Chapter 232: A Sight That Was Downright Chilling
The enormous serpent rolled and twisted in the river, churning the water into a murky mess that spilled onto the banks.
Those paralyzed with fear at the sight of the “Dragon Lady” were jolted back to their senses by the cold water. From the shore, someone shouted, “What are you standing there for? Run!”
The call snapped them out of their stupor, and they scrambled to flee toward safety.
It was Wu Jin who had yelled, his wide eyes fixed on his “frail” younger brother, Yu Yin, as he stood protectively in front of him. At the same time, his attention remained locked on their big brother, monitoring the fight with tense concern.
While everyone else retreated, only Yu Guang moved forward.
Although tall by human standards, Yu Guang appeared minuscule—an ant in comparison to the massive creature in the river.
But to Yu Yin, who watched from afar, it was the human-faced serpent that seemed pitifully small and fragile.
In his shadowy vision, the serpent exuded a serpentine red glow that stretched across the river. At first glance, it seemed overwhelming, but closer inspection revealed the truth: only the human-faced portion radiated any substantial energy, while the rest of its body was a mere illusion—a thin, diluted hue that projected false strength.
Yu Guang, however, was entirely different. The golden aura surrounding him had grown richer and more concentrated than it had been years ago when Yu Yin had first met him.
The immense power that Yu Guang usually kept concealed within his body now began to unfurl. With each step he took, the golden glow expanded, spreading outward in a wave of intangible pressure that enveloped the river.
Yu Yin observed the scene calmly, already anticipating the outcome. He waited with quiet confidence, assured of his elder brother’s victory.
Not everyone, however, shared his clarity of insight.
Behind the sacrificial altar, the influential figures of Chazhou spoke with utmost mockery:
“A mere human dares to challenge the Dragon Lady? He’s not even enough to fill the gaps in her teeth. Just wait and see—this reckless fool is about to be eaten.”
“Everyone, open your eyes wide and see what happens to those who go against the Dragon Lady!”
They widened their eyes, watching the young man approach the Dragon Lady. Surprisingly, the Dragon Lady seemed to sense that something was amiss, and she hesitated, as though she wanted to retreat.
The greedy expression on her massive humanlike face faded, replaced by a look of uncertainty and alarm.
She was still hesitating, but Yu Guang was not about to let her go so easily.
He stepped onto the framework of a riverside building and leapt toward her serpentine body. From a distance, those watching could not see what he was doing, but they heard the creature let out a wail of pain, her body writhing violently.
A faint red hue spread in the nearby seawater.
Yu Guang had driven a long bamboo pole through the serpent’s spine. No matter how the massive snake twisted and thrashed, he stood firm, like a ship cutting through stormy waves, gripping the pole without faltering.
His footing was slick with blood, but Yu Guang applied force with his hands, snapping the bamboo pole in two. Wielding the broken halves, he pressed forward—
The split bamboo in his hands became like blades, slicing along the serpent’s spine.
A seemingly ordinary bamboo pole became a divine weapon in his hands, effortlessly wounding a creature hundreds of times his size.
A torrent of blood sprayed forth, cascading onto the river like a sudden downpour.
Those on the distant shore could not see the chaos in the river, but they could see the water gradually turning red.
It was impossible for an ordinary human’s blood to stain the river red like that. There was only one explanation: it was the blood of their Dragon Lady.
The arrogant nobles of Chazhou, who had been so eager to see Yu Guang devoured, slowly realized something was wrong. Cold sweat began to bead on many of their foreheads.
“This… could it be that the Dragon Lady cannot defeat just one man?”
“Impossible! How could that be? Let’s keep watching.”
The patriarch of the Zhen family, who had silently retreated to the back, was drenched in cold sweat. Any shred of hopeful expectation he harbored was extinguished by the rain carrying the scent of blood.
As he glanced around, he suddenly realized that the Dragon Lady’s envoy, Lord Lu, had vanished. Without hesitation, he decided not to wait any longer and slipped away unnoticed, fleeing from the riverside.
In the river, the serpent with a human face went berserk from her injuries. She burst from the water and slammed into an unfinished palace on the shore.
Inside the palace, two people who had been hiding in fear, unable to escape in time, screamed in terror as the massive human face smashed through the roof and landed right in front of them.
With food making such a commotion before her and her injuries needing sustenance, the serpent immediately opened her mouth and swallowed the two people whole.
The next moment, a golden giant’s phantom appeared above the river.
The giant grabbed the serpent by her hair and forcefully pried her mouth open.
The two screaming individuals tumbled out of the serpent’s mouth and splashed into the river. Moments later, they surfaced, swimming frantically toward the shore, narrowly escaping death.
