Hermit Purple caught Sasuke and gently placed him on the ground.
Sasuke rubbed his hair, messed up by the wind, and hurried over to join Linto.
He poked the huge snake head: "Is White Snake Sage dead?"
Linto nodded.
The system message said it clearly, it was "killed," not "defeated," indicating that this reptile, which had lived for a thousand years and cultivated immortality, was indeed dead.
Sage Art: Inorganic Reincarnation stopped, dust to dust, earth to earth, and Daichi returned to its former tranquility.
Linto looked around, and the Blue Snake was still standing there blankly, its snake eyes staring straight at the head of White Snake Sage.
Not far away was the corpse of Tsujigiri.
This woman's mind worked faster than the Blue Snake's. Seeing that White Snake Sage was weakening, she was afraid that Linto would kill her after killing the boss. She transformed into a snake in advance and turned to run.
At that time, White Snake Sage, in order to get rid of Linto, frantically used Inorganic Reincarnation, and Daichi rose and fell.
It would have been fine if Tsujigiri had stood still, but she flew out of the Ryuuchi Cave's range. Could White Snake Sage sacrifice her own life to protect hers?
So, this snake princess, who had served White Snake Sage her whole life, died under her master's Sage Art, taking the first step to explore the underworld, and continuing to serve White Snake Sage down there.
"What a pity," Linto said sincerely.
That's 400 soul shards. Since they were going to die anyway, it would have been better to die at Linto's hands.
After this fight, Linto roughly understood the personnel structure of Ryuuchi Cave.
At the top was the most powerful White Snake Sage, and below were the three goddesses as officials, responsible for serving tea and water and testing visitors seeking enlightenment. The military officials were Manda, Garaga, Blue Snake, and others, large snakes that had given up transforming into humans.
However, killing everyone in Ryuuchi Cave from top to bottom, just to figure out the family tree... isn't that a bit too hellish?
Linto walked to the Blue Snake.
"Why didn't you run?"
The Blue Snake said, "I... forgot."
The battle between Linto and White Snake Sage was too thrilling. The Blue Snake focused on watching and completely forgot about running away.
"Have you eaten people?" Linto asked again.
The Blue Snake shook its head: "I wanted to, but... it wasn't my turn."
White Snake appeared and raised its palm.
The Blue Snake shrank its head, then looked at Linto, not daring to dodge, and could only take White Snake's slap.
White Snake took out the memory disc, looked at it, and nodded to Linto: "A guy who's always been bullied, indeed hasn't eaten people."
The disc was reinserted.
"Do you know where White Snake Sage's little cakes are hidden? Take me there, and I'll spare your life," Linto said.
The Blue Snake nodded and bowed repeatedly:
"Master, this way please."
The Blue Snake dug the soil in front, and soon, a downward passage appeared.
It obediently led the way, and Linto and Sasuke followed behind. After a series of twists and turns, their vision suddenly opened up.
This was a very bright underground cave. At the bottom of the cave was a pool of crystal clear, slightly sticky, jade-like liquid.
Linto frowned slightly as he looked at the water in the pool.
More than two hundred men and women with extremely handsome and beautiful faces and figures were soaking in it.
The oldest were in their early twenties, and the youngest were only six or seven years old. They were all naked and had all the hair on their bodies removed. They were completely bare like this, and with their peaceful expressions, they resembled fetuses returning to the womb.
The Blue Snake explained: "They are people captured from various countries. White Snake Sage used Sage Art, mixed with her saliva, to create this pool of water, which can keep their bodies in peak condition, pure inside and out, so..."
"The taste is best when you eat them."
Hermit Purple activated, pulling all two hundred people out of the pool. Ripple energy flowed into their bodies along the vines, stimulating their vitality. After a few seconds, coughing sounds came one after another.
Dust and dirt soiled their bodies, but their souls awakened as they stood on solid ground. After figuring out what had happened, more than two hundred people knelt down to Linto.
Linto sat on the ground, making eye contact with everyone in front of him one by one. After a long silence, he said, "Get up. Go outside and wait for me."
"I'll take you home."
"Home."
The simple two words caused a light, made of longing and memories, to burst forth in their confused eyes.
Sasuke took them back to the surface.
The appearance of each person here, if in Linto's familiar world, would be enough to be an internet celebrity or a star.
