This hunting expedition not only gave the disciples good training, but also made them understand the importance of teamwork. All the disciples believed that as long as they stood united as one, there was no difficulty they could not overcome.
However, they did not know that the Demonic Beast Forest held perils beyond their ability to face.
Just as the team was about to walk out of the Demonic Beast Forest...
Suddenly, a First Order Late-stage dark cyan Demon Python darted out from the bushes and lunged at the captain leading the formation.
The captain turned pale with fright and hurriedly cast a spell to resist. Yet his cultivation was simply too far inferior to that of the Demon Python. Failing to withstand even a single exchange, the captain was swallowed whole in one gulp by the Demon Python.
The disciples were completely dumbfounded...
"This... this is a First Order Late-stage Demonic Beast!" a disciple suddenly screamed out in the group...
The formation instantly fell into complete chaos. Far from being able to form a multi-person combat array, many of them did not even have a chance to run away...
For the Demon Python was emanating a strange power from its maw, and the disciples could only watch helplessly as one fellow sect member after another was sucked into the python's mouth, not a single one able to break free from this suction force.
"This... this is a mutated Demonic Beast!" someone suddenly shouted at the top of their lungs.
As it turned out, Demonic Beasts rarely appeared in this Demonic Beast Forest, and even if they did, they were at most First Order Early-stage Demonic Beasts (whose combat power was equivalent to that of Servant Disciples in the first to third layers of the Qi Refinement Stage; as for encountering a First Order Mid-stage Demonic Beast, Outer Sect Disciples in the fourth to sixth layers of the Qi Refinement Stage could completely resist and hunt them). But facing a First Order Late-stage Demonic Beast was an entirely different matter.
This was by no means a Demonic Beast that ordinary Qi Refinement Mid-stage disciples could handle!
What was even more fatal was that the Demon Python everyone encountered today had actually mutated. Mutated Demonic Beasts were generally extremely formidable and usually possessed special skills.
The combat power of this First Order Late-stage mutated Demon Python was already comparable to a Foundation Establishment cultivator.
A mob of minor Qi Refinement Mid-stage fodder was naturally as fragile as paper before it.
In the end, all dozen or so of these Qi Refinement Stage disciples were swallowed into the belly of the Demon Python, with not a single survivor.
Although the original owner was positioned near the back of the team, he still failed to escape this grim fate, being the very last one swallowed by the Demon Python.
Perhaps because the Demon Python had swallowed far too many cultivators, after the original owner was swallowed into its belly, he was not digested by the beast right away.
Though the original owner did not lose his life immediately, the inside of the snake's belly was pitch-black and reeked of a foul stench. Most importantly, the original owner discovered that inside its belly, he was completely unable to mobilize even a shred of Spiritual Power.
Thus, he began to struggle desperately inside the snake's belly, using his hands to scratch blindly all around in an attempt to grab onto something and snatch a hopeless sliver of survival...
Yet, in the end, the original owner found that although the Demon Python had not yet refined him, its snake belly possessed boundless crushing force.
Every time he struggled, it triggered this crushing force, causing gashes to continually appear all over his body.
As his wounds multiplied, the original owner's strength grew weaker and weaker until he finally lost consciousness, plunging into an eternity of darkness.
At the very last moment before losing consciousness, he seemed to have grasped something...
Not very large in shape,
it seemed to be...
a "round stone"...
...
The memory faded away slowly until a beam of otherworldly light from a blue planet absorbed all the imagery...
...
At the same time, a colorful radiance began to shimmer inside the snake's belly, then gradually dimmed. When the colorful light completely vanished, the original owner's body inside the snake's belly also disappeared.
...
Yet when this final scene played out, Shi Lei had already lapsed into unconsciousness and neither saw nor perceived it...
...
"Strange, logically speaking, this body of mine should have been eaten by that Demon Python, right?"
"Yet right now, apart from some relatively heavy initial injuries, my body is still intact? What on earth is going on? And where exactly am I right now? Am I inside the lair of this Demon Python?"
Shi Lei paced back and forth on the spot, scratching his head as he tried hard to figure out the cause and effect of events, as well as a way to escape this place.
Although this place was exceedingly bizarre, Shi Lei felt that it also seemed remarkably safe—a sensation that was bizarre to the extreme...
Lacking information, Shi Lei felt it best not to act rashly! Moreover, this was an immortal cultivation world!
"Calm down, I need to calm down!"
"Let me think again..."
"What should I do now?"
"Alas..."
"Having finally lived another life and even come to the world of immortal cultivation, am I going to kick the bucket here before even becoming an immortal?"
"Sigh... there is not a single crumb of food here... am I really going to become a successfully transmigrated starved ghost?"
Just as Shi Lei was worrying about his future sustenance, his observant self suddenly noticed that the surrounding environment seemed to have expanded a bit compared to before.
