The Serpent God's Might (Part Two)

"The Spatial Bracelet is still with him — it's full of the plague antidotes that Wang Xiaojun bought with his life. If it gets corroded along with Councillor Luo Mian, what happens to everyone infected with the plague? How are we supposed to deal with the White Demon Eagle Legion without it?" Lingling said, her voice tight with worry.

Killing Councillor Luo Mian had avenged the wrong and let out the rage — but the cost to Hangzhou had already been devastating.

The Totem Xuan Serpent had given none of that a second thought. It had swallowed Councillor Luo Mian and his drill shield down into the deepest recesses of its stomach, giving him no chance of escape whatsoever.

Mo Fan was still trying to think when a roar of noise erupted from the horizon. He looked up — and ice flooded his chest. A pale tide, vast as storm clouds, was bearing down on them. The White Demon Eagle Legion.

This was a small plain practically at the city's doorstep. Beyond it lay Hangzhou proper: houses, residents, streets, schools, and the sprawling quarantine zone that held every soul infected with the plague. The area had been partially cleared of civilians as a precaution, but the moment the White Demon Eagles reached the city, those airborne predators would become unstoppable killing machines. Creatures that could fly and strike from above — there would be no holding them back.

The Legion was closing fast. Through the haze of mist, even higher in the night sky, a silver shape beat its wings steadily, leading a cluster of equally enormous demon-eagles straight for Hangzhou.

"What is that? The silver one?" Mo Fan asked, something cold crawling through him.

"The Silver Dome Lord," Lingling said. "The ruler of Xi Ling. It's the one that turned all the Celestial Eagles against us."

"This just became catastrophic." Mo Fan's voice was grim. "A Sovereign breaking into Hangzhou — I can't even fathom the scale of destruction."

The Bo City disaster had been set in motion by a single Commander-class Wing-Azure Wolf, and it had drowned the streets in blood. So what would a Sovereign bring? What nightmare would a Sovereign and an army of Demon-Beasts vast enough to blot out the night sky carve into this city?

And yet, to resolve the plague crisis, they needed the Eagle Red Grass inside the Spatial Bracelet. Even buried in the Totem Xuan Serpent's stomach, Luo Mian would almost certainly be clutching that bracelet with both hands — it was the only bargaining chip he had left. Unless he was genuinely released, he might simply destroy the antidotes that Wang Xiaojun had died to bring back.

So what were they supposed to do?

Mo Fan had no answer.

**SKREEEEE——!!**

The Totem Xuan Serpent reared its titanic head and unleashed a thunderous cry at the White Demon Eagle Legion swarming above. The eagles streaked past it in a great pale wave, hurtling toward Hangzhou. The forward ranks were already diving — plummeting like birds of prey that had spotted fat quarry on the ground, reaching out to snatch up whatever they touched.

Humans without magic were simply too fragile. They had nothing to fight back with.

**SKREE—! SKREE—! SKREE—!!**

The Totem Xuan Serpent's fury was absolute. Hangzhou was its territory. It would not tolerate any other creature running amok here.

It swept its body into motion across the plain, surging toward Hangzhou in a rushing tide of scales. Its size dwarfed mountains — people deep inside the city could make out its approach from a great distance, that staggering head, that pillar-thick body, the deep trench it carved into the earth with every passing length. It ran parallel to a small canal at Hangzhou's outskirts like some ancient rival claim upon the land.

Screams erupted through the residential streets. People dove into their homes, but walls meant nothing against creatures that hunted from the air. Deaths had already begun. It was fortunate that this district had been evacuated early enough — for now, there were no mass casualties.

The White Demon Eagles fell like white rain, a dense curtain of them hammering down onto the city's outskirts. Mages who had rushed to join the defense found themselves helpless against targets that moved through the sky — they could only stand and watch as the eagles hunted and killed freely through the streets below.

But something far worse than eagles now stood at the city's edge. Those guarding the perimeter feared it with a terror that dwarfed anything the White Demon Eagles had inspired.

The Totem Xuan Serpent had arrived.

It opened its jaws and breathed out a torrent of cyan toxic mist at the White Demon Eagles swarming overhead. The mist billowed outward in great rolling clouds — anything that breathed it into its chest would stiffen into a corpse within seconds.

Against White Demon Eagles, the Totem Xuan Serpent's venom was instant death. Hundreds of white shapes dropped from the sky at once and crashed into the streets in broken heaps.

The toxic mist settled in a dense ceiling over the city's edge, forming a vast poisonous wall — a cyan Barrier that drew a hard territorial line through the air. Every White Demon Eagle that flew into that cyan zone died on contact.

Hundreds became thousands. Still more of the White Demon Eagle Legion hurled themselves at the barrier, convinced that sheer numbers could punch through it. They fell just the same.

And not a trace of the venom drifted down into the streets where people lived.

The residents had braced themselves for death. Many had made peace with it. Then, impossibly, the cyan poison curtain hanging over the sky began slaughtering the bloodthirsty white demons on their behalf. People stared upward, hardly daring to trust what they saw, and then shifted their gaze to the colossal Sky-Scraping Serpent now planted at the city's edge.

"Is it... protecting us?" An Intermediate-Level Mage from the Magic Association murmured the words half to herself. Behind her stood a cluster of elderly people who had only just been brought out of a care home.

These old people had received no evacuation warning. They had simply been left behind — abandoned in the care home, invisible to the city that had moved on without them. Only this woman had come to protect them.

The elderly looked up. They watched the Sky-Scraping Serpent drive gust after gust of venom into the invading White Demon Eagles, cutting them down by the hundreds. In the strange mixture of shock and relief stirring through them, an old memory surfaced — a legend Hangzhou had carried for generations. This city had always been watched over by something. A great serpent whose head met its own tail, encircling the city like a living wall.

The Totem Xuan Serpent stood its ground at the city's edge, head raised, gazing out with ancient calm at the unending stream of White Demon Eagles still pouring toward it. To this creature, perhaps, the entire White Demon Eagle Legion was no more threatening than a swarm of flies and gnats. Numbers meant nothing.

It kept breathing out toxic mist, thickening the barrier still further, immovable in its refusal to let a single White Demon Eagle pass.

Then something made it pause.

Its gaze lifted higher. Those vast eyes blazed to life like twin searchlights, twin beams of cold, piercing light cutting straight up into the sky above.

High overhead — the Silver Dome Lord.

The Silver Dome Lord stared back down at the Totem Xuan Serpent on the earth below. Then it let out a screech of rage, as though staring down a threat it had never expected to find. The sound razored through the sky above Hangzhou and shook the air like a blade.