Here, they almost became food for beasts.
For thousands of years, no one knew how many living people had been chewed up and eaten by White Snake Sage as snacks.
Linto grabbed White Snake Sage's huge snake head.
"You really deserve to die."
The Blue Snake's eyelids twitched slightly, and then it heard Linto call its name, so it quickly stretched its head over: "Master, I'm here."
"Where's the money?"
Before the fight, White Snake Sage said that if Linto was willing to leave, she would give him a large sum of gold and silver jewelry.
Linto didn't lack money, but research, development, and the spread of theories all needed money.
The Blue Snake turned left and right again, this time walking longer, sinking almost a hundred meters. Finally, Linto found the cave where the treasure was stored.
Linto stepped into it and suddenly felt a little abnormal.
He sensed White Snake Sage's life force.
Not completely dead?
Impossible, if she wasn't dead, how could the system have issued a kill notification?
Star Platinum appeared, pushing away the gold and silver jewelry blocking the way.
When he reached the deepest part of the treasure cave, Linto saw a shattered "golden egg."
He picked up the broken eggshell.
The outside was plated with gold, looking like gold, but the inside was actually a real snake egg.
There was still mucus left by the crawling snakes on the ground, and the faint life force of White Snake Sage came from within.
Linto held the eggshell.
"Orochimaru's old family... could it be that she really didn't die?"
Linto picked up a luminous pearl from the side. With the help of the burning candle nearby, the light reflected off the pearl onto the wall, creating a blurry reflection.
"Hermit Purple"
Purple vines wrapped around Linto's arm.
"Target, White Snake Sage."
Psychic Photography, no response.
"No response, either the cause and effect is insufficient, or it doesn't exist in this world."
In terms of cause and effect, Linto and White Snake Sage had a series of battles, and the cause and effect between them had long been overflowing.
"That is to say, 'White Snake Sage' really no longer exists in this world."
Linto thought for a while and activated the Psychic Photography ability again.
"Target, a creature with White Snake Sage's life force."
The next second, the picture shook violently. In the picture, there were forty or fifty small snakes of various shapes.
Some of them were moving through the grass, some were crawling underground, and some were soaking in the underground river, going with the flow.
Seeming to sense Linto's gaze, the forty or fifty small snakes turned their heads at the same time, their snake eyes filled with resentment.
Exactly the same as White Snake Sage.
"So that's how it is."
The real White Snake Sage was indeed dead, but how could an old thing that had lived for thousands of years have no backup plans?
White Snake Sage probably had some kind of memory sharing ability with this golden egg.
Once the main body died, the golden egg would shatter, and the forty or fifty small snakes carrying the main body's memories would go their separate ways, avoiding further pursuit from the enemy.
When things settled down, they would probably devour each other until only one snake remained. That snake would be the new White Snake Sage.
But...
Would that still be White Snake Sage?
Linto didn't think so.
The system and Hermit Purple didn't think so either.
What survived was just a new life with the memories of White Snake Sage.
Of course, Linto didn't intend to think about the philosophical question of "whether memory equals the soul."
He looked around at the treasure that filled the cave, accumulated by White Snake Sage over thousands of years.
"It seems I don't have to worry about money in this life."
Under Linto's command, the Blue Snake became a porter, carrying the gold and silver jewelry out.
While it was carrying things, Linto pulled over a gold-inlaid jade chair, grabbed a tiger skin, and plopped down on it.
The dual fatigue of body and mind surged up.
Linto leaned back in the chair, opened the system interface, and checked the gains from this period.
Killing White Snake Sage: 3000 points.
Garaga + Manda: 1600 points.
Yugito Nii: 1100 points.
Plus the 714 points left after upgrading Star Platinum, and the 63 soul shards gained from daily income.
Total soul shards: 6477 points.
Linto looked at the numbers on the system interface and changed to a more comfortable position.
Unknowingly, he had saved up a lot.
With so many soul shards, Linto had three options.
First, use them all to upgrade White Snake.
Second, save them up, wait for the dimensional star core, and gamble on a six-star draw.
Third, draw cards! I want to draw cards!
Linto quietly thought for a few seconds and made a decision.
"Draw cards."
---
You can read 50 Chapters ahead on my
pat reon.com/GMadman