The golden giant stood as tall as a mountain. When it appeared in the river, the storm clouds and rain summoned by the serpent only reached its chest. With a casual wave of its hand, the giant dispersed the oppressive weather.
A beam of light pierced through the giant’s phantom, illuminating the blood-red river, causing golden and crimson ripples to spread across the surface.
The moment the golden giant appeared, even the nobles of Chazhou, who knew nothing about Yu Guang, were left dumbfounded.
As for Wu Jin, he couldn’t suppress his astonishment.
“That’s divine intervention!” Wu Jin exclaimed. “I’ve never seen such an overwhelming display of divine intervention!”
“No, this is different from what the Divine Academy professors taught us. Which ancestral deity’s intervention is this? It doesn’t resemble any of them!”
Yu Yin, standing beside him, edged away with a look of disdain and continued watching the battle unfold on the river.
In Yu Yin’s view, this was not divine intervention from any ancestral deity—it was Yu Guang’s own “divine response.”
From the moment they first met, his elder brother had been surrounded by a radiant golden glow, a manifestation of the merit and power he cultivated on his own, rather than borrowed from any deity.
“Even though I’ve always known how powerful Big Brother is, he still manages to amaze me every single time,” Wu Jin muttered.
As his words fell, the human-faced serpent in the river tried to bite the giant with her massive, gaping jaws. But the golden giant seized her body and smashed her against a dike.
“Boom!”
The dike crumbled, and the river water surged through the breach, rushing down the dry riverbed in a roaring torrent.
The human-faced serpent, bloodied and battered, thrashed fiercely in the water. She attempted several times to coil around the giant and crush it or drag it to the riverbed.
But her opponent was Yu Guang.
The serpent’s once-beautiful human face slammed into several more dikes, smashing them one after another, leaving her face a mangled, bloody mess.
When she finally realized she might die, the human-faced serpent, who had terrorized this region for so long, rediscovered the fear she had felt in her weaker days. She began to plead loudly for her life.
The golden giant, its features indistinct, was unmoved. Its fist came crashing down, shattering her skull.
Water from the breached dike flooded onward, exposing the previously submerged farmlands and villages along the riverbanks.
Half of the human-faced serpent’s massive corpse was now visible above the water, her blood staining the river entirely red.
The river calmed, and all fell silent.
Yu Guang, drenched and dripping, walked out of the water toward the shore, with the colossal serpent’s body lying like a small mountain behind him.
He had truly killed the enormous human-faced serpent on his own.
Seeing such an awe-inspiring figure approaching, Wu Jin couldn’t help but feel the hair on his body stand on end. He instinctively took a step back.
Yet Yu Guang himself seemed entirely nonchalant, as though he had simply gone out to catch a thief or for a casual run. He walked up to the two of them without any sense of ceremony.
Casually, Yu Guang raised his left hand toward Yu Yin. “Here.”
In his palm, he held a thin little snake, extracted from the human-faced serpent’s body—it was her demon core, the source of her power.
Just like that, he took it and handed it to Yu Yin.
After passing the snake to his younger brother without much thought, Yu Guang turned to Wu Jin and asked, “Where is everyone? Why are they all gone?”
Wu Jin glanced around, and sure enough, the group of Chazhou nobles that had been near the sacrificial altar had disappeared without a trace.
The lively riverside from before was now nearly deserted. The few remaining people were still casting frightened glances in their direction as they ran for their lives.
“When did they run off? I didn’t even notice,” Wu Jin muttered, scratching his head.
He had been too engrossed in watching his elder brother fight the human-faced serpent.
Yu Guang didn’t particularly care when they had fled. He figured he’d deal with them later.
As the saying went, you could run, but you couldn’t hide forever.
“I spotted someone familiar among that group earlier—the patriarch of the Zhen family. Let’s go find him first,” Yu Guang suggested.
Though the “Dragon Lady” was dead, the chaotic riverbanks of Ling River still needed restoration, and the downstream villages suffering from drought and famine caused by the serpent required attention.
“Whatever you say, Big Brother. Let’s go find them right now!” Wu Jin replied enthusiastically.
Yu Guang turned to see his youngest brother still holding the snake without moving. Perplexed, he asked, “Why aren’t you eating it? Why are you staring at me?”
Wu Jin interjected, “Does he really have to eat that? Shouldn’t it be cooked first?”
Ignoring him, Yu Yin reached out to touch Yu Guang’s flushed neck, where the aftermath of the intense battle left his pulse racing wildly. He could even feel the surging flow of blood beneath the skin.
When Wu Jin saw Yu Yin’s hand on his big brother’s neck, he quickly averted his gaze, looking up at the sky and deciding to keep quiet.
