"People?" Ning said in surprise. It had been nearly 3 hours since he entered the secret realm. While he knew that the secret realm was large, he hadn't expected it to not find a single participant at all the entire time.
However, finally, he was hearing some footsteps that definitely belonged to humans.
Ning looked to his left and saw a person walking out of the forest. It was an 8th Qi Condensation realm man wearing a blue robe, slightly darker in color than the one Ning was wearing.
"Eh, I finally got to see someone," the man said. He looked at Ning up and down and frowned.
"Why are you so weak brother? What are your elders thinking, sending such a weak disciple to the secret realm?" the man complained.
Ning was a little amused at the man assuming that he was weak due to his aura. 'Well, at least it's working,' Ning thought.
"Brother, you might want to leave the secret realm soon, it's dangerous," the man said.
Ning smiled and said, "Thank you for the concerns, but the secret realm will eject me automatically if I were to come across some mortal threat."
"Sigh, that's true, but you should leave when you have enough points to satisfy your elders," the man said.
Suddenly, Ning ran forward with a fist targeted at the man.
"Wha— What?" the man was surprised at the sudden attack and quickly took out his sword and attacked Ning.
Ning casually parried the sword with the side of his left arm and punched near the man's skull.
"Ahh," the man screamed and closed his eyes at the punch. Suddenly, fresh blood started flowing from the side of his skull.
The man slowly opened his eyes to see the blood flowing down his left arm, but there was no pain at all.
"You should be more careful. It's better if you leave this place," Ning said and walked away from the man. The man slowly turned his head to the left and just managed to see Ning put a large snake corpse into his storage bag.
"I can see that you were concerned for me and I appreciate that. But," Ning said while pointing at the tree, "You should be more concerned for yourself."
The man looked at the tree he had been ignoring this whole time and saw giant snakes wrapped around the tree who were starting to make their way down to the ground after seeing their own kind die.
The man's soul nearly left his body when he saw that.
"Oi, leave," Ning shouted at him and the man came back to himself. He hurriedly turned around and started to run away and stopped.
"Brother, why aren't you running?" he asked when he saw that Ning was still there.
"Hah, Why would I run when there are so many delicious points slithering in front of me."
Ning watched the man run away and focused on the battle that was going to start. "Ugh, I wanted to use the spear at least once, but I can't use that against so many enemies. I guess it's the sword again," he thought and took out the Low-Grade Sword Artifact.
He got into his stance and waited for the closest snake to come nearer. When it was, he started.
He immediately disappeared from his spot and appeared behind the snake. A thin line of blood appeared on the snake's neck as its head slid off its body and it died.
That was 1.
He immediately kicked his movement technique into action and disappeared once more and arrived in front of another snake.
Before the snake could even react, he sliced it through the head and the snake separated into two parts halfway through its body.
That was 2.
His divine sense was in full gear, so he saw a snake sneak behind him and lunge at him. The snake was smaller than him, so Ning didn't even look behind when the snake was stuck in midair.
He simply turned around and gave it a good kick, blasting its head into hundreds of pieces.
That was 3.
There were hundreds of snakes, and Ning couldn't possibly keep count of how many he was going to kill. He was currently focused on two different things.
The first was making sure he didn't get sneak attacked as that could be bad.
The second was trying to find the most venomous ones first so that he could kill them and be in less danger.
Just as he was thinking that he saw a sapphire skinned snake about 10 meters in length with two tiny horn-like protrusions coming out of its skin.
"A Cerulean Hornsnake," Ning said in surprise. That was one of the most venomous snakes he knew of. A single bite of those snakes had enough venom to kill 20,000 mortals at once.
"That's the one I need to kill first," he thought. He continued killing the ones that came up to him but didn't really care much in the ways of danger.
But the Cerulean Hornsnake was slithering towards him and then Ning realized that he was in much greater danger than he thought he was in.
The snake was in the 1st realm of Foundation Establishment.
'F*ck, it's clearly one of the rare beasts the host told us about,' Ning thought. He tried to run further away from the snake while continuously killing more and more snakes.
But it was getting harder. He now needed to split his attention into 3 parts and that was getting troublesome. He was starting to make mistakes.
BITE
"Ow," suddenly, he looked down and saw a snake bite his leg. His leg muscle was very strong, but this snake's bite was also strong enough to puncher it just enough to send the venoms into his bloodstream.
Ning quickly remembered what the snake was a killed it with a single swipe of his sword. But within seconds, the numbness from the venom started spreading in the leg, and he could no longer use his left leg.
More dangerously, the venom was moving up and up to his body, and would slowly reach his waist area.. At that point, he would be in serious danger.