SLITHER—SNAP! SLITHER—WHIP!
Ten thousand thick, crimson-purple vines poured out of the dark jungle canopy like a flood of angry red snakes. Each vine was as thick as a barrel and covered in three-inch barbs that glowed with a hungry red light.
As they charged toward the newly laid gray-brick wall of Camp #2, the biggest vine in the center—a hundred-foot-long Rank 6 Peak Blood-Thorn Vine King with a trunk like twisted red copper—reared up into the air and lashed its thorny tip straight at Old Guo’s ten-foot soup cauldron!
“Careful, Chef Guo! Those thorns can pierce three inches of iron plate!” Old Wei shouted, raising his black-iron broadsword as fifty guard soldiers formed a shield wall along the moon-brick fence.
“Step aside, Brother Wei! Nobody flips my soup pot while I’m on duty!”
Old Guo’s round belly jiggled as he took a single heavy step forward. Even though he looked like a smiling fat uncle from a mortal town, Old Guo had been eating his own fused spirit-stews and training the Furnace-Blood Scripture since Day 1 in Dry-Well Village. His cultivation stood solidly at Rank 6 Mid, and in his right hand gleamed the Rank 7 Dragon-Bone Cleaver that Pei Xuan had fused for him out of Ao Ming’s shed baby-teeth and star-steel!