"Huh, this spiritual mist is a bit further away from me now."
Originally, there was no fog within a radius of two and a half zhang around him, but now it had expanded to three zhang!
"Could this be related to my breakthrough just now? Or is it because I just absorbed a massive amount of vaporized Spiritual Energy, causing the mist here to decrease?"
"Let me try again..." Shi Lei scratched his head without dwelling on it.
He walked to the edge where the vaporized Spiritual Energy began, and tried his best to draw a massive amount of the surrounding spiritual mist into his body while running the Changchun Formula...
Dense Spiritual Energy entered his body, and the Changchun Formula surged into rapid operation.
As Shi Lei circulated his Cultivation Manual, the mist began to slowly recede backward...
"Hey, it really works!" When Shi Lei discovered this phenomenon, joy welled up in his heart, and he began to accelerate the operation of the Cultivation Manual...
Before long, when Shi Lei stopped circulating the manual, he felt that his cultivation level seemed to have improved quite a bit once more...
Slowly opening his eyes, Shi Lei was surprised to find that the surrounding environment had expanded to five and a half zhang!
Within his field of vision, it was no longer completely empty.
Not far away appeared a strange stone. To his astonishment, it was actually suspended in mid-air, seemingly devoid of any weight.
"Well, this is an immortal cultivation world, defying Newtonian gravity is quite reasonable," Shi Lei nodded slightly, taking it in stride.
He gently stroked the stone with his hand, feeling that it seemed to be a very ordinary rock. Aside from its rather peculiar shape and the fact that it floated in mid-air, it appeared to have no other function.
"Why does this stone look so much like a bonsai?" Looking at this strangely shaped rock, Shi Lei, for some reason, was reminded of the "bonsai rock" his father kept on the balcony back in his Blue Star home.
...
Next to the floating stone was a bizarre pillar of white light that emerged from the ground and soared straight into the highest heavens...
Only the top was shrouded in dense spiritual mist, obscuring everything from view, as if that were the very source of the thick spiritual fog.
Shi Lei removed his outer garment, tore it into strips, and thrust a clothing strip into this pillar of light.
"Hmm, no reaction either. Looks like there's no danger," Shi Lei stated with certainty.
Then he walked right into this bizarre pillar of light.
He wanted to get closer for a clearer look in order to fathom its profound mysteries.
Yet after studying it for a long while, Shi Lei failed to figure anything out and ultimately had no choice but to retreat from the strange pillar of light in frustration.
"Huh?! The mist has receded."
Upon stepping out of the pillar of light, Shi Lei was astonished to find that the mist in the lower space had grown thinner and thinner, until it was nearly invisible.
Only the mist at the top remained dense and unyielding.
As his vision cleared, Shi Lei saw that the place he was in appeared to be a strange vine-woven house. The reason it was strange was that there were neither doors nor windows around it, only walls densely covered in vine-like structures, across which wisps of strange yet gentle light clusters constantly flashed...
The walls all around the house were overgrown with these vine-like entities, blending into a complete whole—or rather, one could say these vines were the walls, and the walls were these vines.
They were gnarled throughout, exuding the vicissitudes of history and time, and a rich, heavy Wood Spirit Qi drifted forth, hitting him in the face...
Shi Lei could not help taking another deep breath. "This Wood Spirit Qi is truly dense!" Shi Lei couldn't help praising inwardly.
Since his Divine Soul had now completely merged with the original owner, the original owner's former body, thoughts, spirit, mind, soul, memories, experiences, past encounters, and even former emotions began to consciously or unconsciously influence Shi Lei...
What shocked Shi Lei was naturally not just this dense Wood Spirit Qi; it accelerated the operation of Shi Lei's Cultivation Manual by more than ten times, allowing Shi Lei to easily break through the bottleneck of the Qi Refinement Early-stage—an effect completely no less potent than swallowing and refining a top-grade Breakthrough Pill.
Even more astonishing to Shi Lei were the bundles of strange, circulating light threads intertwined among the vines...
These lights sometimes appeared as linear threads, sometimes as starlight points, and sometimes as cloud clusters...
They shuttled back and forth endlessly among the vine walls, circulating in an endless, repeating cycle...
These tiny light clusters were the very source of illumination for the entire house. They traveled upward along the entire vine wall, just like neon lights on Blue Star, making the surrounding walls seem to enter a dynamic world.
Yet Shi Lei had no idea what purpose these light clusters served or where they came from.
Aside from the floating stone in the middle and that strange pillar of light, the house was completely empty.
"Sigh, what on earth should I do? It's actually a sealed room? This is just too strange, too bizarre." Shi Lei slapped his palm against the wall of the house.
When Shi Lei's palm made contact with the wall...
The wall suddenly underwent a transformation. The entire wall began to slowly lose its color until it finally became completely transparent, revealing the scenery outside!