0042 Flying Centipede Emperor

Jiang Mingzhe had never seen so many centipedes in his entire life; thousands upon thousands of them were writhing in a dense, swarming mass.

The air was thick with a pungent, foul stench as the infinite sea of centipedes rippled and stirred, making him feel faintly nauseous.

Seeing that his expression was off, A-Zi immediately produced a small vial, opened it, and poured a few drops of medicated oil onto her fingertips. Standing on tiptoe, she dabbed it right onto the philtrum beneath Jiang Mingzhe's nose, then applied a little to her own.

When Jiang Mingzhe drew another breath, it felt as though two sweet-scented ice cubes had been slipped into his nostrils, instantly clearing his mind and revitalizing his spirit. He could not help glancing at the small vial in A-Zi's hand.

A-Zi gave the vial a little shake and said, "Jiugong Epidemic-Warding Oil—patchouli, qinghao, artemisia, pine needles, borneol, peppermint, honeysuckle, houttuynia, and tea oil. Weren't you afraid of the plague? With this, you have nothing to fear."

With that, she tossed it to him. "Keep it for yourself; I can mix another batch when we get back."

While they were talking, the six-winged iron centipede had already been eaten down to nothing.

How much meat could possibly be on a mere centipede? Only the hundred-odd centipedes closest to it had managed a taste; the ones surging up from behind didn't even get to drink the broth, and they instantly grew frantic, charging wildly toward the pair.

Jiang Mingzhe's legs turned to jelly with fright, and his first instinct was to grab A-Zi and run. A-Zi, however, was flushed with excitement, her face glowing as she repeatedly cried, "We've struck it rich! We've struck it rich!"

Moving with lightning speed, she snatched Ginger the Lesser from behind her back and hurled him straight into the thick of the centipede swarm, shouting at the top of her lungs to cheer him on, "Go get 'em, Ginger!"

What the hell!

Jiang Mingzhe hadn't expected A-Zi to be so reckless. He reached out to grab the monkey, only to grab empty air, and could only watch helplessly as Ginger flipped mid-air, letting out a sharp squeak as he plunged downward.

Bee monkeys belonged to the loris family—small in size and slow in movement, representing a relatively low stage of evolution among primates. Yet at this very moment, Jiang Mingzhe saw a fierce, dragon-like, tiger-like vigor erupt from the little creature.

Still, no matter how much vigor it possessed, plunging into this ocean of centipedes would surely reduce it to a pile of white bones in a heartbeat.

Filled with pity, Jiang Mingzhe prepared to take advantage of the distraction to make his escape, only to realize the situation was entirely different from what he had imagined!

The moment Ginger landed, thousands of centipedes simultaneously went limp, remaining frozen in place like Japanese adult video actresses struck by a time-stop spell.

A-Zi burst into loud laughter. "Impressive, right? That's the law of nature—everything has its nemesis! Just hearing its cry scared these centipedes half to death."

Jiang Mingzhe thought to himself that centipedes didn't even have auditory organs; they reacted entirely by sensing vibrations in their surroundings... Ah, right!

Most likely, Ginger's cry possessed a specific frequency that paralyzed the centipedes' sensory capabilities. In a way, that truly counted as one thing conquering another.

Ginger landed lightly on his feet. With an expression of excitement resembling a twenty-year-old lecher who had stumbled into a free brothel, both of the monkey's eyes gleamed as it picked up a centipede and began crunching away noisily.

Jiang Mingzhe noticed that the monkey turned its nose up at ordinary centipedes. Every single one it picked up either possessed brilliant, gorgeous coloring, an astonishing size, or distinct physical abnormalities that set it apart from the rest. In short, it was extremely picky.

Furthermore, it was terribly wasteful: it would bite off the head and the first pair of legs, then discard the remaining bulk of the body entirely.

"We need to get in on this too, or it'll eat all the best ones!"

A-Zi rummaged through her bundle and produced two large bamboo tubes, each about the thickness of an arm, handing one to Jiang Mingzhe. "Put on your gloves and pick the fiercest ones! These tubes have been boiled in a decoction of realgar and artemisia leaves, so the moment a centipede goes inside, it behaves. Hurry up and catch them!"

Jiang Mingzhe took the tube, slipped the pearl-fishskin glove onto his left hand, mustered his courage, and stepped right into the carpet of centipedes. He searched for the strangest and rarest-looking specimens, stuffing them one by one into the bamboo tube.

