Chapter 79: The Four-Clawed Blue Dragon

  The cave wasn't very deep, and we hadn't even fully let out the 100-meter climbing rope in our backpacks before we were standing on solid ground.

  Below was a pitch blackness, and I and Jingang Cannon hurriedly closed our eyes. After a moment, we opened them again, letting our vision adapt to the darkness in the cave as soon as possible, then moved our spiritual energy and looked around left and right.

  We've been through quite a few caves, but this one in front of us is probably the worst we've encountered so far. The cave is not only damp and narrow, but there's also knee-deep water on the ground. I scoop up a few drops of the water and bring it close to my nose for a sniff. Although it smells slightly fishy, it doesn't feel sticky or slimy, so it should be non-toxic.

  Jin Gang Cannon looked around for a moment, pointing to the right side of me indicating the location of the gray spirit. I nodded slightly, and Jin Gang Cannon and I each drew our own swords, advancing cautiously step by step.

  The water accumulated in the cave is uneven in depth, and there are occasionally protruding rocks underfoot. The entire cave has no signs of artificial excavation and is entirely natural.

  "My grass, what thing?" Jin Gang Pao said softly, and reached out to grab something. In his hand was a small toad with an unusual appearance.

  It is said to be ugly because the toad in Jin Gang Cannon's hand is not the common yellow, but a bright red all over and has only three legs. The only hind limb grows in the center of the tail vertebrae, forming a tail shape.

  I knocked the little toad out of the cannonballer's hand and shook my head, signaling him not to speak. In nature, any cold-blooded animal with overly bright colors is usually poisonous, so it's best not to touch them. The little toad had two legs and a tail, probably still in the metamorphic stage between tadpole and adult, nothing to get excited about.

  The cannon nodded in agreement, and I turned around to move forward again. At this time, although it was a cold winter day, the ground beneath was not cold, so walking barefoot through the water was not difficult. The only concern was that I didn't know what unexpected situation would appear under my feet, so I walked relatively slowly.

  The cave is deeper than we imagined, and after walking for two cigarettes, we still haven't reached the end. However, the gray air is getting thicker and more intense. To ensure our safety, Jin Gang Cannon and I can only disperse our own spiritual energy to block the gray air outside our bodies, so we have to be even more careful as we move forward.

  After proceeding for a short while, the water on the ground gradually became shallower, and soon we arrived at a dry area. The dry area was not large, located outside a stone wall, and above the stone wall appeared a small opening. Inside the opening, the grey air was extremely dense, and the main person should be inside.

  Jin Gang took out a cigarette, lit one and stuffed it into my mouth, then lit another for himself. He gestured to ask me about the situation ahead.

  I made a gesture as if I was going in, pulled out the divine turtle cannon from behind my waist and handed it to him, signaling him that I would go in first, and he followed.

  Jin Gang took over the divine turtle cannon from my hand and nodded. I bit down on the cigarette holder, took a hard drag, and flashed into the gap with Gan Jiang in hand.

  Before I entered, I had imagined all possible situations that might arise and thought of several countermeasures. After entering, I found that the situation inside was not as terrifying as I had imagined. In front of me was a spacious sandy area, very dry, with an area of about half a football field. A giant skeleton of an ancient beast lay diagonally in the sand, and in the center was a pool of water.

  "Old cow, died." I shouted out towards the Gatling gun. The reason why I didn't dare to speak earlier was because I was afraid of startling the snake by hitting the grass.

  "You're dead!" Jin Gang pao bent down and crawled in "Huh, what's this thing, how is it so big?"

  The beast bone in front of me is extremely large, with a flat and long skeleton, no limbs are found, it should be some kind of snake-like creature. The intense gray gas earlier was emitted from its skeletal remains. It seems that I and Jin Gang Cannon were both wrong, there is no living creature inside after all.

  I sheathed my sword and walked closer to the skeleton, only to find myself standing beside the carcass of this unknown serpent-like creature, and I had to look up at it. I tried to measure its length with my paces, from tail to head, and it took me over thirty steps, which means that when this serpent-like animal was alive, its body could reach a length of about 8 zhang (a unit of measurement).

  The skull of the corpse showed even more obvious characteristics of a snake-like creature, with the upper and lower jaws closing together, protruding fangs, and when looking up at the line of sight, it was discovered that there were two horns as thick as an arm on the forehead of the corpse.

  With a pair of horns, it's not a snake anymore. The breath is so evil that even the corpse's bones can emit an evil aura that can kill people after death. What exactly is this thing? I closed my eyes and quickly recalled the memories of Feng Sheng's life before he became a Daoist. After a while, I finally remembered something "like, very like."

  "What's going on?" The voice of Jīn Gāng Pào came from the other side of the snake-like animal's skeleton.

  "It's just like the Four-Clawed Azure Dragon. When I followed San Sheng Zhen Ren to Bi You Gong in the East Sea to pay respects to Tong Tian Jiao Zhu, I saw that thing back then. Unfortunately, this one doesn't have claws..."

  "Who says there isn't? Look," said Jin Gang Pao, bending down to pick something up from the gravel and tossing it over to me.

  I reached out to catch it, and upon closer inspection, it was indeed a huge toe bone. I quickly ran to the side of the golden cannon, squatted down, and dug in the sand with my hands, and sure enough, I found that the skeleton had dragon claws on its abdomen, which were deeply buried in the sand.

