He had set out in pursuit the very day the cow went missing from home, and by his reckoning this was already the third day—and he had caught not so much as a fart for his trouble. Anyone else would have long since thrown in the towel, but Ergoudan showed not the slightest intention of giving up.

He had grown up in these mountains, and because of the gu poison he could not easily leave West Star Village. To him, this vast West Star Mountain was the only little world there was, and spending the night out in the woods was an everyday affair.

Three days was nothing. Years ago, chasing a mountain leopard that had been poaching his family's chickens and ducks, he had doggedly hunted the beast through the mountains for twelve whole days, until in the end the leopard simply dropped dead of exhaustion.

Of course, this time the matter was far from ordinary—it was certainly no mountain leopard. But whatever it was, ghost or goblin, so long as it had stolen from his family, Ergoudan had no intention of letting it off.

Right now there was only one thought in Ergoudan's head: drag the thing out and pound it to a pulp with a single punch.

"Eh? That my cow?" After searching a full circle, Ergoudan suddenly bolted toward the front right, where an old yellow ox lay sprawled in the grass—still alive, even now, its eyes staring in despair as it twitched and shuddered on the ground.

From somewhere came a tremendous force, and though the old ox tried again and again to rise, it was pinned down dead each time and could only go on twitching on the ground.

"Old Yellow, what's got into you? Fall and break a leg?" Ergoudan muttered in puzzlement. Meeting the ox's pleading gaze, he stepped up and casually made to haul it off the ground—but he had scarcely lifted it halfway when that tremendous force slammed down again with a thunderous boom, flattening the beast right back down and sending even Ergoudan staggering.

"Ho there, looks like we've got ourselves a fool." Some dozen meters overhead, a man was lounging at ease across a branch, and in bearing and countenance he closely resembled Sun Baimei of the Taigu Alliance's Bixie Sect—the sole difference being his snow-white beard. This was Sun Baimei's full-blooded elder brother, and also the senior disciple leading the Bixie Sect's contingent out into the secular world for this training expedition: Sun Baixu.

The Bixie Sect had always conducted itself in eccentric, outlandish ways, and its relations with the other Taigu sects were lukewarm at best. Their numbers on this excursion into the secular world were few, and others rarely paid their movements any mind. In fact, even Uncle-Master Xin Yijie, who led the expedition, had subconsciously forgotten all about them. Ever since Wei Zhao stepped in to smooth things over, virtually all the Taigu sects' training disciples had been recalled—yet the Bixie Sect's people alone remained outside, still going about their business.

It was not that they meant to defy orders; chiefly it was that no one had informed them. Sun Baixu, their lead senior disciple, had never once stayed at Shennongjia awaiting orders the way the lead disciples of the other Taigu sects had. You could turn the whole of Shennongjia's mountain gates upside down and still not find a single Bixie Sect disciple—so even if Xin Yijie had genuinely remembered such a sect existed, there was no way to get word to them.

Sun Baixu lounged above, taking in the whole scene at his leisure, his face wearing the unmistakable look of a cat toying with a mouse. Burly as an ox and more than enough to overawe the vast majority of ordinary folk, Ergoudan was in his eyes nothing but an ant. To take Ergoudan's life would have been a mere flicker of thought—indeed, in his eyes Ergoudan had been a dead man from the moment he started following.

But Sun Baixu had no intention of killing him so quickly. He had been squatting in West Star Mountain for over a month now; his plans were unfolding steadily and methodically, and so far all was going smoothly—only it was a trifle dull. Here was just the thing to while away the boredom: this simpleton.

"Go on, pull. Until my precious pet finishes feeding, you can wear yourself to death and you'll never haul it up." Sun Baixu chuckled with a teasing grin. Without a force of ten thousand catties, to drag this old ox off the ground was sheer fantasy; not just any ordinary man could manage it—even a fine hand at the peak of Foundation Establishment like himself was not necessarily up to the task.

And then, the very next instant. Ergoudan spat twice into his palms—ptui, ptui—and with a sudden heave, straining against that inexplicable force, wrenched the old ox clean up off the ground.

"What in the world?!" Sun Baixu's eyes nearly bulged out of his skull. He slipped and almost tumbled from the tree, barely managing to clutch the trunk, and stared slack-jawed at Ergoudan below, hoisting the old ox high. What kind of monster had crawled out of the woodwork here?!

"What in the world?!" Ergoudan was equally dumbstruck—for once he had the old ox up, he saw that the side pressed against the ground had a bloody hole the girth of a wooden bucket, and inside it a huge, hideous, unspeakably ugly blood-red worm was burrowing away, feeding on the innards—or more precisely, on the blood.

The blood-red worm was enormous. The portion now revealed before Ergoudan already measured over two meters, and that was only a small part of it; the bulk of its body remained coiled underground. This was a giant worm in the truest sense of the word!

Hoisted in midair by Ergoudan, the old ox thrashed desperately, while the blood-red giant worm went on madly draining its blood. In the blink of an eye the ox's innards were devoured along with everything else, sucked clean, and only then did the blood-red worm draw its head back out of the carcass—no eyes, no nose, no mouth, no feelers, nothing but a veritable gaping maw of blood.

Ergoudan stared blankly for a good long while. Sun Baixu above thought the fool had been stunned silly—until two words abruptly fell from his mouth: "Ugly as sin."

Thud! Sun Baixu dropped straight out of the tree on the spot—though before he hit the ground the blood-red giant worm caught him in midair. Standing atop the worm's head, looking down from his height, he said, "Boy, do you even know what legendary creature you're looking at, and you dare call it ugly?"

"Eh? There's a person too?" Ergoudan blinked.

"Hmph. Slow as a slug. And here I took you for a real hand—turns out you're just a simpleton." Sun Baixu shook his head in contempt at Ergoudan's look of surprise.

That display just now had genuinely given him a fright. He had never imagined Ergoudan could so effortlessly brace against the giant worm and lift the old ox; the raw strength of it was truly astonishing, and for a moment he had thought he was dealing with a formidable fighter. But now it seemed this was merely a simpleton with brute strength in his arms—not worth a mention at all.

"Where'd you come from? Was it you who stole my family's cow?" Ergoudan asked, his eyes shifting between the blood-red giant worm as it writhed and reared upright and the figure of Sun Baixu. (To be continued.)