A-Zi was even more gleeful as she caught them. Her inner art involved fire-toxin, and most of it had been lost when her cultivation had previously gone awry, so she specifically targeted centipedes whose coloring was as pure as fire without a trace of impurity.

Most centipedes possessed a wood attribute, and finding one with a fire attribute usually took days of painstaking searching. Yet here, in mere moments, A-Zi had already found four or five, keeping her mouth curved in an unbroken smile.

In the time it took to burn a stick of incense, Ginger had already discarded over a hundred mangled carcasses. He raised his head, let out a satisfied burp, stopped crying, licked his lips, and curled up into a drowsy ball, looking as though he were ready to sleep.

A-Zi had kept her peripheral vision fixed on him the entire time. Seeing this, she immediately cried out, "Oh no! Ginger has ingested too much venom and is about to fall asleep. Grab him and let's go!"

With Ginger no longer crying, the limp centipedes on the ground slowly began to twitch their feelers and legs, clearly on the verge of waking up.

By this time, Jiang Mingzhe had already captured twenty or thirty exceptionally ferocious centipedes. Hearing her warning, he plugged the bamboo tube without a moment's hesitation, scooped up Ginger with his left hand, and fled.

However, no sooner had he stepped outside the circle of black earth than a sharp, rustling sound erupted from behind him.

He glanced back and saw that, at some point, a giant centipede the length of an adult's thigh had emerged from the rocky hill and was rapidly scrambling downward. Dust and debris flew in its wake as its razor-sharp claws gouged deep marks right into the stone.

This giant centipede was unusually wide and flat, with a body of pure emerald green and two golden feelers swaying like the pheasant feathers on a martial general's helmet. Its legs were much thicker and longer than those of ordinary centipedes, branching densely along its sides like a bristling array of weapons, making it look more like a giant house centipede.

At a single glance, A-Zi gasped, "Good heavens! Why is there a flying centipede emperor here? Run!"

She shouldered her pack and fled. Seeing that A-Zi's face had turned pale with terror, Jiang Mingzhe knew this giant centipede must be unimaginably terrifying. Not daring to waste a single second, he clamped the bamboo tube under his arm, cradled Ginger in his left hand, and dashed for his life with the bamboo basket in his right.

Though he knew no lightness kung fu, he was tall and long-legged. Channeling his inner energy, he regulated his breathing and matched A-Zi stride for stride at a full sprint, managing to gasp out, "How on earth are there centipedes this big? What did you just call it? Some kind of emperor?"

A-Zi was employing the Moon-Chasing Art, clearing a zhang with every bound and maintaining a steady lead. Over her shoulder, she called back, "It's the flying centipede emperor! Flying!"

"Flying?"

A sense of deep foreboding rose in Jiang Mingzhe's chest, and he couldn't help glancing back, his pupils dilating instantly.

The giant centipede had leaped into the air, its dozens of long legs spreading wide to glide through the sky like a multi-oared warship. It swept forward with ferocious speed, its long legs bracing simultaneously upon landing to spring upward once more. With every rise and fall, it covered a distance of thirty to fifty feet.

"A-Zi!" Jiang Mingzhe was so tense he forgot to call her senior sister. "The giant centipede is catching up!"

A-Zi looked back and was similarly horrified. While this flying centipede emperor couldn't truly fly, its leaps made it faster than a soaring bird. Not to mention Jiang Mingzhe, even she couldn't outrun it.

Slowing her pace to let Jiang Mingzhe pass her, A-Zi whipped out a paper parcel and shook out a cloud of gray-green powder into the wind.

This powder was the very same insect-repellent dust she had scattered while staying in the cave the previous day. Formed by grinding realgar, plant ash, lime, dried chrysanthemums, sophora root, and pine needles together, it usually caused venomous bugs and snakes to retreat a hundred paces.

To her horror, the giant centipede swept right through the cloud of powder and sprang off the ground again, completely unaffected. A-Zi felt the blood drain from her face as she fled for her life, desperately racking her brain for a countermeasure.

She briefly considered leaping into the nearby river to hide, but worried that if she fled alone, Jiang Mingzhe would surely die. As she searched for a solution, she suddenly felt the light above her darken. Instinctively coming to a sharp halt, she watched as the centipede soared right over her head, blocking her path ahead. It turned to face her, parting its spoon-like mandibles as a wisp of dark cyan vapor drifted from its mouth.