  "The four-clawed Qing Long has already become a true dragon, it has long had spiritual wisdom, how could it die here? Moreover, the Qing Long itself is a righteous energy entity, even if it died, it shouldn't leave behind such an evil corpse. Unless..."

  "What's wrong? If you have something to say, just spit it out. Don't leave me hanging like this." Jin Gang Pao was also an impatient person and saw that I was hesitating, he became very annoyed.

  I didn't answer Jin Gang Pao's question, but instead looked up at the top of the cave. Alas, the top of the cave was several zhang high, and I couldn't help but use the Wind Movement Technique to jump up a few zhang, focusing my eyes on the top of the cave. Finally, I saw what I wanted to see - a crack. Sure enough, there were several cracks on the top of the cave left behind by lightning strikes, but due to the passage of time, they had been covered up by dust that had fallen from above.

  Although I can currently use the Wind Movement Technique to jump into the air, there is a fundamental difference between jumping and flying. Jumping only uses the power of upward momentum to leap into the air, but it cannot stay suspended in mid-air.

  "It was probably killed by lightning." I crouched down and stood up with my hand pointing to the crack on top of the cave.

  "Why did heaven's wrath strike it?" asked Jin Gang Cannon, looking up at the cave entrance and then lowering his head.

  I slowly shook my head. If a serpent-like creature were to cultivate to the highest realm through coincidence, it would be the four-legged Qing Long. However, the five-clawed Jin Long requires blood inheritance and cannot be achieved through cultivation. The corpse of the Qing Long in front of me had clearly reached the number of four legs, but there was no auspicious aura of a Qing Long, instead emitting an evil gray gas. Thinking about this, I made a rough judgment in my heart.

  "It's likely that it did something bad and drilled here to escape. But in the end, it couldn't escape the heavenly punishment." I gazed at the huge skeleton in front of me with a sigh. It seems that whether it's human or beast, as long as they've committed too many evil deeds, they'll never be able to escape retribution.

  "What's it done wrong?" Jin Gang Pao took off his boots and poured out the accumulated water inside.

  "The four-legged Qinglong was also extremely rare in the past. The body of a naturally born Qinglong and that of a snake-like animal that had cultivated and transformed into a Qinglong were different. This Qinglong's skeleton is so large, which can explain that it wasn't born this way, meaning it may not have had any Qinglong bloodline to begin with, and was purely the result of later cultivation. I suspect that it might have taken some shortcut or wrong path during its cultivation that wasn't tolerated by heaven, otherwise its skeletal remains after death shouldn't have such a heavy evil aura." I analyzed based on the gray aura on the Qinglong's skeleton.

  "Never mind that now, let's think of a way to deal with it first. We've been down here for quite some time." Jin Gang Cannon put on his boots and stood up.

  "Just scatter its bones." The reason why the green dragon's corpse in front of him still had an evil aura emanating from it was because it still maintained its original shape before death, so the evil aura gathered and did not disperse.

  "Leave it to me, I'm best at causing trouble, haha!" Jin Gang laughed as he pulled out the remaining half stick of TNT explosives from his backpack and handed over the detonator.

  I agreed with his idea and handed him a grenade. Such a large corpse, without explosives, would have kept us busy for half a day.

  Jin Gang cannon lowered his head and fiddled with the detonator. "You go outside first, I'll light the explosives and then leave."

  "You get ready and we'll go together." I lit a cigarette.

  "There's not much fuse left, the gap on the stone wall is so narrow, don't compete with me in a moment." Jin Gang cannon head didn't lift, half joking.

  "Hurry up and finish what you're doing, I'll wait for you outside." I said as I walked out.

  I leaned against the stone wall, smoking and looking around at the dark surroundings with a strong sense of contrast. Just a few years ago, I was still on the training ground of the troops, receiving materialistic education. But now I've run to Tibet to drive out ghosts and demons, which is something I didn't even dare to think about before.

  Although I used to be very fond of ancient anecdotes and interesting stories, it was limited to my own entertainment, and I also knew in my heart that the gods, foxes, dragons, and snakes recorded in books were not real. However, after learning the art of observing aura, what I saw and heard directly proved that there are indeed many things and animals in the world we live in that we are not familiar with.

  I wasn't superstitious before, because at that time I didn't believe in gods, ghosts and fox spirits.

  Now I'm no longer superstitious because I've seen many ghosts and monsters with my own eyes.

  Hehe, what's superstition? Sometimes superstition is just the truth that most people can't understand or accept!

  "Grass." The burnt cigarette hurt my fingers and also pulled my thoughts back. This cigarette was lit up in the cave, but I only took a few puffs before coming out. Normally, one cigarette can be smoked for four to five minutes. Why hasn't the Gold Nugget come out yet?

  At this point, I turned around and stuck my head into the cave and shouted "Lao Niu".

  There was no response, I furrowed my brow and hastily turned sideways to rush in. I ran towards the remains of Qinglong, but found that the Diamond Cannon was not there either. The explosive packs and backpacks set up for the Diamond Cannon were scattered randomly beside the bones.

  I secretly gasped in shock and quickly searched around the cave, but still couldn't find any trace of the Golden Cannon, and I couldn't help but break out in a cold sweat.

  Where did he go?