“Big Brother is even more incredible than I imagined. He killed her so easily,” Yu Yin remarked softly.
Yu Yin’s amused voice echoed in Yu Guang’s mind.
“If one day I did something you couldn’t tolerate, just like her, would you kill me as decisively as you killed her?”
Yu Guang pulled his hand away. “I wouldn’t let you reach that point. Don’t worry.”
Yu Yin flipped his hand to catch Yu Guang’s fingers, then asked, “This snake—are you really letting me eat it just like this?”
Yu Guang was momentarily taken aback. “If not like this, do you really want to cook it first? Last time, I didn’t see you asking to cook it before eating.”
Yu Yin: “…”
“You really don’t worry about me at all, do you?” Yu Yin lowered his gaze, smiling softly.
“There’s a little worry,” Yu Guang admitted suddenly and openly. “But I can’t let you go hungry, either.”
“If Youngest gets stronger, then your big brother will become stronger too. I’ll always watch over you—don’t worry.”
“Do you think I’m the same as them?” Yu Yin shook the snake in his hand.
“No matter what, family is always different from everyone else,” Yu Guang replied.
Wu Jin, listening at the side with only a vague understanding, cleared his throat when he sensed their conversation winding down. “So, are we going to trouble those people now?”
Yu Yin grabbed Yu Guang’s arm and refused to let go. “Tell this brainless guy that you just killed a major demon. You need rest.”
“Rest? I don’t really feel that tired…” Yu Guang started, only to feel the grip on his arm tighten. He sighed and changed his tone. “Fine, then let’s head to the Zhen family’s estate in Chazhou City to rest.”
Yu Yin: “…” Fine, fine, you’re made of iron. Clearly, you don’t need rest at all.
He released Yu Guang’s arm and decided to leave him be.
The three of them traveled from the banks of the Ling River toward Chazhou City. Along the way, Wu Jin suddenly sidled up to Yu Guang, lowering his voice to chat with him.
“Big Brother, I didn’t hear everything the youngest was saying earlier, but I caught your responses. I think I’ve got a pretty good idea of what it was about.”
“Did he see that human-faced serpent and start brooding about his identity again? Honestly, after all these years together, everyone’s already guessed what he is. Nobody’s made a big deal of it.”
“Little Brother’s heart is just too sensitive, though. It’s tough on you, Big Brother, having to comfort him all the time. But that’s life, isn’t it?”
Yu Guang nodded subtly, his expression unreadable.
His youngest brother was indeed too delicate, always overthinking. This wasn’t the first time these kinds of questions had come up.
Every time the youngest thought he’d grown stronger, he’d bring it up again.
And every time, Yu Guang would patiently reassure him: “Don’t worry, your big brother will always be stronger than you!”
But no matter how many times he said it, it never seemed to put Yu Yin’s mind at ease.
“Still, the youngest isn’t all bad,” Wu Jin added, laughing. “Didn’t he just now urge you to rest? See, he does care about you.”
Wu Jin chuckled to himself, thinking about how nice it was to have a “spouse-like” presence around. It didn’t matter if it was a husband or a wife—so long as they were thoughtful and caring, it was worth the occasional effort to console them.
“Big Brother, don’t blame me for being nosy, but… are you two really not planning to get married?” Wu Jin asked suddenly.
Yu Guang froze at the question. “Why would I and the youngest get married?”
Wu Jin looked equally surprised. “Well, you’re already like this. You’re clearly going to spend your whole lives together. Isn’t marriage the next step?”
Yu Guang was baffled. “What kind of logic is that? Just because we live together forever, we have to get married?”
Sure, their relationship might seem unusual, and he did intend to always look after his youngest brother—but how did that lead to marriage?
Wu Jin hadn’t expected Big Brother to have no intention of “taking responsibility” and awkwardly added, “Well, if you ask me, maybe the reason Little Brother’s always uneasy is because you haven’t given him a proper title.”
Yu Guang was puzzled. “What do you mean? You think he can’t feel secure just being my brother, and marrying me is the only way he’ll feel at ease?”
The two of them talked in complete circles, their words utterly mismatched, until a sudden, cold laugh came from behind them.
Yu Guang and Wu Jin turned to look, only to see Yu Yin wearing an expression laced with sarcasm. His jaw clenched, and blood seeped from the corners of his mouth as his teeth sank into the snake.
The sound of his teeth grinding against the meat made it clear how furious he was—practically radiating hostility as he savagely bit into the snake, a sight that was downright chilling.
Yu Guang: “…”
Wu Jin: “…”
Yu Guang quickly turned back around. “Alright, enough nonsense. Don’t say anything more.”
Wu Jin nodded hurriedly. “Alright, alright! I won’t say another word!”
