky Python.
The ground continued to heave and howl. It was as if a storm had come, showering lightning everywhere.
The colossal body of the Formless Sky Python had by now disappeared into the ground. Though the world thrashed around them, there was no longer any trace of the beast...
“Don't stop! Keep moving forward!” cried Zen.
They had managed to escape death, but he knew the chase wasn't over.
The ground beneath wouldn't protect them. It would fold like paper in the face of the Formless Sky Python's power.
In fact, at that very moment, the Formless Sky Python slid through the dark underground like a crocodile through water, poised to strike at any time at the hapless figures on the surface.
The speed at which it now moved was something they hadn't even considered...
Just as Zen's voice faded away, the ground below them suddenly caved into a massive pit thousands of feet in width. Just as quickly, the dirt and the trees disappeared, and above them yawned the jaws of the Formless Sky Python. The beast had erupted out of the earth and now rushed into the sky, attempting to swallow the Princess Royal and Zen whole.
The both of them had jumped away in the nick of time, however, and were caught on top of the Formless Sky Python's mouth as they rocketed into the sky. Zen's mind raced, but there was nothing he could think of. The Teleportation Token and the token of the mountain weren't available, and there didn't seem to be any other means of escape.
In the face of such a powerful and vast monster, any ordinary martial artist was unable to resist. Only the Supreme Lords would be able to save them, and even then only temporarily suppress the beast.
Their hearts sank once more.
“I'm sorry for getting you into this predicament,” said the princess.
Zen turned to look at her. She had spoken calmly while holding her oil-paper umbrella.
Her features were soft and sincere, and her beautiful, sad eyes were fixed on Zen's.
Zen felt like cursing. What was the use of apologizing!? Now of all times, and here of all places!? 'She simply shouldn't have tried to capture me from the start, ' he thought to himself.
All he wanted to do now was to summon his strength to fight the Formless Sky Python, but he was drained and weak. He felt that he wouldn't be able to beat the monster even if he tried. Instead, he merely grabbed the princess's arm and they flew upwards, trying to escape.
The Formless Sky Python's head rose rapidly, trying to swallow the two of them into its mouth. They desperately tried to fly faster, but the jaws of the beast had formed walls around them, leaving them nowhere else to go but upward. They strained with their speed as they felt clouds whip by them in a flash, but the Formless Sky Python's jaws grew taller and taller around them. The jaws began to close...
Suddenly, the Formless Sky Python froze, turning rigid mid-flight.
Zen and the Princess Royal were stunned. They looked up to discover that, only a few hundred miles away, Kennan and Woodrow had appeared and had once again cast their Wishing Spells! They had sealed the other head of the Formless Sky Python!
The Formless Sky Python had two heads at both ends, and when its tail was sealed, it meant that one of its heads became sealed as well. As its tail head was taken care of, the head under Zen and the princess's feet could no longer rise any further!
“It's done,” whispered Zen in disbelief.
He had never felt so overjoyed to be alive before. He dragged the princess with him, leaping over the huge mouth of the Formless Sky Python, escaping from the mouth that led to the abyss.
Before he could say anything else, however, violent tremors thundered out into the heavens. The tail of the Formless Sky Python was thrashing madly, struggling to escape its bounds.