Chapter 1217, The Flesh Mountain

Translator: Silavin

 

“I believe the road ahead won’t be particularly great to move through.” The Bronze Dragon King cracked her knuckles then let out a cold laugh. “Honestly, I had hoped it would show up soon. I would like to see just how formidable this so-called Ancient God truly is. We’ve been fighting it for so long already, and the whole time it’s been hiding behind our ignorance of its abilities, dodging battle and refusing to face us head-on. I’ve had enough of this. This time, with all of you here, I’d like to see what tricks it has left up its sleeve, and whether it can slip free from our hands!”

 

Lu Fan smiled, feeling considerably more confident about this mission: to hunt down the Desolate Ancient God.

 

Indeed, he was a Dragon Tamer, and operating within the Dragon Domain was essentially home ground.

 

If the Slaughter Ancient God had also been here in the Dragon Domain back then, would the Fallen Corpse Ancient God ever have had the chance to rescue him? Not to mention whether one could have kept the Fallen Corpse Ancient God pinned down here as well, at the very least the Slaughter Ancient God would never have been spirited away.

 

Lu Fan did not dwell on these thoughts for long and beckoned everyone to keep moving.

 

Ouyang Bai Ge continued guiding the way, directing the group towards the area where the Desolate Ancient God was Concealed.

 

At the same moment, deep within the Valley of Life.

 

A presence resembling a Flesh Mountain was slowly writhing.

 

With a sticky, viscous sound like mucus being drawn into threads, twelve eyes opened across the surface of the Flesh Mountain.

 

The twelve eyes were each a different colour, as though they had been plucked from twelve different creatures and forcibly stitched together into one.

 

And yet, despite this, all twelve eyes shared exactly the same expression, quite clearly under the command of a single consciousness.

 

Within those eyes sat a restless, agitated panic.

 

*Thud!*

 

The Flesh Mountain shuddered, and a lump of flesh the size of a fist broke free and tumbled to the ground, rolling several times before coming to rest.

 

As it rolled, the lump rapidly shifted shape, eventually forming into a peculiar creature bearing a passing resemblance to a Flying Dragon.

 

Or perhaps a Giant Dragon, though that would be quite an insult to Giant Dragons.

 

Because while this thing did possess a body vaguely like a Giant Dragon’s, complete with claws and wings, its surface was utterly devoid of scales. It was entirely a blur of raw flesh and gore. It was the sort of thing that would make one’s scalp prickle just to look at. It also had no eyes and no nose, only a gaping maw lined with rows of dense, fine teeth.

 

If the body of a Giant Dragon was the most perfect creation ever born from the Principles of this world, something that embodied the very meaning of power in its purest form, then this thing was nothing but repulsive ugliness, without a single point of connection to a Giant Dragon whatsoever.

 

The hideous Flesh Dragon spread its fleshy wings, flapping them several times as though familiarising itself with its own body, then unfurled them fully and took off in the direction away from this place.

 

Watching the little Flesh Dragon fly off, the eyes of the Flesh Mountain relaxed ever so slightly. A faint sense of relief settling in.

 

But it did not simply stand still and await its fate. It continued to writhe the lumps of flesh across its body.

 

Had anyone been standing there to witness it, they would have seen that the flesh across its surface was connected to the rotting mud of the ground, seamlessly continuous, as though they were one and the same.

 

And as the flesh writhed, the rotting mud of the ground shifted too, moving in directions so minute as to be nearly imperceptible.

 

The distance the mud moved beneath the Flesh Mountain may not have been particularly great.

 

But if one thought of it as an enormous lever, then the further from the Flesh Mountain one stood, the greater the displacement of the mud became.

 

The Valley of Life was extraordinarily vast, nearly the size of a small country, which was precisely why it could accommodate so many Giant Dragons living peacefully within it without incident.

 

From a sufficiently grand vantage point, one could see that the entire Valley of Life had long since been swallowed and carpeted by rotting mud.

 

To call this place the Valley of Life would have been generous. It was more accurately now a world made entirely of rotting mud.

 

And now, without a sound, the mud was shifting. Its subtle changes were impossible to detect for anyone moving within it.

 

Inside the Valley of Life.

 

Lu Fan and the others had been pressing forward for some time now.

 

Along the way, they had encountered no small number of Monsters, and without exception, every one of them was a Dragon Carcass.

 

Moreover, the Dragon Carcasses here seemed to have been steeped in an especially overwhelming Ancient God Power, making them far stronger than the Dragon Carcasses they had encountered outside.

 

Even creatures like the Flame Dragon and the Two Headed Dragon did not dare engage more than five Dragon Carcasses simultaneously. Otherwise, a single misstep could carry the very real risk of death.

 

Fortunately, Lu Fan’s group included elites of the elites, best were the Bronze Dragon King and the Shadow Dragon King, both Dragon King powerhouses.

 

Even when dozens of Dragon Carcasses swarmed the group at once, they managed to overcome each encounter without any casualties.

 

The Bronze Dragon King and the Shadow Dragon King, in fact, maintained their Human Forms throughout. They never once transformed into their Dragon Form.

 

That in itself said quite a lot. They were clearly handling the situation with ease and had not come close to using their full strength.

 

In truth, the journey through the Valley of Life was proving somewhat easier than the group had anticipated.

 

The fearsome existences they had imagined, those that could rival or even surpass the Life Dragon King Carcasses, had not appeared. Even the Dragon Carcasses that were far stronger than those outside the valley were dealt with by the group without much effort.

 

Beyond that, the group had not faced any particular hardships within the Valley of Life. Their progress was not exactly smooth sailing, but at the very least they had not hit any significant walls.

 

The problem, however, was becoming clear. Ouyang Bai Ge had been repeatedly using her Void Insects to confirm the position of the Desolate Ancient God, but the news she kept receiving was the same: the distance between the group and the Desolate Ancient God had hardly diminished at all.

 

No matter how quickly the group advanced, it was as though they were walking in place, maintaining the same vast distance from the Desolate Ancient God without ever managing to close it.

 

This left Lu Fan puzzled. The Valley of Life was filled with this rotting mud, and the Ancient God Power of the Desolate Ancient God still lingered throughout that mud. It made sense that it could sense their location and keep retreating ahead of them.

 

But whether the group advanced at full speed or paused to gather intelligence and crept forward carefully, the distance between them seemed to be kept constant.

 

It felt, more than anything, like the Desolate Ancient God was not desperately fleeing the group’s pursuit, but rather playing a game with them. It was neither letting the gap widen nor allowing the group to close in, maintaining what appeared to be an absolute safe margin.

 

If one had to explain it, the only explanation that fit was that the Desolate Ancient God knew Lu Fan’s group could find it no matter how far it fled, so it saw no point in escaping at full speed.

 

But that explanation still left Lu Fan with an unsettling feeling. He could not shake the sense that hunting the Desolate Ancient God this time was not going to be as straightforward as it seemed.