Chapter 96: Dissecting the Giant Serpent

Faced with the giant serpent’s venomous spray, Liu Zhi did not hesitate for even an instant. He made a swift decision and forcibly drew himself and all his undead servants back into the Underworld Palace.

“Good thing I reacted in time, or we all would have been melted. I’ll meditate for a bit and recover my mana first. Still, I have to say, this sort of mage tactic is pretty useful. I should make more use of it in the future.”

After speaking, Liu Zhi sat down where he was and began to meditate, restoring his mana.

When the meditation ended, he did not rush out to inspect the situation outside. Instead, he replenished the poisons and other supplies on hand. After all, he had only brought along a few kinds of poison he thought useful, and had not carried every toxin with him.

From the performance of those poisons, some proved effective, while others seemed ill-suited to fighting the giant serpent. He would need to make some adjustments.

After that, Liu Zhi also reinforced his forces. Though he no longer had any new golden skeletons, he could still call out other undead units.

He added a few more walking corpses, and only then did he reappear at the pyramid in the real world.

The instant he emerged from the Underworld Palace, Liu Zhi saw that part of the pyramid’s surface had been melted away.

The giant serpent lay collapsed on the pyramid steps, and from the +317 that flashed before his eyes, it was clear the creature was dead.

Without hesitation, Liu Zhi jumped down from the pyramid and ran to the serpent’s side to examine it.

“It didn’t die from poison, and the injuries on its body aren’t serious. This thing actually sprayed itself to death from spraying too much.”

After roughly determining the cause of death, Liu Zhi felt a little uncertain. He was torn over whether to drag the serpent back to his Underworld Palace, or hang the corpse by the river to intimidate the other giant serpents.

After thinking it over, Liu Zhi decided not to throw the corpse into the river. Instead, he had the walking corpses drag the serpent’s body back to the Underworld Palace with them.

Once inside, Liu Zhi personally set to work dissecting the giant serpent.

He was well practiced at such tasks. Last time, he had dissected who knew how many fish-men, and had even gained a piece of knowledge about aquatic life.

This time, he did not much care about serpent lore, but he at least needed to know what the creature feared, and what methods would be best for dealing with it.

“Silken Fate Spider Maiden, help me hang this snake up.”

At Liu Zhi’s command, the serpent’s head was hoisted up. Then he drew his longsword, wind blades gathering along the edge, and cut down from beneath the serpent’s jaw.

The scales were fairly hard, but the spray the giant serpent had unleashed earlier had damaged them somewhat. Liu Zhi found a good angle and sliced through with ease.

Next, he made a ring cut around the serpent’s neck. “Good. The flesh here is exposed now. All of you, come here and hold the spider silk taut from behind. Pull it back.”

As he worked on the serpent, Liu Zhi ordered the walking corpses and roving skeletons to come help.

In his view, the greatest trouble with the giant serpent was simply skinning it. Once the outer hide was stripped away, all that remained inside was snake flesh.

However, compared with the way he had seen snakes skinned in the real world, the greatest difficulty here was the creature’s sheer size.

It took his subordinates a great deal of effort before they finally tore the hide off by force.

After removing the skin, and then cutting off the head, the serpent could be eaten.

No, that was not right. Food was not the first matter at hand. Liu Zhi was still studying the skin he had just taken off.

At first, he had assumed the hide of such a giant serpent would be extremely thick. But after stripping it away, he discovered it was about the same as ordinary snake skin.

This puzzled Liu Zhi for a moment, but then he understood. Snakes shed their skin once a year. No matter how large this one was, its hide was still fresh new skin.

This discovery made him feel a little better. It seemed that aside from being bigger, these giant serpents were not especially troublesome.

His attention then shifted from the skin to the head. Aside from constricting prey to death, the giant serpent’s forced swallowing ability was also one of its greatest weapons.

Although the one before him had displayed an unusual spraying ability, its swallowing power had not diminished much. More than once, Liu Zhi had seen it open its mouth and try to gulp someone down whole.

So he focused most of his effort on the serpent’s head.

First, since this giant serpent was a venomous species, Liu Zhi removed its two fangs and venom sacs. He also found the spraying conduit in its mouth.

It was obvious that what the serpent sprayed was a liquid made by mixing venom with something else.

Tracing the conduit downward, Liu Zhi nearly had to pull the serpent’s organs out before he found a deflated sac near the heart.

Feeling it in his hand, Liu Zhi understood that this thing could use the pressure of the heart’s contraction to expel the liquid inside.

It was just that by now the contents of the sac had all been sprayed dry. Liu Zhi had no idea what substances had been inside it, or what reaction they might have produced when mixed with serpent venom.

He set the sac aside, then noticed that there was still some venom left in the venom sacs. He took out a small bottle and collected it all, testing it carefully, only to discover with some disappointment that it was merely ordinary viper venom. It might have been a little stronger in effect, but only because of long accumulation, not because the venom itself had mutated.

That left Liu Zhi somewhat disappointed. He had thought he might find some suitable exotic toxin, but it turned out to be nothing special after all.

Still, he did notice a pearl-like object in the serpent’s brain. It should have been some kind of bone-derived mutation, though for now he had no idea what use it might have.

After finishing with the head, Liu Zhi forcibly split open the serpent’s belly. Once he had taken out the gallbladder and other important organs, his attention turned to the spinal joints.

Liu Zhi had heard the saying that a snake should be struck at its seven-inch mark, since that is where the heart lies. Of course, for a serpent this huge, seven inches below the head would naturally make no sense; the proportion had to be adjusted accordingly.

Based on the length of the heart vessels he had dragged out earlier, Liu Zhi was calculating where the giant serpent’s heart should have been.

At the same time, he carefully examined the chest cavity, searching for the weakest point in the giant serpent’s defenses. If he intended to attack it head-on, he might only have one chance to strike.